Dedication.
TO
LAURENCE STERNE, Esq.,
&c. &c. &c.
London, Jan. 2d, 1888.
Dear Sir,—
We never should have ventured to address you, had we not noticed of late that Mr. Andrew Lang has been writing to Dead Authors, not one of whom—to our knowledge—has taken offence at this liberty. Encouraged by his example, we beg leave to dedicate to you this history of our journey, laying it with the most respectful humility before your sentimental shade, and regretting it is without that charm of style which alone could make it worthy.
And as, in our modesty, we would indeed be unwilling to trouble you a second time, we must take advantage of this unhoped-for opportunity to add a few words of explanation about our journey in your honour. It is because of the conscientious fidelity with which we rode over the route made ever famous by you, that we have included ourselves in the class of Sentimental Travellers, of which you must ever be the incomparable head. To other sentiment, dear Sir, whatever we may have thought in the enthusiasm of setting out, we now know we can lay no claim. Experience has taught us that it depends upon the man himself, and not upon his circumstances or surroundings. Nowadays the manner of travelling through France and Italy is by rail, and mostly on Cook’s tickets, and chaises have become a luxury which we at least cannot afford. The only vehicle by which we could follow your wheel-tracks along the old post roads was our tricycle, an ingenious machine of modern invention, endeared to us, because without it Our Sentimental Journey would have been an impossibility. In these degenerate days, you, Sir, we are sure, would prefer it to a railway carriage, as little suited to your purposes as to those of Mr. Ruskin—an author whose rare and racy sayings you would no doubt admire were you still interested in earthly literature. Besides, in a tandem, with its two seats, there would be nothing to stir up a disagreeable sensation within you. You would still have a place for “the lady.”
Because it was not possible to follow you in many ways, we have spared no effort to be faithful in others. We left out not one city which you visited, and it was a pleasure to learn that the world is still as beautiful as you found it, though to-day most men of culture care so little for what is about them, they would have us believe all beauty belongs to the past. However, it will be gratifying to you, who did not despise fame during your lifetime, to know that you are one of the men of that past who have not wholly died.—And again, dear Sir, as it was your invariable custom to borrow the thoughts and words of any writer who particularly pleased you—a custom your enemies have made the most of—we have not hesitated to use any pictures of other men, or any descriptions and expressions in your works, that seemed appropriate to the record of our journey. More honest than you, Sir, we have given credit to the artists, that their names may enhance the value of our modest offering. But as you will recognise your own words without our pointing them out, we have not even put them into quotation marks, an omission which you of all men can best appreciate.
In conclusion: we think you may be pleased to hear something of your last earthly resting-place in the burying-ground belonging to St. George’s, Hanover Square. We made a pilgrimage to it but a few Sundays ago. Though your grave was neglected until the exact spot is no longer known, the stone, since raised near the place, is so often visited that, though it stands far from the path, a way to it has been worn in the grass by the feet of the many, who have come to breathe a sigh or drop a tear for poor Yorick. We scarce know if it will be any comfort to you in your present life, to learn that this cemetery is a quiet, restful enclosure, near as it is to the carriages and ’busses about Marble Arch and the Socialist and Salvationist gatherings in Hyde Park. In the spring it is pretty as well, laburnums shading the doorway of the little chapel, through which one can see from the street the grey gravestones that dot the grass, and seem no less peaceful than the sheep in the broad fields of the park opposite.
We have the honour to be, dear Sir, your most obedient and most devoted and most humble servants,
JOSEPH PENNELL.
ELIZABETH ROBINS PENNELL.
CONTENTS.
OUR
SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY,
&c. &c.
—“THE roads,” said I, “are better in France.”
“You have ridden in France?” said J——, turning quick upon me with the most civil sarcasm in the world.
“Strange!” quoth I, arguing the matter with him, “you have so little faith in cyclers that you cannot take their word for it.”
“’Tis but a three hours’ journey to Calais and French roads,” said J——; “why not ride over them ourselves?”
—So, giving up the argument, not many days later we put up our flannels and our ulsters, our “Sterne” and our “Baedeker,” a box of etching plates, and a couple of note-books—“Our old cycling suits,” said I, darning a few rents, “will do”—took our seats in a third-class railway carriage at Holborn Viaduct; and the Calais-Douvres sailing at half-past twelve that same morning, by two we were so incontestably in France, that a crowd of shouting, laughing, jesting, noisy Frenchmen in blue blouses were struggling up the gang-plank with the tricycle, which at Dover half the number of stolid Englishmen in green velveteen had delivered into the hands of the sailors.—But before we had set foot in the French dominions we had been treated by the French with an inhospitality which, had it not been for the sentiment of our proposed ride, would have made us forget the excellence of the roads beckoning us to its coast, and have sent us back in hot haste to England.——
“To pay a shilling tax for the privilege of landing in France,” cried J——, fresh from his “Sterne,” “by heavens, gentlemen, it is not well done! And much does it grieve me ’tis the lawgivers and taxmakers of a sister Republic whose people are renowned for courtesy and politeness, that I have thus to reason with.”
—But I confess we were much worse treated by the English, who seemed as unwilling to lose our tricycle as the French were to receive us.——
“Eight shillings to carry it from London to Dover; ’tis no small price,” said J——, putting the change in his purse. “But fifteen from Dover to Calais, as much as we pay for our two tickets, tax and all, I tell you ’tis monstrous! To seize upon an unwary cycler going forth in search of good roads, and make him pay thus dearly for sport taken away from England——ungenerous!”
—But we had scarce begun our sentimental journey.
CALAIS.
NOW, before I quit Calais, a travel-writer would say, it would not be amiss to give some account of it.—But while we were there we were more concerned in seeking the time and occasion for sentiment than in studying the history and monuments of the town. If you would have a short description of it, I know of none better than that of Mr. Tristram Shandy, who wrote without even having seen by daylight the places he described.—The church with the steeple, the great Square, the town-house, the Courgain, are all there still, and I fancy have changed but little in a hundred years.
To travellers eager for sentiment, nothing could have been more vexatious than the delay at the Custom-House, where the tandem was weighed, its wheels measured, and its number taken; and we were made to deposit fifty francs, three-fourths of which sum would be returned if we carried the machine out of France within three months, the remaining fourth going to pay the Government for our wear and tear of French roads.—There was another delay at the Hôtel Meurice while a room was found for us, and a femme-de-chambre insisted upon Madame’s going to bed at once, because of the terrible wind that had prostrated two English ladies. But, finally rid of officials and femmes-de-chambre, we walked out on the street.
Now was the moment for an occasion for sentiment to present itself.
It is a rude world, I think, when the wearer of a cycling suit (even if it be old and worn) cannot go forth to see the town but instantly he is stared at and ridiculed by the townspeople. For our part,
being but modest folk, we keenly felt the glances and smiles of the well-dressed men and women on the Rue Royale. To find a quiet place we walked from one end of the town to the other; through the Square where Mr. Shandy would have put up his fountain, and where a man at an upper window yelled in derision, and a woman in a doorway below answered——
“What wouldst thou have? ’Tis the English fashion.”
