I visited Chambord also Chenonceau. They are both much restored and inferior in interest to Blois, which is a most delightful place in every way.”
In respect of Blois he writes as follows in another letter: “This town is more picturesque than any French town I have yet seen; most of it, or the older part of it at any rate, is high up on a hill, and the steps that mount up between the different streets are very beautifully contrived.
Tell Phil I should like him to read the parts of his French history connected with Blois, particularly about Henri III. and the Duke of Guise, and I will tell him about the wonderful castle when I get back.”
I remember he brought home some excellent photographs of that castle and the lovely outer staircase of the tower.
Another letter written during this French journey brings in a more humorous note: “Toulouse is a real city of the south, its market place covered with big red umbrellas reminding one of Verona, and the old hotel having a pleasant shady courtyard with pots of oleanders.... It is difficult to give you much news. I was thinking this morning how funny it was how little I had spoken English since I left home, once with the manager of a travelling English panorama at Limoges and yesterday at Montauban where I met a Frenchman who insisted upon speaking my native tongue to me. He declared that he knew English ‘au fond,’ but his mastery of the tongue was not complete. ‘Good voyage, have distraction,’ were his parting words to me.”
These good wishes were not entirely fulfilled. The day after his arrival at Toulouse Joe had been overcome by the August heat and mosquito bites, and had been obliged to take to his bed for a day in the fine old inn, where he was admirably nursed by the motherly landlady; and, as he sat in the cool courtyard next day he was vastly amused by the discomfiture of a fat commercial traveller, awaiting his déjeuner with napkin tucked in ready under his chin, when a one-legged old stork, who perambulated the garden, suddenly uttered its raucous note: “Quel cri épouvantable!” exclaimed the poor gentleman, and jumping up he overturned the small table on which a succulent Southern dish now steamed ready for his consumption, and wept afresh at the sight of gravy and red wine trickling together down the coarse clean tablecloth!
I think merriment must have hampered Joe’s offers of assistance, and his French was not then as fluent as he made it in after years.
Anyhow the commercial traveller appears to have been less genial than was a gentleman in the train later on who thought to flatter him by comparing him to the then Prince of Wales: “Les mêmes traits, la même barbe, le même âge!” said he pleasantly, not thinking that he was speaking to a man years younger than Edward VII.
But if there was a momentary annoyance it was immediately forgotten by Joe in a lively, if halting, conversation on the merits of a trout stream which the train was skirting—Joe vehemently describing how different was our view regarding poachers with the net, and mentally despising his fellow-traveller for upholding the equal merits of perch, gudgeon and trout.
When they reached Lourdes the traveller again afforded Joe a fresh cause for wonder—unfamiliar as he then was with what later he called “the Frenchman’s unfailing desire to place himself in a category.”