Autumn Impressions of the Gironde

by I. Giberne Sieveking

And, after all, we were very fairly comfortable during our stay, until confronted by an exorbitant charge at the end—my disinclination to remain, in the first instance, being merely due to the somewhat forsaken, gloomy look of the rooms, giving a certain oppressive introductory atmosphere to the hotel.

November is the "off" season at Arcachon, and I can well understand that it should be so, for there seemed no particular reason why anybody should go and stay there at that time! I had been recommended, rather mistakenly as it afterwards proved, to try it for my health, but it was so bitterly cold the whole time of our stay that I rather regretted having gone there at all, as I had come abroad in search of a mild, warm climate. However, one good point in the hotel was that the salle-à-manger was always well warmed, and evenly warmed, with pipes round the walls, and it was exceedingly prettily situated in the midst of the pines.

There were but twelve of us who daily frequented it; and we might almost have belonged to the Trappist Order for all the conversation that was heard. Never have I been at such quiet table d'hôtes as those that took place there. The company consisted of an old man and his wife, who kept their table napkins in a flowery chintz case which the man never could tackle, but left to the woman's skill to manipulate each evening. Both seemed to think laughter was most wrong and improper in public. A consumptive, very shy young man who had to have a hot bottle for his feet; a consumptive older man whose continual cough approached sometimes, during the courses, to the very verge of something else, and who passed his handkerchief from time to time to his mother for inspection; a very bent and solitary man by the door who had "shallow" hair growing off his temples, deeply sunken eyes, black moustache and receding chin, and who had the air of a conspirator, and a few other uninteresting couples.

The menu was delightfully worded sometimes. Such items as "Veal beaten with carrots," "Daubed green sauce," "Brains in butter," proved no more attractive to the palate than they were to the eye. But, apart from these delicacies, the fare was exceedingly appetising; oysters, as common as sparrows, played always a large part, (the charge per dozen, 1½ d.) Then, the last thing at night, our cheerful, bright-faced chambermaid used to bring us the most delicious iced milk.

There was a curious, but so far as we could see un-enforced, regulation hung up in the salle-à-manger, to the effect that if one was late for table d'hôte one would be punished by a fine of fifty centimes. The evenings we usually spent in our bedroom; it being the off-season there was practically nowhere else to go to. But it was cosy enough up there, with our pine log fire blazing up the chimney, its brown streams of liquid resin running down the surface of the wood, alight, and dripping from time to time in dazzling splashes on to the tiles below.

The only drawback to our comfort—and it was a drawback—was that the young man who had such unpleasant coughs and upheavals during table d'hôte paced restlessly and creakily up and down overhead continuously, both in the evening as well as in the early morning, and was, to judge by the sounds, always trying the effects of his bedroom furniture in different parts of the room, and generally altering its geography. He had quite as pronounced a craze for patrolling as had John Gabriel Borkman.

There are few more irritating sounds, I think, than a creak, whether it be of the human boot or of a door. Of the many penances which have been devised from time to time could there be a more irritating form of nerve flagellation than an insistent, recurring squeak when you are vainly endeavouring to write an article, an important letter, or, if it be night, to get to sleep? A squeak in two parts, as this particular one was, was calculated to make one ready for any deed of violence! One knew so well when one must expect to hear it, that it got in time to be like the hole in a stocking which, as an old nurse's dictum ran, one "looks for, but hopes never to find!" Thus one half unconsciously listened for the creak. So great is the power of the Insignificant Thing!

There were other sounds which broke the stillness of the night at Arcachon. In England cocks crow, according to well-authenticated tradition, handed down from cock to cock from primitive times, at daybreak; in Arcachon they crow all through the night and, indeed, keep time with the hours. They have, too, a more elaborate and ornate crow. They do not accentuate, as ours do, the final "doo," but introduce instead semi-quavers in the "dle;" so that it sounds thus: "Cock-a-doo-a-doo-dle-doo." I noticed that they had a tendency to leave off awhile at daybreak, while it was yet dark.

Then, sounding mysteriously and from afar on one's ear, came the quick tones of the bell calling to early Mass from the little church in the village street below.

Of ancient history Arcachon has its share. It was, in the thirteenth century, the port of the Boiens, and in old records one finds it mentioned under the name "Aecaixon" or "Arcasson," "Arcanson" being a word used to designate one of the resin manufactures. In the beginning of things, Arcachon was nothing but a desert, its forest surrounding the little chapel founded by Thomas Illyricus for the seamen. During the whole of the middle ages the country had the entire monopoly of the pine oil industry, which was turned to account in so many ways.