—Down a narrow street, where, “For example!” cried a little young lady in blue, laughing in J——’s very face—for we had turned full in front on a group of girls—while a child clapped her hands at sight of him, and a black dog snapped at his stockings. And then up a second street, that led to the barracks, where two soldiers on duty put down their guns and fairly shrieked. Into the Cathedral children followed us, begging, “Won sous, sare! won sous, sare!” until we longed to conceal our nationality. At its door a poor wretch of a fisherman, who had looked upon the wine when it was red, came to our side to tell us in very bad English that he could speak French.—There was no peace to be had in the town.
If there was one thing we hoped for more than another, it was to see a monk, the first object of
our master’s sentiment in France; and, strange as it may seem, our hope was actually fulfilled before the afternoon was over.—On the outskirts of the city, where we had taken refuge from ridicule, we saw a brown hooded and cloaked Franciscan, and in our joy started to overtake him. But he walked quite as fast across the yellow-flowered sand-dunes towards St. Pierre. Had he known what was in our hearts, I think he too would have introduced himself with a little story of the wants of his convent and the poverty of his order.
We soon discovered that it was a fête day in Calais, and that a regatta was being held down by the pier.—When we were there three Frenchmen in jockey-caps were pulling long out-riggers against the wind over a chopping sea. Looking on was a great crowd, sad-coloured in the grey afternoon light, for all its holiday dress, but touched here and there with white by the caps—their wide fluted borders blowing back on the breeze—of the peasant women.
As every one who has passed in the Paris train knows, at the entrance of the town is the town-gate, a heavy grey pile, with high-gabled roof and drawbridge, the chains of which hang on either side the archway. Now that Dessein’s was gone, J—— declared that it interested him more than anything else in Calais, since Hogarth had painted it; and he began an elaborate study. It was not easy work. To the people in their holiday humour the combination of knee-breeches and sketch-book was irresistibly comic. But he went bravely on. I have rarely seen him more conscientious over a sketch. Indeed he was so pleased with this gate that later, when, at the end of a street, we came to another, under a tall turreted house, and leading into a large courtyard, nothing would do but he must have that as well.—In a word, he was in a mood to draw as many gates as he could find; but by this time at the Hôtel Meurice dinner was on the table.
It was not until many weeks after, when we were back in London, that, on looking into the matter, J—— discovered that Hogarth painted, not the gate facing the sea, but that at the other end of the town—I verily believe the only gate in all Calais of which he did not get a sketch.
On the whole the afternoon was a disappointment. In little more than a single hour our Master had grasped seventeen chapters of adventures. In thrice that time we, with hearts interested in everything, and eyes to see, had met with a paltry few, easily disposed of in as many lines.—To add vexation to vexation, at the table d’hôte we learned from the waiter, that though the old inn had long since ceased to exist, there was a new Dessein’s in the town, where, for the name’s sake, it would have been more appropriate to begin our journey. Had we carried a “Baedeker” for Northern as well as Central France, we should have been less ignorant.
We left the champions of the regatta toasting each other at the next table, and went into the salon to study a chapter of our sentimental guide-book in preparation for the first day’s ride. But an American was there before us, and began, instead, a talk about Wall Street and business, Blaine and torchlight processions. As Americans do not travel to see Americans, we retired to our room.
BY A FAIR RIVER AND OVER TERRIBLE MOUNTAINS.
THE milkman, followed by his goats, was piping through the town, and the clock over the geraniums in the court was just striking eight, as we disposed of our bill—not without numerous complaints, in which every one but some English tourists joined—and wheeled the tricycle out to the street.—Though the old motherly femme-de-chambre had come to see us ride, and stopped a friend to share this pleasure, and though there were many faces at the dining-room windows, the sight of the pavé, or French paving, kept us from mounting. We walked, J—— pushing the tricycle, to the Place, past the grey town-hall, into the Rue Royale. We had been told that where La Fleur’s hotel once stood a museum was being built. To sentimental travellers, perhaps, this destruction of old landmarks was as worthy of tears as a dead donkey.—But it is easier to weep in a private post-chaise than in the open streets.
We got through the town without trouble, but we could not ride even after we went round the city-gate which Hogarth did paint, and to which we gave but a passing glance. It was only beyond the long, commonplace, busy suburb of St. Pierre that the pavé ended and the good road began.
The morning was cool, the sky grey with heavy clouds, and the south wind we were soon to dread was blowing softly. It seemed a matter of course, since we were in France, that we should come out almost at once on a little river. It ran in a long line between reeds, towards a cluster of red-roofed cottages, and here and there fishermen sat, or stood, on the banks. When it forsook its straight course, the road and the street-car track from
Calais went winding with it,—grassy plains, where cows and horses wandered, stretching seaward on the right. In front we looked to a low range of blue hills, that gradually took more definite shape and colour as we rode. They were very near when we came to Guignes, a silent, modest little village, for all its royal associations and memories of the “Field of the Cloth of Gold.” On its outskirts old yellow houses rose right on the river’s edge; and when we passed, a girl in blue skirt stood in one doorway, sending a bright reflection into the grey water, and in another an old man peacefully smoked his pipe, taking it from his mouth to beg we would carry packets for him to Paris. Behind one cottage, in the garden among the apple-trees, was a large canal boat, like a French Rudder Grange. Beyond, high steep-roofed houses faced upon the street, and the stream was lined with many barges.—But just here we turned from river and street-car track to walk to the other end of the town, over pavé and up a steep hill, where we were told by a blushing young man, in foreign English, that we had but to follow the diligence then behind us if we would reach Marquise.
Though we thought this a rare jest at the time, we carried his advice out almost to the letter.—We had come to the terrible mountains for which we had been prepared in Calais. It is at this point, according to Mr. Ruskin, that France really begins, the level stretch we first crossed being virtually but part of Flanders. ’Tis a bad beginning, from a cycler’s ideal. For many miles I walked—and even J—— at times—along the white road, barren of the poplars one always expects in France, over the rolling treeless moors, where we were watched out of sight by gleaners, their white caps and dull blue skirts and sacks in pale relief against a grey blue-streaked sky; and by ploughmen, whose horses, happier than they, ate their dinners as they worked.—Always to the north of the moorland was the grey sea-line, and farther still the white cliffs of England.
Sometimes I rode, for each tiny village nestled in a valley of its own, giving us a hill to coast as well as to climb. There were occasional windmills in the distance; and close to the road large farm-houses and barns, with high sloping red roofs and huge troughs in front, where we knew cattle would come in the twilight and horses would be watered in the morning. And when Calais, with smoking chimneys, was far behind and below, we came to black crosses by the wayside and better manners among the people. The peasants now wished us good day.
At this early stage there was nothing we looked for less than trouble with the tricycle. It had been carefully put in order by the manufacturers before we left London. But now already the luggage-carrier loosened, and swung around on the backbone of the machine. Do what we would, we could not keep it straight again. In Marquise we bought a leather strap, in hopes to right it, and there also ate our lunch.—From the window of the estaminet we could see that the men and boys who came up to examine the tricycle never once touched it, while a man with a cart of casks, though it was in his way, rather than disturb it, stopped a little farther down the street, and rolled the casks along the pavement. Inside the estaminet, the brisk, tidy woman who cooked and served our coffee and omelette, kept talking of the weather and France and the tricycle, and what a wise manner of travelling was ours. My faith! from the railway one sees nothing.
