Produced by Melissa McDaniel, Juliet Sutherland and the
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Transcriber's note:
Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document
have been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been
corrected.
[Illustration: THE WESTERN FACADE OF AMIENS CATHEDRAL.]
FRANCE
BY
GORDON HOME
WITH 32 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR
LONDON
ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK
1914
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY 1
CHAPTER II
THE GENESIS AND CHARACTERISTICS OF THE FRENCH 6
CHAPTER III
FAMILY LIFE--MARRIAGE AND THE BIRTH-RATE 23
CHAPTER IV
HOW THE FRENCH GOVERN THEMSELVES 49
CHAPTER V
ON EDUCATION AND RELIGION 67
CHAPTER VI
SOME ASPECTS OF PARIS AND OF TOWN LIFE IN GENERAL 86
CHAPTER VII
OF RURAL LIFE IN FRANCE 114
CHAPTER VIII
THE RIVERS OF FRANCE 143
CHAPTER IX
OF THE WATERING-PLACES 169
CHAPTER X
ARCHITECTURE--ROMAN, ROMANESQUE, AND GOTHIC--IN
FRANCE 193
CHAPTER XI
THE NATIONAL DEFENCES 205
INDEX 213
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
1. THE WESTERN FACADE OF AMIENS CATHEDRAL _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
2. COMBOURG, A TYPICAL _CHATEAU_ OF THE MEDIAEVAL TYPE 8
3. IN THE CAFE ARMENONVILLE IN THE BOIS DE BOULOGNE, PARIS 17
4. IN THE PLACE DU THEATRE FRANCAIS, PARIS 24
5. EVENING IN THE PLACE D'IENA, PARIS 31
6. IN THE CENTRE OF PARIS 40
7. THE MARKET-PLACE AND CATHEDRAL AT ABBEVILLE 48
8. FIVE-O'CLOCK TEA IN PARIS 64
9. CHILDREN OF PARIS IN THE LUXEMBOURG GARDENS 71
10. LE PUY-EN-VELAY IN THE AUVERGNE COUNTRY 75
11. LA ROCHE, A VILLAGE OF HAUTE SAVOIE 78
12. A TYPICAL _COCHER_ OF PARIS 90
13. AUTUMN IN THE CHAMPS ELYSEES, PARIS 95
14. A BRETON _CALVAIRE_: THE ORATORY OF JACQUES CARTIER 122
15. A PEASANT CHILD OF NORMANDY 126
16. THE CATHEDRAL AND PART OF THE OLD CITY OF CHARTRES 136
17. THE CHATEAU OF AMBOISE ON THE LOIRE 144
18. CHATEAU GAILLARD AND A LOOP OF THE SEINE 150
19. MONT BLANC REFLECTING THE SUNSET GLOW 155
20. EVIAN LES BAINS ON LAKE GENEVA 158
21. THE CHAPEL ON THE BRIDGE OF ST. BENEZET, AVIGNON 162
22. CAP MARTIN NEAR MENTONE 164
23. THE CHATEAU OF CHENONCEAUX 168
24. ST. MALO FROM ST. SERVAN 171
25. MONTE CARLO AND MONACO FROM THE EAST 174
26. MONT ST. MICHEL AT HIGH TIDE 177
27. THE VEGETABLE MARKET, NICE 187
28. THE PYRENEES FROM NEAR PAMIERS 190
29. THE GALERIE DES GLACES AT VERSAILLES 192
30. THE ROMAN TRIUMPHAL ARCH AT ORANGE 194
31. FRENCH DESTROYERS 200
32. SOLDIERS OF FRANCE IN PARIS 208
_SKETCH MAP OF FRANCE ON PAGE 212._
FRANCE
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
The more one knows of France and the French at first hand, and the
more one reads the ideas and opinions of other people concerning this
great people, so does one feel less and less able to write down any
definite statements about the country or its inhabitants. Whatever
conviction one possesses on any aspect of their characteristics is
sure to be shaken by the latest writer, be he a native or a foreigner.
