There were many to be had, painted sky-blue or apple-green, and bearing
romantic names like Juliette or Gabrielle, but their sea-going
qualities were none of the best, and moreover most of them leaked
badly. They might have done for half-an-hour’s _belle promenade_ with
Marcelle or Céleste, but I doubted their worthiness for the perilous
adventure from which my friend the innkeeper had tried to dissuade me.
[Illustration: A SEINE TYPE]
I was told that at Bougival I would surely find what I desired. My time
was getting short and I took the train there to inquire. Visions of
light, perfectly appointed canoes filled my mind as I got off at the
station. I could almost see them lying by dozens snubbed to dapper
wharves ready to be rented. The river flashed in the warm sun and swung
under cool archways. The people whom I passed on my way through the
village looked nautical enough. I stopped the likeliest looking one as
I crossed the bridge, a bronzed, thick-set man wearing a sailor’s cap.
“Can I rent a rowboat here, monsieur?” I asked.
He looked at me in a dazed sort of way, then, shaking the ashes from
his stubby pipe, became lost in thought. Had you asked him for a
balloon he could not have been more puzzled.
“A rowboat,” I reiterated.
“_Ah! monsieur, un bateau à rames, ah!_ that is difficult. The miller
used to have one a year ago, but he sold it.”
I walked along down the river in the direction of Pont de Chatou,
through waving fields of wheat gay with scarlet poppies. Suddenly in
the distance I saw the lateen sail of a canoe showing above the bank.
Another half mile and I had reached the bridge. Here several rowboats
were drawn up to a float in front of the workshop of a _constructeur_.
The builder himself came out to greet me. He was a pleasant little man
and seemed much interested when I told him what I wanted. He motioned
me to follow him and, unlocking the door of a barnlike structure,
ushered me in. Suspended from the ceiling hung a score of racing boats
and shells, the property of a Parisian boat club. Tucked away in a
corner of the floor I saw my boat! A St. Lawrence canoe, clinker-built
and perfect in all its appointments.
“Where the devil did you get this?” I cried.
He shrugged his shoulders.
“It belongs to the gentleman whose château you passed on the river. He
brought it from America himself.”
My spirits fell.
“Will he rent it?” I asked.
“Ah! monsieur, I do not know, but you could ask him. He is the head of
a famous firm in Paris,” and he gave me his address.
The _concierge_ who ushered me the following day into the private
office of the head of the firm in question, informed me that monsieur
would see me in half an hour. Could I wait? At the end of this time
monsieur, an imposing looking man with a red ribbon in his buttonhole,
entered the room with all the ceremonious courtesy found among Parisian
men of affairs.
We both bowed low and he motioned me to a Louis XVI. chair.
“Now, monsieur, I am at your disposal.”
I explained to him that I had not come to transact affairs affecting
the credit of Russia or to merge anything of any kind.
“Then it is not in business that I have the honor of your visit,
monsieur?”
“Monsieur,” I said, “I simply want to rent your boat.”
“_Tiens_, have I a boat?”
“Yes,” I reminded him, “at the builder’s, below your country place at
Chatou.”
“Ah! yes,” and he laughed heartily. “Yes! yes! so I have, I had almost
forgotten it; it has been so long since I have been there. It was the
green one you liked?”
“No! no, the American canoe,” I explained.
“_Ah! parfaitement!_ But, monsieur, that is not mine; it belongs to my
brother. He left town yesterday, but you could write him here
explaining what you wish and I will leave it here on his desk.”
He touched an electric button over an escritoire, and left me with a
low bow. I began to write. I had just slipped the note in its envelope
when his brother entered unexpectedly—a placid gentleman with a
well-trimmed beard.
“Monsieur,” I began in my rapid French, “it is for the difficulty of
having to find a boat of oars that I have become desolate that has
inspired me to come to you to ask you to rent me yours which I find of
the type ravishing to my eyes as well as practical to the voyage.”
He smiled pleasantly as I talked on, putting his hand to his ear. At
last he spoke in a high-keyed, monotonous voice.
[Illustration: A PARISIAN SUNDAY ALONG THE SEINE]
“Monsieur, the lady whom you speak of I am not acquainted with.”
“It is not a lady!” I replied in my best megaphone French. “It is a
boat, your canoe, at Chatou; want to rent it?”
His face brightened at last, I thought.