But, indeed, for hours afterwards we saw as little as if we had been in a railroad train. We were conscious only of the great hills to be climbed, and of our incessant trouble with the luggage-carrier. The new strap did not mend matters. Every few minutes the carrier with the bag took an ugly swing to one side.—We never began to enjoy a coast, we never got fairly started on an up-grade, that it did not force us to stop and push it straight. And then the lamp in its turn loosened, and every few kilometres had to be hammered into place.
The other incidents of that long afternoon I remember merely because of their association with hills. It was at the top of one, where I arrived breathless, we had our first view of the dome and monument of Boulogne; it was at the bottom of another that we came to the pavé of Wimille; it was half-way on a third, up which J—— worked slowly, standing up on the pedals and leaning far over to grasp the front handle bars, while I walked, that I was stopped by an Englishman and Englishwoman.——
“Oh,” said the man, as he watched J——, “you’re making a walking tour together, I suppose?”
“We’re riding!” cried I, aghast.
“Oh!” he exclaimed, “I see; you ride by turns.”
—I was so stupefied by his impudence or ignorance that at first I could say nothing. Then,——
“We ride together,” said I; “and we’ve come from England, and we’re going to Paris and Lyons, into Savoy, and over the Mont Cenis pass.”
—And with that I turned my back and left them, open-mouthed, in the middle of the road.
But their unconscious sarcasm had its sting. The thought that, if these hills went on, I might really have to walk half-way to Italy almost brought sentiment to an end.——
“Boulogne! and ’tis but half-past three. We’ll go on,” said J——.
—As we did not even enter the town, I cannot of my own knowledge say if there is anything in it worth seeing. But from the outside we learned that it has a picturesque old city-gate under the shadow of the dome; that the people are polite, and some of the men wear baggy blue breeches; and that close to the grim grey walls is an unpaved tree-lined boulevard which is very good riding. It led to a down-grade which a woman called a terrible mountain, though she thought it might be “good for you others.”
Only the highest ranges are mountains to an Italian, but to a Frenchman the merest hillock is une montagne terrible.—The hill outside of Boulogne
was steep, but unrideable only on account of the pavé. And, oh! the pavé that afternoon! We went up pavé and down pavé, and over long level stretches of pavé, until, if any one were to ask me what there is between Boulogne and Pont-de-Brique, my only answer would be pavé! We had heard of it before ever we landed in France, but its vileness went beyond our expectation. The worst of it was, that for the rest of our journey we were never quite rid of it. To be sure it was only once in a long while we actually rode over it, but then we had always to be on the look-out. We came to it in every town and village; we found bits of it in lonely country districts; it lay in wait for us on hillsides. The French roads without the pavé are the marvels of symmetry, cleanliness, and order Mark Twain calls them. If they are not jack-planed and sand-papered, they are at least swept every day. With the pavé, they are the ruin of a good machine and a better temper. And yet, all things considered, France is the cycler’s promised land.
By the time we reached Pont-de-Brique the luggage-carrier hung on by one screw. Fortunately we found a carpenter in a café, and he and J——went to work.—In the meantime I saw, under the shade of a clump of trees, a green cart with windows and chimney, a horse grazing near by, and a man and woman sitting in front of a fire kindled on the grass. I walked towards the cart.——
“Kushto divvus, Pal te Pen” (“Good-day, brother and sister”), said I.
“What?” asked the woman, without looking up from the tin-pan she was mending.
“Kushto divvus,” said I, louder; adding, “Me shom une Romany chi” (“I’m a Gipsy”).
“Comment?” she repeated peevishly. “I do not understand you.”
—The man still tinkered at his pots.
I chaffed them in my best Romany, but they took no further heed. I tried French. I said I was a Gipsy come from over the seas, with news of their brothers in America.——
“But we’re not Gipsies,” said they; “we live in Boulogne, and we’re busy.”
—I declare I never was so snubbed in my life!
’Twas but six quarters of an hour on foot to Neuchâtel, the carpenter told us.—The road in the late afternoon was full of fine carriages and shabby carts; and in sight of Neuchâtel we passed men and women going home from work. We asked one man if there was an inn in the town.——
“Il-y-a-douze,” he answered, with great effort, and hurried on, so that we had not time to tell him we too could speak English.
We wondered so small a town should be so rich in inns. But douze, it seemed, was the English way of saying deux. A woman standing in the first doorway assured us there were but two—one opposite the church, and another, the Pas de Cœur—we understood her to say, around the corner.—At the foot of the hill we found the first, with Boarding-House in large black letters on its newly whitewashed walls. As there never was any sentiment in a Boarding-House except in Dr. Holmes’ books, or any cheapness in a foreign hotel with an English sign, we looked for the other inn. But when we had wheeled up the street and down the street, until its want of heart became ours, we gave up the search and returned to the Boarding-House.
THE BOARDING-HOUSE OF NEUCHÂTEL.
A FAT old landlady received us, after a glance at the tricycle had reassured her that to take us in did not mean to be taken in herself. She promised us dinner at six, and a room in the course of the evening. In the café, or outer kitchen, where she gave us chairs, an elderly Cinderella was blacking boots and peeling potatoes in the fireplace; a pretty girl was carrying tumblers and clean linen to a near room; another, with a big baby in her arms, gossiped with neighbours on the front steps. The landlady hurried back to the small kitchen, through the open door of which we could see her bustling about among the pots and pans.
Presently a little man, in white trousers and brown velveteen waistcoat, wandered in from the stable-yard to clink glasses with a friend at the bar, and drink without pause two mugs of beer and one glass of brandy. Then he gave us a dance and a song.
And then there came trooping into the room huntsmen with dogs and guns, and servants bearing long poles strung with rabbits, and three ladies in silks and gold chains and ribbons, and a small boy. The huntsmen were given cognac and absinthe; the ladies were led away through a narrow passage, but they returned in a minute, with pitchers which they themselves filled from a barrel near the kitchen-door.
These were people of quality, it was plain. They had come in a carriage, and a private dressing-room was found for them. But for us, who had arrived on a machine we worked ourselves, a basin was set in the fireplace, where we too made a toilet as best we could.—At seven the landlady, with upraised hands, rushed from the kitchen to say that——
“Mon Dieu! the mutton cutlets Monsieur and Madame ordered have gone like a dream. What is to be done?”
—What, indeed? And all the time we had supposed her preparations were for us.
A little later, when dinner still seemed a remote possibility, in searching for our bag which had been carried off, I came by chance upon a dining-room where the cloth was laid and the table was gay with lights and flowers. But when I hurried back with the good news to J—— he was less hopeful.——
“We had to wash in the fireplace,” said he.
