Among these visitors from the other side of the Channel, I remember one elderly lady of the Roman Catholic faith, and a strict observer of its precepts, who was pleased to express a very strong approbation of a certain oyster soup, which made its appearance one day at my mother’s table. She was charmed at the idea of being able to eat such soup for a maigre dinner, and begged that the receipt might be written out for her. “Oyster soup! Just the thing for a Friday!” So the mode of preparing the desired dainty was duly written out for her. But her face was a study for a physiognomist when she read the first line of it, to the effect that she was to “Take of prime beef” so much. Oyster soup, indeed!
It was a pleasant time—so pleasant that I am afraid that I did not regret perhaps so much as I ought to have done the continued delay of the Birmingham appointment for which I was all this time waiting. But pleasant as it was, its pleasantness was not sufficient wholly to restrain me from indulging in that propensity for rambling which has been with me the ruling passion of a long life-time.
It was in the spring following that merry Christmas that I found time for a little tour of about three weeks in Normandy. The reader need not fear that I am going to tell him anything of all I did and all I saw, though every detail of it seemed to me at the time worthy of minute record. But it has all been written and printed some scores of times since those days—by myself once among the rest—and may now be dismissed with a “See guide-books passim.” The expenses of my travel accurately recorded I have also before me. There indeed I might furnish some facts which would be new and surprising to tourists of the present day, but they would only serve to make him discontented with his generation.
There is one anecdote, however, connected with this little journey, which I must relate. I was returning from southern Normandy and reached Caen without a penny in my pocket. My funds, carefully husbanded as they had been, had sufficed to carry me so far and no further. There were no such things as telegrams or railways in those days; and I had nothing for it but to go to an hotel and there remain till my application to Hadley for funds could be answered—an affair of some ten or twelve days as things then were. While I was waiting and kicking my heels about the old Norman city, from which I had already extracted all the interest it could afford me, I lounged into the shop of a bookseller, M. Mancel. I revisited him on a subsequent occasion, and find the record of this second visit in the first of two volumes which I wrote, and entitled A Summer in Brittany. There I find that M. Mancel is “the publisher of numerous works on the history and antiquities of Normandy.... M. Mancel has also an extensive collection of old books on Norman history; but the rarest and most curious articles are congregated into a most bibliomaniacal looking cabinet, and are not for sale.”
Well, this was the gentleman into whose very tempting shop I strayed with empty pockets. He was extremely civil, showed me many interesting things, and finding that I was not altogether an ignoramus as regarded his specialty, observed ever and anon “That is a book which you ought to have!” “That is a work which you will find very useful!” till at last I said “Very true! There are two or three books here that I should like to have; but I have no money!” He instantly begged me to take any book or books I should like to buy, and pay for them when I got to London. “But,” rejoined I, “I don’t know when I shall get to London, for I have no money at all. I reached Caen with my purse empty, and am stranded here!” M. Mancel thereupon eagerly begged me to let him be my banker for my immediate needs, as well as for the price of any volumes I chose to purchase. And though he had never seen my face or heard my name before, he absolutely did furnish me with money to reach home, and gave me credit for some two or three pounds’ worth of books, it being arranged that I should on reaching London pay the amount to M. Dulau in Soho Square.
A few years ago on passing through Caen I went to the old book shop; but M. Mancel had long since gone to join the majority, and his place knew him no more. His successor, however, on my explaining to him the motive of my visit, remarked with a truly French bow, “My predecessor seems to have been a good physiognomist, monsieur!”
I returned to Hadley to find my mother eagerly occupied with the scheme of a journey to Vienna, and a book as the result of it. She had had, after the publication of her book on Paris and the Parisians, some idea of undertaking an Italian tour, but that was now abandoned in favour of a German journey, whether on the suggestion of her publisher, or from any other cause of preference, I do not know. Of course I entered into such a scheme heart and soul. My only fear now was that news of my appointment to a mastership at Birmingham might arrive in time to destroy my hopes of accompanying my mother. But no such tidings came; on the contrary, there seemed every reason to suppose that no new master would be appointed till after the following Christmas holidays. My mother was as anxious as I was that I should be free to act as her courier, for in truth she could hardly dispense with some such assistance; and I alone remained who could give it to her. My sister Cecilia was to accompany my mother. She wished also to take with her M. Hervieu, the artist who illustrated her former books; and I obtained her permission to ask an Oxford friend to make one of the party. We were thus a party of five, without counting my mother’s maid, an old and trusted servant, the taking of whom, however, she subsequently considered so great a mistake that she never fell into it on any other occasion.
My delight at the prospect of such a journey was intense. I surrounded myself forthwith with an amazing supply of maps and guide-books, and was busy from morning to night with the thoroughly congenial task of studying and preparing our proposed route.
CHAPTER XV.
That I started on this occasion even more than on any other with the greatest delight “goes without saying.” A longer and more varied journey than I had ever before enjoyed was before me. All was new, even more entirely new to the imagination than Paris; and my interest, curiosity, and eagerness were great in proportion. We travelled by way of Metz, Strasbourg, and Stuttgardt, and, after reaching the German frontier, by Lohnkutscher or vetturino—incredibly slow, but of all modes of travelling save the haquenée des Cordeliers the best for giving the traveller some acquaintance with the country traversed and its inhabitants.