“Ah! the little canoe Américain. But it is not mine, monsieur, it
belongs to my brother Achille. He is out of town.”
I thanked him, left the note and bowed myself out, saving my more
intricate vocabulary for the open air. Three days later I received the
following answer:
“Monsieur,
“I am truly desolate, I beg of you to believe me, not to be able to
acquiesce to your amiable request, but it will be impossible for me
to rent my St. Lawrence skiff. I hope sincerely you can find what
you wish. Might I suggest hunting at Asnières? If I am not
intruding, let me advise you, monsieur, to take for that delightful
little voyage so Arcadian, a strong rope of thirty meters and a
gaff which will prove useful in going through the locks.
“Permit me to express to you again, sir, my very sincere regrets
and the assurance of my distinguished sentiments.
“Yours, etc.”
[Illustration:
Photo by F. Berkeley Smith
THE BOAT BUILDERS AT ARGENTEUIL]
Finally, just outside of Paris, at Asnières, in the workshop of a
_constructeur de bateaux_, Monsieur Malo Lebreton, I discovered an
excellent boat, brand-new, but rather heavy and flat-bottomed. Both of
these seeming defects, however, proved advantages before the end of the
trip. A short portable mast carried a leg-of-mutton sail, which I
hoisted one sunny afternoon, and left Asnières, with a fair wind
driving me along under old bridges and past little islands in the
direction of Argenteuil.
Rounding the edge of a wooded island, a weird object came floating
toward me, silhouetted against the copperish red disk of the setting
sun. It was a strange craft, a short squat boat sunk deep in the water,
carrying a black lugger sail, and steered by an old man grizzled and
bent with age. A tawny, yellowish mass was loaded across the middle of
the boat. As it drew nearer, I saw the body of a lioness, her head
resting on her great paws. She was dead. Her long life of captivity had
ended in the menagerie of some _fête foraine_ down the river. Here was
a breath of the twilight air and the cool smell of the fresh woods and
freedom, but for her they were too late. Father Time was steering her
down the golden river to her grave. As she drifted close by, the old
man neither spoke nor raised his eyes. Slowly the boat of the dead
drifted by, and the bend of the river hid it from view.
The fair wind, which so far had driven me before it, suddenly changed,
and for hours the boat crept against a head wind that roused itself
into a stiff river gale and slapped the tops of running waves across
the bow. The breeze held its position so persistently for a succeeding
one hundred and fifty miles, that often it was a daily fight to keep
from shore.
So tortuous is the course of the Seine, so many twists and turns does
it take to reach a few kilometers nearer the sea, that the excellent
chart supplied by the nautical journal, “Le Yacht,” looks like the
track of a snake in a box.
I managed to reach Argenteuil that night.
Near the picturesque bridge there was the comfortable inn of Le
Drapeau—jolly, as I entered, with a bourgeois wedding supper. The
party had arrived from Paris in high two-wheeled carts filled with
chairs. These lumbering festival vehicles were stowed under the shed of
the courtyard, while, as a precaution against the upsetting of a
friendly glass of wine, many of the women present had hung their
overskirts in a barn adjoining. It was late when the guests departed,
and during the remainder of the night other high two-wheeled carts
rumbled by, loaded with vegetables for the Paris _halles_, and shaking
the very ground as they passed. When I awoke, two automobiles were
cooling under the shed, and a _partie carrée_ of smartly dressed
Parisians had ordered breakfast under one of the pretty kiosks in the
garden.
It was Sunday, and the waiters were hurrying about setting extra tables
for the expected guests. Soon smart traps and bourgeois carts began to
arrive, the horses being unharnessed and led from the shafts in front
of the little tables.
[Illustration:
Photo by F. Berkeley Smith
A TYPICAL SEINE HOTEL]
The landlord whose dual role of cook and proprietor kept him as busy as
the innkeeper in a comic opera, bustled among his guests or flew to his
kitchen, to look after his _poulets_ and his sauces.
Rich fields and stretches of woodland rolled back of the inn to the
river, still whipped white by the gale and dotted with scudding
sharpie-like canoes which had ventured out from a neighboring boat club.
The wind having abated the next day, I pushed down the river, past
barges and iron foundries and rows of steam tow-boats, of which there
are many plying between Paris and Rouen, moored to the shore.