—We were not long in doubt. The ladies and the huntsmen were ushered into the dining-room. The pretty girl in her neat apron carried in the soup, the fish, the cutlets. We could hear a pleasant clattering of plates and the sound of laughter. But still we sat in our humble corner.—Seldom have we felt class distinctions so bitterly. At last the landlady, very warm and red from the kitchen fire, with the baby in her arms, bade us follow her into a large dark room on the farther side of the café-kitchen. There she laid a modest omelette on a rough wooden table guiltless of cloth, and we ate it by the light of one candle. The huntsmen’s servants packed the rabbits and drank coffee on our left; on our right a little tailor stitched away at brown velveteens. Villagers strolled in and out, or played billiards; and a stray dog, unbidden, sat upright and begged at our side.—We cut but a poor figure in the Boarding-House of Neuchâtel.
We should have gone to bed at once, so tired were we after the pavé and the hills, but the sheets were not yet ironed. It was not until the kitchen clock struck ten that we were shown into a small closet where there was a bed, and promised a towel in the morning.—Before we went to sleep we heard, between the screams of the baby, the rain falling softly on the roof, to fill us with fears for the morrow’s ride.
THE SOUTH WIND.
THE next day began well. Without, the rain had stopped, and the morning was bright and clear. Within, unfavourable social distinctions had ceased, since we were the only guests. If we were slighted at dinner, we were overwhelmed with attention at breakfast. The interest of the household centred upon us. Nothing was talked of but our journey. Every one was eager to advise. We must go here, we must go there; we must keep by the sea, we must turn inland; and, above all, declared the little tailor, who still stitched away, we must not rest until we rode into Paris. Ah, what a city it was! He knew it well; but, my faith! a man must work to pay for life in the capital. He could see by the portfolio that Monsieur was an artist; no doubt he was on his way there to make great pictures.—We thought we could not please him better than to tell him in our country Paris was called the Paradise of good Americans. We were right. He made us a low bow, as if the compliment had been personal.
It was easy not to be bewildered by conflicting directions, since we were predetermined not to be influenced by them. The fairest promise of good roads, enchanting country, and picturesque towns could not have turned us a hair’s breadth from the route we had settled upon. The fact is, the question was one of sentiment, and at that stage of our enthusiasm where sentiment was concerned we were inflexible.—Mr. Sterne, on his way to Amiens and Paris, passed by Montreuil. To Montreuil, therefore, we must go.
A good strong breeze blew from the south. Out at sea it swept the white foam before it, and above, it lashed the clouds into fantastic shapes. It caught the skirts of the gleaners on their way to the yellow fields, and of the women going towards Neuchâtel, and held them back at every step. But we were saved the struggle while we rode eastward. Now we were on a level with the sea, looking at it across grassy plains and sandy stretches; and now it lay far below, and we saw it over the tree-tops on the hillside; again it was hidden by high dunes and dense pine-groves. Little villages lay in our way: Dannes, with pretty, shady road leading into it and out of it; another, for us nameless, with thatched white cottages, standing in a dreary waste, a broad inlet to one side. And at last a short ride between young green trees brought us to Etaples, a town of low white houses built close to the shore, and at the same time to the end of the day’s easy riding.
Our only memories of Etaples are unpleasant. We there bought a bottle of bad oil for a good price. When we left Neuchâtel the machine needed oiling; but the top of our oil-can had not been made to fit, and when we opened the tool-bag the can was in the oil instead of the oil in the can.—After using the poor stuff sold us by a shoemaker, the tricycle ran even more heavily. This was unfortunate, for after Etaples the road left the sea and started for the south. There was nothing to be done but to put our heads down and to work as if we were record-making.—I do
not think it wrong, merely because the wind blew in our faces almost every day of our sentimental journey, therefore to say the prevalent winds in France are from the south; but indeed all the trees thereabouts bend low towards the north, to confirm this assertion.
Thus we rode on between fields bare as the moors; through lovely park-like country; by little shady rivers, where ducks were swimming in the deep-green water; by tiny villages; by little churches, grey and old; by crosses, some split and decaying; through long avenues, with poplars on either side; by hills, the ploughman on the top strongly marked against the blue sky; and all the way the road was only a little worse than asphalt.
It was noon, and school-children were running home to dinner when we reached Montreuil. There were no less than three kilometres of pavé to be walked before we came into the town. We were further prepossessed against it because it has just enough character to stand upon a hill, instead of nestling in a hollow, as is the way with towns and villages in this part of the country. What with the wind and the pavé and the climb, we were so cast down that when by the city-gate, almost at the top of the hill, we saw a stone bearing the legend, “Two hundred kilometres to Paris,” we wondered if sentiment would carry us that far.
MONTREUIL.
THERE is not a town in all France which, in my opinion, looks better in the map than Montreuil. I own it does not look so well in the guide-book, but when you come to see it, to be sure it looks most pitifully.
There is promise of picturesqueness in a group of tumbled-down gabled houses at its entrance, and in a fine church doorway at one end of the Place where we lunched. But gables and doorway have been spared, I think, but to mislead the visitor with false hopes. The streets are lined with modern houses monstrously alike. The Grande Place is large enough to deserve its name, but as we saw it, it was forlornly empty, silent, and dull. The gaiety of Montreuil has gone with the fiddling and drum-beating of La Fleur.
Despite its disadvantages, however, in the town where our Master compounded that little matter with the sons and daughters of poverty it was our duty to be sentimental. There was no question of travellers of our means and vehicle engaging a servant to fiddle and make splatter-dashes for us, even if another La Fleur could be produced. But if beggars sent in their claims, we could at least find in them the occasion of the first public act of our charity in France. Beggars, after a fashion, we did meet; for at once an old woman—a poor tattered soul—begged we would let her grandson Jules show us the way to a restaurant; and next a hatless man followed us around the Place to implore a visit to his hotel, where his wife could “spik Inglis”—a sound perhaps as worth money as the “My Lord Angolis” that won Mr. Sterne’s last sous. But our hearts were hardened against them, as his, too, might have been against those other miserables, had he not slept off the ill-humours of his journey to Montreuil.
I think it was at Montreuil it first occurred to us that sentiment does not depend upon man’s will alone.—And so we got on our tricycle with no more ease than usual, but less, as the wind came howling over the plain to meet us.
Note.—J—— was too lazy, and said the morning was too hot to do anything but work the tricycle.
NAMPONT.
THE road between Montreuil and Nampont was for us classic ground. Breathlessness, because of the wind, before we had got a league, brought our career—like La Fleur’s—to a sudden stop. We then had time to see that the deathbed of the famous donkey lay in fair country. Near by two windmills turned their long arms swiftly. A sportsman banged away in the fields, and, to bring good-luck, two crows flew overhead. When we went on, the wind began to moderate, and by the time we reached Nampont it was making but a little noiseless noise among the leaves.
We thought Nampont a pretty village, with its poplared canal flowing without turn or twist to the far horizon, and its long, wide street lined with low houses. The first we came to, that had a stone bench by the door and an adjoining court, we decided to be the post-house, in front of which the donkey’s master told his pathetic tale. We appealed to an old man just then passing. But he knew nothing of it, and there were so many other houses with stone seats and courts that we could not settle the matter to our satisfaction.—We were only certain of the pavé over which Mr. Sterne’s postillion set out in a full gallop that put him out of temper. Instead of galloping, we walked, first refreshing ourselves with groseille, a harmless syrup, in a brand-new café at the end of the village street, the one sign of modern enterprise in Nampont.