Every fresh sojourn in the country upsets all one's previous ideas in
the most baffling fashion. One used to think the Parisian _cocher_ a
bad driver, and then discovers a writer who eulogises his skill. When
he knocks over pedestrians, says this writer, he does so because his
whole life is given up to a perpetual state of warfare with the
public, from whom he gains his livelihood. This point of view being
new to one, it takes a little time before it can be safely rejected or
accepted, and before this process is completed a man of most decided
views, and possessed of a wide knowledge of France and the French,
comes along with the statement that no Frenchman can drive. He
supports it with a dozen good reasons, and leaves one with a bias
towards earlier convictions.
It used to be axiomatic, platitudinous, that Frenchwomen dressed
better than Englishwomen. People whose knowledge of France is, say,
ten, perhaps fewer, years out of date would accept this without a
thought, and yet one is inclined to think that the Frenchwoman's
pre-eminence has gone. No doubt all that is truly _chic_, all that is
essentially dainty in feminine attire, emanates from the brain of the
Parisian, but the women of the French capital no longer have any
monopoly in the wearing of clothes that give charm to the wearer.
Then as to French cooking. The day has not long passed when to breathe
a syllable against the cooking of the French would be to proclaim
oneself a savage, but what does one hear to-day? Openly in London
drawing-rooms people are heard expressing their preference for the
food supplied in English homes and hotels. They dare to state that
many of the courses provided in French hotels and restaurants are
highly flavoured, but uneatable; that the meat provided is nearly
always unaccountably tough and full of strange sinews and muscles that
give one's teeth much inconvenience; that the clear soup is commonly
little more than greasy hot water containing floating scraps of bread
and vegetables; that the sweet course is incomparably inferior to that
of the English table.
The difficulties confronting those who attempt to describe the Gallic
people are only realised when one grasps the fact that almost anything
one writes is true or untrue of a fragment of the nation. Who could
suppose that the inhabitants of soil facing the North Sea would have
similar virtues and faults to those who dwell on the shores of the
Mediterranean? They seem of a different race, and yet a curious unity
pervades the Norman, the Breton, and the Burgundian, the Provencal,
the dwellers on the great wheat plain, and the Iberians of Basses
Pyrenees. One is tempted to deal with each portion of the country
separately, but to do so would make it necessary to produce a library
of books, and in trying to pick out qualities common to the whole
nation one is checked at every turn by the contradictions that present
themselves continually. With the mind resting for a time on one part
of France, it would be easy to describe the people as very clean, but
mental visions of other parts arrest the pen, and a qualified
statement is alone possible. Then the mind hungers for an opportunity
of preparing a series of maps, showing by various colours where the
people live who possess this or that salient quality. If such maps
were presented to the reader, and supposing that districts in which
the inhabitants were inclined towards thriftiness were shown red, the
whole country would be of the same glowing colour, and therefore this
map need not be drawn, but the same does not apply to wages and
prosperity, nor to religious fervour, nor to the social manners of the
people, and on these and a very large number of subjects the
variations are so great that what the writer has ventured to condense
in the chapters which follow may be open to much limitation, and even
to contradiction. He has always felt a very deep appreciation of the
country and the people, and the joy of arriving in France is one of
the pleasantest things in his experience. The curious smells that are
wafted to the deck of the steamer as it is tied up by the quayside
bring to him in one breath the essence, as it were, of the life of
France, which has for him so great an attractive force. In that first
breath of France, the faint suggestion of coffee brings to mind the
pleasant associations of meals in picturesque inns or in the cafes of
Paris in sight of the amazing movement of the city; the suspicion of
vegetables recalls the colour and human interest of countless
market-places and chequered patches of cultivation on wide hedgeless
landscapes; and that indefinable suggestion of incense and a dozen
other impalpable things brings with it the whole pageant of French
life, its colour and gaiety, its movement, its pathos, and its grand
moments, all of which act as a magnet and irresistibly attract him to
the southern shores of the Channel.