Recollections of Europe

by James Fenimore Cooper

We drove through the gates of Paris, amid the dreariness of a winter's evening. You are to understand that everybody quits London and Paris just as night sets in. I cannot tell you whether this is caprice, or whether it is a usage that has arisen from a wish to have the day in town, and a desire to relieve the monotony of roads so often travelled, by sleep; but so it is. We did not fall into the fashion simply because it is a fashion, but the days are so short in February in these high latitudes, that we could not make our preparations earlier.

I have little agreeable to say concerning the first forty miles of the journey. It rained; and the roads were, as usual, slippery with mud, and full of holes. The old pavés are beginning to give way, however, and we actually got a bit of terre within six posts of Paris. This may be considered a triumph of modern civilisation; for, whatever may be said and sung in favour of Appian ways and Roman magnificence, a more cruel invention for travellers and carriage-wheels, than these pavés, was never invented. A real Paris winter's day is the most uncomfortable of all weather. If you walk, no device of leather will prevent the moisture from penetrating to your heart; if you ride, it is but an affair of mud and gras de Paris. We enjoyed all this until nine at night, by which time we had got enough of it; and in Beauvais, instead of giving the order à la poste, the postilion was told to go to an inn. A warm supper and good beds put us all in good-humour again.

In putting into the mouth of Falstaff the words, "Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn?" Shakspeare may have meant no more than the drowsy indolence of a glutton; but they recur to me with peculiar satisfaction whenever I get unbooted, and with a full stomach before the warm fire of an hotel, after a fatiguing and chilling day's work. If any man doubt whether Providence has not dealt justly by all of us in rendering our enjoyments dependent on comparative rather than on positive benefits, let him travel through a dreary day, and take his comfort at night in a house where everything is far below his usual habits, and learn to appreciate the truth. The sweetest sleep I have ever had has been caught on deck, in the middle watch, under a wet pee-jacket, and with a coil of rope for a pillow.

Our next day's work carried us as far as Abbeville, in Picardy. Here we had a capital supper of game, in a room that set us all shivering with good honest cold. The beds, as usual, were excellent. The country throughout all this part of France, is tame and monotonous, with wide reaches of grain-lands that are now brown and dreary, here and there a wood, and the usual villages of dirty stonehouses. We passed a few hamlets, however, that were more than commonly rustic and picturesque, and in which the dwellings seemed to be of mud, and were thatched. As they were mostly very irregular in form, the street winding through them quite prettily, they would have been good in their way, had there been any of the simple expedients of taste to relieve their poverty. But the French peasants of this province appear to think of little else but their wants. There was occasionally a venerable and generous old vine clinging about the door, however, to raise some faint impressions of happiness.

We passed through, or near, the field of Cressy. By the aid of the books, we fancied we could trace the positions of the two armies; but it was little more than very vague conjecture. There was a mead, a breadth of field well adapted to cavalry, and a wood. The river is a mere brook, and could have offered but little protection, or resistance, to the passage of any species of troops. I saw no village, and we may not have been within a mile of the real field, after all. Quite likely; no one knows where it is. It is very natural that the precise sites of great events should be lost, though our own history is so fresh and full, that to us it is apt to appear extraordinary. In a conversation with a gentleman of the Stanley family, lately, I asked him if Latham-House, so celebrated for its siege in the civil wars, was still in the possession of its ancient proprietors. I was told it no longer existed, and that, until quite recently, its positive site was a disputed point, and one which had only been settled by the discovery of a hole in a rock, in which shot had been cast during the siege, and which hole was known to have formerly been in a court. It is no wonder that doubts exist as to the identity of Homer, or the position of Troy.

We have anglicised the word Cressy, which the French term Crécy, or, to give it a true Picard orthography, Créci. Most of the names that have this termination are said to be derived from this province. Many of them have become English, and have undergone several changes in the spelling. Tracy, or Tracey; de Courcy, or de Courcey; Montmorency; and Lacy, or Lacey, were once "Traci," "Courci," "Montmorenci," and "Laci." [35] The French get over the disgrace of their ancient defeats very ingeniously, by asserting that the English armies of old were principally composed of Norman soldiers, and that the chivalrous nobility which performed such wonders were of purely Norman blood. The latter was probably more true than the former.

[Footnote 35: The celebrated Sir William Draper was once present when the subject turned on the descent of families, and the changes that names underwent. "Now my own is a proof of what I say," he continued, with the intention to put an end to a discourse that was getting to savour of family pride; "my family being directly derived from King Pepin." "How do you make that out, Sir William?" "By self-evident orthographical testimony, as you may see,—Pepin, Pipkin, Napkin, Diaper, Draper.">[

As we drew nearer to the coast, the country became more varied. Montreuil and Samer are both fortified; and one of these places, standing on an abrupt, rocky eminence, is quite picturesque and quaint. But we did not stop to look at anything very minutely, pushing forward, as fast as three horses could draw us, for the end of our journey. A league or two from Boulogne we were met by a half-dozen mounted runners from the different inns, each inviting us to give our custom to his particular employer. These fellows reminded me of the wheat-runners on the hill at Albany; though they were as much more clamorous and earnest, as a noisy protestation-making Frenchman is more obtrusive, than a shrewd, quiet, calculating Yankee. We did not stop in Boulogne to try how true were the voluble representations of these gentry, but, changing horses at the post, went our way. The town seemed full of English; and we gazed about us, with some curiosity, at a place that has become so celebrated by the great demonstration of Napoleon. There is a high monument standing at no great distance from the town, to commemorate one of his military parades. The port is small and crowded, like most of the harbours on both sides of the Channel.

We had rain, and chills, and darkness, for the three or four posts that succeeded. The country grew more and more tame, until, after crossing an extensive plain of moist meadow-land, we passed through the gate of Calais. I know no place that will give you a more accurate notion of this celebrated port than Powles Hook. It is, however, necessary to enlarge the scale greatly, for Calais is a town of some size, and the hommock on which it stands, and the low land by which it is environed, are much more considerable in extent than the spot just named.

We drove to the inn that Sterne has immortalised, or one at least that bears the same name, and found English comfort united with French cookery and French taste. After all, I do not know why I may not say French comforts too; for in many respects they surpass their island neighbours even in this feature of domestic comfort. It is a comfort to have a napkin even when eating a muffin; to see one's self entire in a mirror, instead of edging the form into it, or out of it, sideways; to drink good coffee; to eat good côtelettes; and to be able to wear the same linen for a day, without having it soiled. The Bible says, "Comfort me with flagons, or apples," I really forget which,—and if either of these is to be taken as authority, a côtelette may surely be admitted into the carte de conforts.