After this town, there was no sense of sentimental duty to oppress us, since a little beyond, it Mr. Sterne went to sleep, a sweet lenitive for evils, which Nature does not hold out to the cycler.
A CITY IN MOURNING.
THE straight, poplared road to Abbeville still lay across a golden plain, with no interest save its beauty, here and there bounded by a row of trees, yellow haystacks standing out in bold relief against them; and here and there narrowed by dark woods, in front of which an old white-haired shepherd or little white-capped girl watched newly sheared sheep. Now and then the way led through small blue villages. There was Airon, where a large party of gleaners, old and young men, women, boys, and girls, sitting by the wayside, jumped up of one accord and walked with us up the hill. And then came Nouvion, where we saw a fine old rambling yellow farm-house, over whose disreputably tilted front-door peered two grotesque heads, and where we had coffee in the village inn, sitting on the one dry spot in the flooded floor, and just escaping the mops and buckets of two women who had raised the deluge.
The hills we still had. To read the “Emblems of the Frontispiece” in “Coryate’s Crudities,” one would imagine that from Montreuil to Abbeville was one long endless descent.
“Here, not up Holdbourne, but down a steepe hill,
Hee’s carried ’twixt Montrell and Abbeville.”
But I remember many steep up-grades to be climbed beside that of Airon.
Just about Nouvion the road was bad, because, so a friendly cantonnier said, there had been no rain for more than two months. He promised it would improve seven or eight kilometres farther on, and prepared us for a crowd in Abbeville, whither all the world had gone to take part in the funeral celebrations of Admiral Courbet, who by this hour of the afternoon was no doubt already buried.—A little later all the world seemed on its way home, and the road was full of carts, carriages, and pedestrians. It was no easy matter to steer between the groups on foot and the waggons driving sociably side by side. The crowd kept increasing, once in its midst a bicycler wheeling by to throw us a haughty stare. There were as many people on another straight poplar-lined road that crossed the Route Nationale. At this rate it was possible we should find no one left in the town, and the hotels, therefore, not more crowded than usual. So there was as much cheerful, unalloyed pleasure as Mr. Ruskin himself experienced—which he believes is not to be had from railway trains or cycles—in our getting into sight of Abbeville far below in the valley of the Somme, two square towers dominant over the clustered house-roofs.
On the outskirts of the city we saw the cemetery, a little to our right. The funeral procession, with flags, banners, and crosses borne aloft, was about to return from the grave. We felt so out of keeping with its solemnity that, rather than wait on the sidewalk as it passed, we hurried on at once.—But there was no going fast. In a minute we were jolting on the pavé again, and the street was more crowded than the road. All the world had but begun to go home. People walked on the pavement and in the street. Windows were filled with eager faces; benches and platforms in front of shops were still occupied. Houses were draped in black, flags hung here, there, and everywhere, and funeral arches were set up at short distances.
Our position was embarrassing. Try our best, we could not, unnoticed, make our way through the crowd. Every minute we had to call out to citizens or peasants in front to let us by. The people at the windows and on the benches, waiting idly to see the end of the day’s solemn show, at once caught sight of the tricycle. Do what we would, all eyes were turned towards it. And, to our horror, the funeral procession gained upon us. The chants of priests and acolytes were in our very ears. We jumped down and walked. But it was no use. In a few minutes we were on a line with the cross-bearer, leading the way for clergy and mourners through the streets. There was no escape. We could not turn back; we could not out-distance them. But, fortunately, before an archway at the entrance to a large Place the procession was disbanded. Without further ceremony, priests, stole and surplice under their arms, stray bishops in purple robes, naval and army officers, gentlemen in dress-coats and many medals, school-boys in uniform, peasants in caps, townspeople in ordinary clothes, walked home-or hotel-wards, we pushing the tricycle in their midst.
At the Hôtel de France we found confusion. Waiters tore in and out of the kitchen; maids flew up and down the court-yard. Frantic men and women surrounded, and together asked a hundred questions of a poor waiter in the centre of the court; an English family clamoured for a private dining-room.—During a momentary lull we stepped forward and told this waiter, who seemed a person of authority, we should like a room for the night.
There was not one to be had, he said. If we would wait two or three hours, it was just very possible some of these Messieurs might go back to Paris. If not, we must travel into another country; he knew we should fare no better in any hotel in Abbeville. Last night he had turned away fifty people.——
Where was the next country, asked I, for in his disappointment J—— had lost all his French.
It was only seven kilometres off. But, he added, we could dine in the hotel.
—Our choice lay between a certain good dinner at once and a mere possibility later in a far-off town. We were both tired and hungry.——
“It will be dark in half an hour,” said I.
“We can never work after eating heartily,” said J——, and, our objections thus disposed of, we decided for immediate dinner, and to risk the consequences.
—We wheeled the machine into the stable, conveniently adjoining the dining-room. We were
not very fresh after a day’s ride through the wind, over dry and dusty roads, and as we were to dine in company with dignitaries of State and Church, I said that first we should like to make our toilet. “Oh, certainly,” said the waiter, “Voilà!” and he pointed to a small spicket and a handkerchief of a towel at the dining-room door.—With no more elaborate preparation than these permitted, we went in and took our seats at table with bishops, officers, and statesmen in full dress.
It was as we expected. When we had eaten a dinner worthy of the company, we were unwilling to ride farther. We could and would not leave Abbeville that night.—J—— was silent over his sponge-cakes and wine, speaking only once, to consult me about the future tense of French verbs. Then he called the waiter.——
“Is there a room yet?” I asked.
“Not yet, Madame,” and he bowed his regrets.
“Well, then,” said J——, turning full upon him with the speech he had been ten minutes in composing, “nous partirons pas si nous dormirons sur la table!”
—Hitherto I had been his spokeswoman. The consequence of his sudden outburst in French was the waiter’s hearty assurance that the first room at his disposal was ours, but we must not look for it until nine or ten. It was then a little after seven.
This interval was spent in wandering about the town. The wind and the pavé together had again made me very tired. I remember as a restless dream our walk up and down the streets; into the great Place, a sombre black catafalque on one side, lights burning around it, tall houses back of it, the still taller Church of St. Wulfran rising above the high gables; and next into the church itself, where the columns and arches and altars, draped in black, and the people kneeling at prayer, or coming and going in the aisles, were but dimly seen by the light of a few candles. I remember speculating on the chance of shelter there, if at the eleventh hour the hotel failed us. And then we were shut out by the sacristan, to wander again through narrow, twisting streets; through brighter, livelier thoroughfares, the shops open, citizens and peasants laughing and talking; and so back to the Place, roofs and towers now but a black shadow on the dark blue of the evening sky; and at last to the hotel, where the good waiter met us with smiles.—A room at last! It was not very commodious, but it was the best he could do. There followed a melancholy quarter of an hour, during which we sat on a heap of blankets in a dark passage while the garçon laid the sheets.—The waiter was right; the room was not the most commodious. It was directly over the stable, and not larger than an old-fashioned closet. But it was better than church or dining-room; and though the garçon kept passing on the balcony without, and there was a ceaseless clatter in the court below, I was soon asleep.
