THE ROAD TO CHERBOURG
It is easy enough to get into almost any town or city, but it is
different when you start to leave it. All roads lead to Rome, but there
is only here and there one that leads out of it. With the best map in
the world you can go wrong.
We worked our way out of Paris by the Bois de Boulogne, but we had to
call on all sorts of persons for information before we were really in
the open fields once more. A handsome young officer riding in the Bois
gave us a good supply. He was one of the most polite persons I ever met;
also, the most loquacious. The sum of what he told us was to take the
first turn to the right, but he told it to us for fully five minutes,
with all the variations and embroideries of a young and lively fancy
that likes to hear itself in operation. He explained how the scenery
would look when we had turned to the right; also how it would continue
to look when there was no longer a necessity of turning in either
direction and what the country would be in that open land beyond the
Bois. On the slightest provocation I think he would have ridden with us,
even into Cherbourg. He was a boon, nevertheless, and we were truly
grateful.
Beyond the Bois de Boulogne lay the _pave_, miles of it, all as bad as
it could be. Sometimes we could not really tell when we were in the
road. Once I found myself on a sort of private terrace without knowing
how I got there or how to get down. We went through St. Germain, but we
did not stop. We wished to get far from Paris--back to the simple life
and good roads. It was along the Seine, at last, that we found them and
the quiet villages. Imagine the luxury of following a silent, tranquil
road by that placid stream, through the sweetness of a May afternoon.
Imagine the peace of it after the jar and jolt and clatter and dazzle of
detestable, adorable Paris.
I am sorry not to be able to recommend the hotel at Rosny. For a time it
looked as if it were going to be one of the best of our selections, but
it did not turn out so. When we found a little toy garden at the back,
our rooms a string of tiny one-story houses facing it, with roses
blooming at every doorway, we were delighted. Each of us had a toy house
to himself, and there was another for the car at the back. It was a real
play place, and we said how nice it was and wished we might stay a good
while. Then we went for a walk down to the river and in the sunset
watched a curious ferryboat run back and forth on a wire, taking over
homefaring teams, and some sheep and cattle, to the village on the
farther bank of the little, but historic, river. In the early gloaming
we walked back to our hotel.
The dinner was very good--all dinners in France are that--but alas for
our pretty playhouse rooms! When candles were brought in we saw what I
had begun to suspect from the feeling, the walls were damp--worse, they
were soaked--almost dripping. It seems they were built against a hill
and the recent rains had soaked them through. We could not risk it--the
landlady must give us something in the main house. She was a good
soul--full of regrets, even grief. She had not known about those walls,
she said, and, alas! she had no rooms in the main house. When we
insisted that she _must_ find _something_, she admitted that there was,
indeed, just one room, but so small, so humble--fine folk like us could
never occupy it.
She was right about its being small, but she was wrong in thinking we
could not occupy it. She brought in cots and bedding, and when we were
all in place at last we just about filled it from side to side. Still,
it was dry and ventilated; those other places had been neither. But it
seemed to us amusing that our fine pretension of a house apiece opening
on a garden had suddenly dwindled to one inconsiderable room for the
four of us.
We were in Normandy, now, and enjoying it. Everything was quite
different from the things of the south. The picturesque thatched-roof
houses; the women in dainty caps, riding on donkeys, with great brass
milk jugs fore and aft; the very ancient cross-timber architecture;
those, to us, were new things in France.
The architecture and some of the costumes were not new to one who had
visited England. William the Norman must have carried his thatched-roof
and cross-timber architecture across the Channel; also, certain dresses
and smocks and the pattern of the men's whiskers. In some of these
towns one might almost believe himself in rural England.
Lisieux, especially, is of the type I mean. It has a street which might
be in Shrewsbury, though I think the Shrewsbury houses would not be as
old as those of Lisieux, one of which--"The House of the Salamander"--so
called from the decoration on its carved facade--we were permitted to
visit. Something about it gave me more the feeling of the ancient life
than I have found in most of the castles. Perhaps because it is wood,
and wood holds personality longer than stone.
There is an old church at Lisieux, and it has a chapel built by Cauchon,
Bishop of Beauvais, who hounded Joan of Arc to the stake. Cauchon earned
the Beauvais appointment by convicting Joan, but later, especially after
Joan had been rehabilitated, he became frightened of the entertainment
which he suspected Satan was preparing for him and built this chapel in
expiation, hoping to escape the fire. It is a beautiful chapel, but I
think Cauchon wasted his money. If he didn't there is something wrong
with justice.
The Normandy road to Cherbourg is as wonderful as any in France. All the
way it is lined with trees, and it goes straight on, mile after mile, up
hill and down--long, long hills that on the approach look as if they
reached to the sky, but that flatten out when you get to them, and offer
a grade so gradual and a surface so smooth that you need never shift
your speed levers. Workmen are always raking and touching up those
roads. We had something more than two days of them, and if the weather
had not been rather windy and chilly out on that long peninsula the
memory of that run would be about perfect.
Cherbourg is not the great city we had imagined it to be. It is simply a
naval base, heavily fortified, and a steamer landing. Coming in on the
Paris road you are in the center of activities almost as soon as you
reach the suburbs and there is none of the crush of heavy traffic that
one might expect. There is a pleasant beach, too, and if travelers were
not always going somewhere else when they arrive at Cherbourg, the
little city might become a real resort. We were there a week before our
ship came in, then sailed out one quiet June evening on the harbor
tender to meet the missing member and happily welcome her to France. Our
hotel had a moving-picture show in the open air, and we could look down
on it from our windows. The Joy especially liked this, and we might have
stayed there permanently, but the long roads and still unvisited glories
of France were calling.