It had weighed upon my mind for the last two years that my “France” remained unfinished. There was still another volume which could not be written without personally visiting all the places of interest in Normandy and Brittany, and my publishers were constantly urging its completion. The book has always been utterly unremunerative, very much the contrary, which is very depressing in its way, but “on ne vit dans le mémoire du monde que par ses travaux pour le monde.’[522] So I determined to give up London and home pleasures this summer, and to set about it, taking my young cousin Theodore Chambers as my companion and guest.
We left Holmhurst together on the first of June, and spent June in Normandy and July in Brittany. It was one of the most laborious journeys I ever made—eight or nine hours a day of walking, standing, collating, correcting, simmering in the relaxing western heat, and constantly soaked by the Scotch mist which pervades that district five days out of seven. For the latter month young Inverurie, Lady Kintore’s eldest boy, was also with me, a most kind and pleasant fellow-traveller, but, though eager about drawing, neither of my companions had any more interest in architecture or history than a stone. Thus my associations with North-Western France are not transcendent. Places, even the most beautiful, are innutritious to the mind in the long run; one needs people with mental life, and enthusiasm to see them with.