FAITHFUL ABBEVILLE.
IT is a pity that most tourists go straight from Calais to Amiens, satisfied to know Abbeville as a station by the way. The fault, I suppose, lies with “Murray” and “Baedeker,” who are almost as curt with it as with Montreuil, giving but a few words to its Church of St. Wulfran, and even fewer to its quaint old houses. But the truth is, Abbeville is better worth a visit than many towns they praise. And though Mr. Tristram Shandy objected to one of its inns as unpleasant to die in, I can recommend another as excellent to live in, which, after all, is of more importance to the ordinary tourist.
We remained in Abbeville the next day until noon. We went again to the church. We saw the house of Francis I. We found our way into alleys and courtyards, where grotesques were grinning and winking, as if they thought it an exquisite joke at last to be taken seriously by the few art and architectural critics, who now come to look at them.
CRUSHED AGAIN.
AND now Mr. Ruskin writes:—“I not only object, but am quite prepared to spend all my best ‘bad language’ in reprobation of bi-tri-and-4-5-6 or 7-cycles, and every other contrivance and invention for superseding human feet on God’s ground. To walk, to run, to leap, and to dance are the virtues of the human body, and neither to stride on stilts, wriggle on wheels, or dangle on ropes, and nothing in the training of the human mind with the body will ever supersede the appointed God’s ways of slow walking and hard working.”
“Oh well, let us go on,” said J——.
A BY-ROAD.
BECAUSE of our sight-seeing we made a late start from Abbeville.—But then we determined to go no farther than Amiens that day. It was a good ten minutes’ walk over the pavé from the hotel to the end of the long Rue St. Gilles, where it is crossed by the railroad.—Here we were kept waiting another five minutes, in company with a carriage and two covered carts, while the woman in charge, who had shut the gate, put on her official hat and cape. Presently a faint whistle was heard.——
“Hold!” said one of the drivers, “I think he comes.”
—And so he did, and at last we were allowed to pass and go our way.—Another weary kilometre of pavé, and then we were on the highroad between the poplars.
But when we had got off the stones there was still the wind to fight. It blew in our faces with never-relaxing vigour, rushing through the trees and over the plain as if in haste to reach the sea. To make matters worse, the road was bad. The cavalry had ruined it, a stone-breaker said. We were soon riding on the side-walk.—The few white-capped, blue-skirted pedestrians we met went obligingly into the road to let us pass.——
“Pardon, ladies,” said we.
“Of nothing,” said they.
“The road is so bad,” we explained.
“You have reason. Au revoir,” cried they.
—The road ran straight along the edge of the upland. Below, a pretty river wound among reeds and willows, overtopped by tall trees shivering in the wind. But hard work gave us little chance for pleasure in the landscape, until at Pont Remy we stopped on the bridge to take breath.
We went back to the pedals with sad misgivings, like people who know that the worst is still to come. Just beyond, we left the Route Nationale for a by-road and unmitigated misery. Here we were led to believe there was no other road between Abbeville and Amiens. Amiens, “the very city where my poor lady is to come,” we could not miss. And yet Italian experience made us doubt the advisability of turning off the highroad.
The wind was now directly in our faces, and the road was deep with sand and loose with stones, and we had not gone a mile, a mile but scarcely one, when we lost our tempers outright and sent sentiment to the winds. First we climbed a long up-grade, passing old crumbling grey churches decorated with grotesques and gargoyles like those on St. Wulfran’s, in Abbeville, some perched upon hillocks, with cottages gathered about them, others adjoining lonely châteaux; and riding through forlornly poor villages full of houses tumbling to pieces and vicious dogs. Hills rose to our left; to our right, in the valley below, were wide marshes covered with a luxurious green growth, and beyond, the river, on the other side of which was a town with a tall church rising in its centre.
Once we got down to drink syrup and water at an inn where a commercial traveller catechised us about America.——
“And the commerce, it goes well there? Yes?”
—I suppose he took us for fellow-drummers; and I must admit the idea of our travelling for pleasure over such roads was the last likely to occur to him.
Then we went down hill for some distance, but we ran into ridges of sand and brought up
suddenly on a stone pile at the bottom. On the level the road became a shady avenue. But it grew worse as it increased in beauty. We wheeled first to one side, then to the other. We even tried the grass close to the trees. But soon we were down and walking, and pushing the wretched machine through the sand. And now riding was out of the question, it began to rain. When we came into Hangest——
“We’ll take the train,” said J——.
—But we had first to wait for two hours, during which we ate a lunch at the “Sign of the Duck,” and sat at the station watching the passing trains and the signals.—In his demoralisation J——asked at the office for tickets for la treizième classe, and then a man joined us and told us of the fine roads in his country, so that we wished we were there. Finally our train came.—J—— had some trouble with the machine. At the first baggage-car the conductor declared there was not room for it. The second was full and no mistake. He went back to the first, and while the conductor remonstrated, pushed it in with the help of a porter. He then had just time to jump into the nearest carriage, which happened to be the same in which I had already found a seat, and the train started. The carriage was full.——
“C’est complet, Monsieur,” screamed a little man, in a passion.
“Certainly, Monsieur” said J——, as he fastened the door with a click behind him.
“I tell you it’s full,” repeated the little man, in his rage dancing to the window and calling the conductor.
—It was too late. All he could do was to return to his seat and glower at J——, who calmly sat in the window.——
“We must not make the war,” said a good curé next to him, patting him gently on the shoulder.
—He restrained his anger with a comforting drink of brandy. Monsieur le Curé fell to saying his beads, covering his mouth with his wide-brimmed hat, while all the other passengers laughed and nudged each other. A man in the corner, carrying a genuine American carpet-bag, drank something from a gingerbeer bottle, and asked us in good American what we knew of the hotels in Paris.
At the next station J—— got out, and the man from the country of beautiful roads, who had been sitting in the adjoining compartment, met him at the door.——
“I render to you my place, Monsieur,” said he.
—And so in perfect peace we made all possible speed to Picquigny, and from Picquigny to Amiens; not, however, before we saw from the carriage windows that the road, now running alongside of the railway, was smooth and hard, that the sun shone, and that the wind blew but mildly.
At Amiens the conductor was waiting on the platform full of apologies. He had really thought there was no room for the velocipede. Monsieur must pardon him.
The French have a charming way of putting you in a good humour. We forgot the attack of the irascible traveller, as, let us hope, he forgave the enormity of J——’s crime.
AMIENS.
WE should always remember Amiens, even were it not for the cathedral, because it was there we had the best dinner we ever ate in France.—In looking over my note-book I find I made at the time elaborate mention of the menu, and applied the adjective divine to a course of fresh mackerel served with an exquisite sauce.—As there may be readers who take interest, and perhaps pleasure, in dining well, I will here add that this excellent meal was eaten at the Hôtel de l’Univers. I can wish the visitor to Amiens no better luck than a dinner in this hotel prepared by the same artist.
