Dogs and Flowers, La Bourboule, 24th July.
During the greater part of our stay, the theatre here was devoted to comic and other operatic performances, which I did not care for, and so scarcely glanced at the play-bills, posted up daily in our hotel; and was not even tempted by the announcement of “une seule représentation extraordinaire” of Le Songe d’une Nuit d’Eté, as I did not like to have my idea of A Midsummer Night’s Dream disordered by a French metrical version. When too late, I sorely regretted it, as, had I even read the caste, I should have gone, and been able to give you a trustworthy report,—for the three principal characters were William Shakespeare—by M. Dereims, of the opera (who would sing his great song of La Reine de Saba)—Falstaff, and Queen Elizabeth! Next morning I catechised a young Englishman, whose report was, as near as I can recollect, as follows: “Well, there wasn’t much of our Midsummer Night’s Dream in it, no Oberon and Titania, or Bottom, or all that fairy business. Queen Elizabeth and one of her ladies went out at night disguised, to a sort of Casino or Cremorne Gardens” [what would Secretary Cecil have said to such an escapade?], “and coming away they met Shakespeare and Falstaff, and had a good time; and Falstaff sang a song which brought the house down. Then, as the Queen falls in love with Shakespeare, they get some girl to marry him right away.” One more lost opportunity, and to think that I shall probably never get another chance!—
There is a flower that shines so bright,
They call it marigold-a:
And he that wold not when he might,
He shall not’ when he wold-a.
As you are fond of dog-lore, here is a sample from Auvergne. Just opposite our hotel lives the young Scotch (not Irish, as I think I called him last week) doctor. His wife owns a clever pug, whose friendship any self-respecting dog would be anxious, I should say, to cultivate. One of the rather scratch-pack gathered for the coming fox-chase, who wandered as they pleased about the town, seems to have shared my view, for every morning, between café and déjeûner, he came and paid a visit of about five minutes to Mrs. Gilchrist’s pug, in the doctor’s vestibule, always open to man and dog. At the end of his call, he trotted off down the avenue to whatever other business he might have in hand. Now, his visits could not have been amatory, as both are of the masculine sex, nor could they have been gastronomic, for he invariably refused the food which Mrs. Gilchrist offered him. What other conclusion is possible than that he came to talk over the gossip afloat in the dog-world of La Bourboule?
Lastly, as to the excursions. These are numerous, and very interesting in all ways, for you drive through great, sad pine-forests (in which I was astonished to see many of the trees gray with the weeping moss which makes the Louisiana and Texas forests so melancholy) and breezy heaths all aglow with wild flowers, getting every now and then indescribably glorious glimpses of the rich plain which stretches away from this backbone of Central France to the Alps. The flora is quite beyond me, but I recognised many varieties of heart’s-ease, fox-gloves, gentians, amongst them an exquisite blue variety, and the air was often scented with meadow-sweet or wild-thyme. Then almost every mountain-top is crowned by a peculiarly shaped block of dark rock, which looks as if some huge saurian, disgusted with a changing world, had crawled up there to die and get petrified. They must, however, have been even bigger than the Atlanlosaurus immanis, the biggest of the family yet found, I believe. I well remember the delight of Dr. Agnew, of New York, when the American geologists came upon its thigh bone, two feet longer than that of any European monster. It had become agate, and I have a scarf-pin made of a polished fragment, and presented to me by the triumphant doctor. I cannot tell you what these rocks really are, as I made no ascent, preferring nowadays, like dear Lowell, “to make my ascents by telescope.”