It was a pity that, before leaving England—we had been so taken up with Mr. Sterne, whose sentiment was not to be distracted with cathedrals and old houses—we did not consult Mr. Ruskin, who probably thought of nothing else while he was in Amiens.—To the unsentimental traveller I would recommend the traveller’s edition of “Our Fathers have Told Us” (Part I. chap. iv.), rather than the “Sentimental Journey,” as a guide-book to the town.
We had two hours of daylight on the afternoon of our arrival, and we remained in the city until noon the next day, partly because there were many things to see, and partly on account of a heavy wind and rain storm in the morning. We were not much troubled by sentiment, though here Mr. Sterne’s overflowed into three chapters. But it was of a kind so impossible for us to simulate—not having left an Eliza in England, nor knowing a fair Countess in the town—we put all thought or hope of it aside, and went out to look about.
What pleased us most were the many canal-like branches of the Somme, old tumbled-down houses rising from the water, and little foot-bridges connecting them with opposite gardens. We liked, too, the wider and less modest main current of the river, where men or women in flat boats with pointed prows and square sterns, like inclined planes, were for ever poling themselves down stream beyond the embankment where the poplars begin.—But I remember we lingered longest on a bridge over a tiny canal from which there was a fine view of disreputably shabby back doors, women appearing and disappearing as they emptied their pails and pots, and of battered windows from which hung the family wardrobes. It was then, I believe, we pronounced Amiens the French Venice—an original idea which most likely occurs to every tourist fortunate enough to find his way to the banks of the Somme. Indeed I have since read that in the good old days, before a straight street had been dreamed of by city officials, the town was known as Little Venice.
Delightful as were the scenes by the river in the late afternoon, they were even more so in the early morning, when, from under a borrowed umbrella, we watched the open-air market. The embankment was carpeted with greens and full of noisy peasants. The prevailing tint, like that of the sky above, was a dull bluish grey, relieved here and there by a dash of white. Fastened to rings in the stone wall of the embankment, some thirty or forty of the boats with pointed prows lay on the water. Two, piled high with cabbages and carrots, the brightest bit of colour in the picture, were being poled towards the market-place. Others, laden with empty baskets, satisfied-looking women in the prow, a man at the stern, were on their homeward way. And above the river and the busy people and the background of houses the great cathedral loomed up, a “mass of wall, not blank, but strangely wrought by the hands of foolish men of long ago.”
We found a priest saying Mass in the chapel behind the choir, the eastern light shining on him at the altar. His congregation consisted of four poor women and one great lady in silk attire kneeling in the place of honour. In the nave and aisles were a handful of tourists and two sentimental travellers—i.e., ourselves, who scorned to be classed as tourists—uttering platitudes under their breath about the unspeakable feeling of space and height, as if the cathedral existed but to excite their wonder.
We went also to the old belfry, a fine substantial pile, allowed to stand, I suppose, because to remove it would be too herculean a task. Our attention was distracted from it to a pair of French twins staggering by, arm in arm, both wearing baggy brown velveteen trousers, striped shirts and open coats, and little round caps, which rested on each curly head at exactly the same angle. It was rather absurd to discover that they were no greater oddities to us than we were to them. Of one accord they stopped to stare solemnly at J——’s knee-breeches and long stockings. Indeed I might as well say here, as in any other place, that we were greater objects of curiosity off the machine than on it.—Always, as in Calais, the eminently quiet and respectable Cyclists’ Touring Club uniform seemed to strike every French man and woman as a problem impossible to solve but easy to ridicule.
WIND, POPLARS, AND PLAINS.
THERE is nothing more pleasing to a traveller, or more terrible to travel-writers, than a large rich plain, unless it be a straight white poplar-lined road, good as asphalt. After Amiens, as after Abbeville and Neuchâtel, there was a poplared avenue over a breezy upland to carry us to the next town, that town little more but a new place to start from to the next plain and poplars, and so on. There were cantonniers still at work, sweeping the highway with great brooms.——
“You sweep them everyday?” asked J—— of one.
“Every day—yes,” he answered.
—And there was still a strong wind rushing down between the trees and blowing my skirts about my feet. Riding against it was such hard work that I walked many kilometres during the morning. But indeed there was scarce any walking with ease.
We were glad many of the towns and villages were in little valleys. After hours, perhaps, of steady pedalling, it was pleasant to coast down a long hill, while a country postman stopped in his struggle with a French operatic umbrella turned inside out by the wind, to smile and show the loss of all his front teeth, as he cried——
“Ah, but it goes well!”
—And then, alas! came another hill, this time to be climbed, and the admiration changed to sympathy. I remember in particular an old woman on the hill outside of Amiens, who was sorry there was still a long way up the mountain. When we asked her how far it was to the top——
“Behold!” said she, and pointed a few yards ahead.
In an insignificant village near the Forest of Drouy—the one wooded oasis in the treeless plain—our café-au-lait was for the first time served in the basins to whose size our eyes and appetites were quickly to be accustomed. In a second, where there was an old grey church with grinning gargoyles, a pedler’s cart, big bell hanging in front, tempting wares displayed, blocked the way.——
“It is a bon marché you have here,” said J——
to the pedler, with a politeness that would not have disgraced a Frenchman.
—In Breteuil, a good-sized town with fair share of pavé, we met another funeral party—gentlemen in long black frock-coats and antiquated silk hats. They had come down from Paris to bury a most virtuous lady, we learned from the proprietor of the café. They were vastly taken with the tricycle, however, testing its saddles while we drank our syrup and water.
It was a beautiful ride we should now have to St. Just, the proprietor foretold. It would be level all the way.—“What! no hills?” we asked. None, he declared, that deserved the name.—It is needless to add that we at once came to three or four up which we pushed the machine, because of their steepness. But much could we forgive him. He it was who counselled us to spend the night at the Cheval Blanc in St. Just, where we had a plenteous brave dinner and the greatest civility that ever we had from any man, as Pepys would say. Besides, the latter part of the ride was lovelier than his foretelling. The wind abated, and work was so easy we could look out over the fields to the distant villages, their church spires white in the sunlight or turned to grey, even as we watched, by a passing cloud. It is for just such happy intervals the cycler braves wild winds and high hills. The day, it is true, was from beginning to end uneventful. But we had not looked or hoped for adventures.—Of his journey between Amiens and Paris our Master says not a word. Mr. Tristram Shandy recalls his but to regret that he was then prevented, by troublesome postillions, from gratifying his kindly propensity to sleep. Therefore we felt, that to-day at least, we had no sentimental shortcomings with which to reproach ourselves.
The sun had set, and Gipsies by the roadside were preparing their evening meal when we came to the pavé of St. Just.
THE COMMERCIAL GENTLEMEN OF ST. JUST.
AT the Cheval Blanc the landlady gave us a room over the stable on the farther side of a large court-yard.
From the window we looked down into the court on chickens and ducks, and on a woman watering a small vegetable garden, and the poultry and vegetables reminded us that we had not dined. So we went to the café of the hotel, where Madame stayed our hunger with the overgrown lady fingers that are served with dessert at every well-regulated table d’hôte, and where a small man in a frock-coat and Derby hat, with a very loud voice, exchanged political opinions with a large man in a blue blouse with no voice to speak of; while a third, in white blouse and overalls, stood and listened in neutral silence.
The discussion was at its liveliest when the dinner-bell rang, and we hurried off in such indecent haste that we were the first to arrive in the dining-room. We knew as soon as we saw the pots of mignonette and geranium and the well-trimmed, well-shaded lamps on the table, that whoever had placed them there must have prepared dishes worthy to be served by their sweet scent and soft light, and we were not disappointed.—I have seldom eaten a better dinner. We were ten altogether at table. Seven men were guests like ourselves. One was an unwearying sportsman of France. The six others we soon discovered to be commercial gentlemen, though what so many travellers could find to do in one such small place was a mystery we do not pretend to solve. Madame, the landlady, was the tenth in the company. She presided in person, not at the head, but at the centre of one side of the table. We sat directly opposite, encompassed about with drummers and touters.——
“Monsieur and Madame arrived from Amiens on a velocipede,” said the landlady, opening the conversation and the soup-tureen at the same moment.
—The sportsman started to speak, hesitated, coughed, and fell to feeding his dogs with bread. The commercial gentlemen wanted to know at what hotel we stopped in Amiens.
At this moment a diversion was made by the entrance of a stout man with the smile of a clown and the short forked beard of a Mephistopheles, who took his place on Madame’s right.——
“Mon Dieu, Madame,” said he, as a plate of soup was put in front of him and the tureen carried away, “I came next to you because I love you; and you would starve me? You would give me no more soup!”
“But you are greedy,” said Madame.
—The soup, however, was left on a side table.——
“I have been starved already to-day,” he went on, before we had time to answer the question put to us. “I slept last night at a grand hôtel. It was so grand that this morning for breakfast they could give me but cutlets of mutton and cutlets of pork and ham—and ham, one knows it well, it counts for nothing. Is this not true, Madame?”
—He had had a wide and remarkable experience of hotels. He knew one. Ma foi! they swept it every day. But he knew another. Dame! there the floors were waxed and rubbed daily, so that if a beefsteak were to fall on them it would be as clean as if it fell upon a plate. For his part, however, he thought no hotel would be perfect until it made a law to give each guest a partridge and half a bottle of wine with his candle, in case of hunger during the night.
A little man with a light moustache, on Madame’s left, as he amiably filled her glass with wine and seltzer, recalled a certain town where the hotels were closed at ten. He arrived at midnight; every door was shut. What did he do? He could not sleep in the street. He went to the Mairie.
The man next to J—— had heard of a hotel where if you stayed out after ten they would not permit you to enter even if they had your baggage. The proprietor would come to a window above when you knocked, and throw your trunks down rather than open the door. He then made no charge.——
“Ma foi!” thought Mephistopheles, who could no more have begun a sentence without an ejaculation than he could have eaten his dinner without wine, “he would take the pavé and throw it at the head of such a proprietor.”
—Then they turned to hear our experience. They appealed to J——.
“O, nous,” he began bravely, “nous avons été en France pour deux jours seulement”—then suddenly to me, “Oh, bother, you tell the fellow what he wants, and ask them if they know any decent hotels on the route,” and he took out our route-form.
—I explained our intention to ride through France into Italy, and asked if they would have the goodness to recommend hotels by the way.
We could not have paid them a greater compliment. The next minute the route-form was passed from one to the other, and by the name of each town was written the name of a commercial hotel which meant a good dinner and a moderate bill. But not one of the houses in the C. T. C. Handbook was on the list.—Mr. Howells, in his Italian Journeys, declares it to be the evident intention of a French drummer, “not only to keep all his own advantages, but to steal some of yours upon the first occasion.” I wish he could have seen these men at St. Just, as each helped his neighbour to wine before filling his own glass. A commercial gentleman apparently would not think of not sharing his bottle with some one, or of not calling for another when his first was empty, in obedience to the sign seen in so many hotels, “Vin à discrétion.” It must be admitted that this is only what an Englishman would call “good form” in commercial circles, since one bottle always stands between two covers. But then, when did “good form” ever serve such practical ends in England?
We saw nothing of the French travellers’ ill-breeding of which Mr. Howells so bitterly complains. If they talked, well, is it not their business to talk? Besides, they never once referred to trade or praised their wares. I know men of far higher professions who cannot boast of a like discretion. Indeed, is it not a common thing for great men to give dinners for the express purpose of talking “shop”?—It is true Mephistopheles, when he wanted to call Madame’s attention, beat on the table with his knife-handle and shouted in a voice of thunder——
“Madame! Madame Emilie! Emilie! Bon Dieu! gentlemen, she will not listen!”
—But if she took this in perfect good nature it was not for us to object. That she did not find fault was clear. While we were eating mutton I noticed he was served with a special dish of birds.
The excellence of the dinner and the good-humour of the company came to a climax with the course of beans. Mephistopheles asserted enthusiastically that had they not been invented already he would have invented them himself. Monsieur on Madame’s left wondered who brought them into France. Somebody suggested the Bishop of Soissons. As they all laughed this must have been a joke, but we could not understand it; and though I have since spent hours over it in the British Museum, I still fail to see the point.—The traveller next to J—— said nothing, but was twice helped to the favourite dish.
Afterwards in the café Madame introduced us to an Englishman who had lived thirty years in St. Just, and who was always glad to see his countrymen. We explained we were Americans, but he assured us it was an equal pleasure—he always liked to speak the English.—Whatever else St. Just had done for him, it had made him forget his mother tongue.—He was much pleased with our tandem, which he had examined while we were at dinner. He rode a bicycle, and was therefore competent to judge its merits. He also thought ours a fine journey when we showed him our route on the map.
In the meantime, the commercial gentlemen had settled down to coffee and the papers, and the evening promised to be peaceful. But presently the little man with the light moustache, who had sat on Madame’s left, put his paper down to comment on the advantages of naturalisation, on which subject he had just been reading an editorial. It was a great thing for the country, he thought, that the children of foreigners should be permitted to become Frenchmen.
But Mephistopheles was down upon him in an instant. He would not hear of naturalisation.——
“Mon Dieu! I am a Frenchman. I go to America or Austria. A son is born to me there. Is he an American or an Austrian? No, Monsieur, he is a Frenchman!” and he glared defiance.
—But the little man reasoned that, on the other hand, France was too hospitable not to take in strangers.
Mephistopheles swore it was not logical, and, what was more, it was against la morale, and la morale was prime. This was his clinching argument.
The dispute grew warm. They both left their coffee and walked up and down the room with great angry strides, beat themselves on their breasts, threw their arms to right and left; one would have thought blows were imminent. In passing, they stopped simultaneously before the sportsman, who sat near me.——
“And you, sir, what do you say?”
“My faith, gentlemen, I say you are both too violent.”
—Thus startled into speech, he turned to me to explain his views.——
“A man wishes to adopt France. Et bien? it is reasonable that France should adopt him.”
—When I looked around again the argument had been amicably adjusted over a backgammon board.