These tow-boats were iron-clad and painted red. They were propelled by
an endless chain arrangement jutting from bow to stern, which rattled
as it cut the water. A little below this point, the character of the
river changes. Quiet backwaters sheltered flocks of ducks and wild
doves. By noon I reached the “Ile Jolie,” a cozy restaurant under shady
green trees. It had a ballroom whose walls had been decorated by a
clever caricature of a wedding procession, the payment, no doubt, for
some bohemian supper of long ago, when madame the proprietress was
young and the good comrade of idle painters.
Now its clientèle has changed, and the scow used as a ferry is shouted
for from the opposite bank by Parisians with a fondness for game and
champagne.
“It must be lonely here in the winter?” I venture.
“No, indeed, monsieur; on the contrary, it is quite gay.” And she added
with a twinkle of her eye, “They come in the winter to show their furs.”
[Illustration: HERE, AS EVERYWHERE, THERE ARE PEOPLE FISHING]
Below the “Ile Jolie” lie more long, quiet stretches, smooth backwaters
flowing past feathery green islands full of cooing wild pigeons. As I
round a point, a blue heron squawks and rises lazily, his long legs
dangling. Farther on, a pair of black ducks scurry out of a hidden cove.
At sundown I glide under the bridge at Pont de Chatou. Here, as
everywhere else along the Seine, there are people fishing. Often, all
that is visible are the spider-webs of lines which lead from the water
into the brush along the banks; but at the end of each thread buried in
the tangle is some itinerant disciple of the patient Izaak.
A little below all this I carry over a narrow bit of land to avoid the
lock at Bougival. Here the Seine resembles somewhat the Thames. Fine
estates with formal gardens run to the edge of the river. Cedar boats
gay in colored cushions and silk parasols are drawn under shady trees,
the nooks of idling house parties. From the walls of one country place
the butler is fishing in his spare half hour before dinner. The gateway
to this estate is protected by an iron grille bearing in gilt the crest
of the family. A smart coupé passes, driven by a cockaded coachman.
[Illustration:
Photo by F. Berkeley Smith
A PRETTY SPOT ON THE SEINE]
At dusk the forbidding settlement of Pecq came into view, a sordid
collection of gray houses harboring a wretched combination of a hotel
and tobacco-shop. Above Pecq towers the forest plateau of St. Germain,
with its palace and balustrades and terraces faced with long avenues of
trees strung out like the wings of an advancing army, and having an
effect which smacks of the fancies of an extravagant court.
Here from the Pavilion Henri IV., where _chic_ Paris drives to _dîner_,
one sees the Seine glistening far below—a vein of silver running
through a vast undulating ocean of trees.
I stop at Maison for _déjeuner_ the next day, and find the proprietress
of a river-side café washing in the public _lavoir_. However, she
leaves her suds and scrubbing-board with the best of humor, and hurries
to her kitchen, whence she emerges a few minutes later with a smoking
omelet, a loaf of bread, and a bottle of wine.
“Monsieur will excuse my larder, but we get ready for Parisians on
Sundays.”
“Then you have a big crowd on that day?”
“_Ah! monsieur, quel monde!_” and she went hurrying back to her
kitchen, with her honest face beaming.
The character of the people becomes more primitive. I row on past La
Frette, a red-and-white town snug against a hillside checkered with
vineyards. At evening I reach Herblay, and a quaint inn with a tiled
kitchen shining in polished copper. The town is very small, very
crooked and very old. Boat-loads of peasants, many of them in coats of
sheepskins, returned at evening from their work in the fields.
[Illustration:
Photo by F. Berkeley Smith
A RED-AND-WHITE TOWN]
[Illustration:
Photo by F. Berkeley Smith
A SEINE LOCK]
It takes a week to reach Havre from Paris by tow. At the locks
tow-lines are slipped and the procession drifts into the big basins by
twos. Slowly the iron gates close, and the boats sink gradually to the
lower level. As slowly the gates open at the other end; tow-lines are
rehitched, and the procession goes on its way. By the side of the big
lock there is a narrower one for the passing through of smaller craft.
This, for a few sous, the lockman will grind open for you. But more
often you arrive in time to go through at the tail end of a tow and
without the slightest trouble. Evidently the dangers of the locks
existed only in the mind of my landlord at Poissy, which town now lay
just below.
It takes barely an hour to reach Poissy from Paris by train, but by the
twisting Seine it is a long way.
It seemed good to get to the Esturgeon again. The veranda overhanging
the river was already crowded with Parisians, and every automobile that
thundered over the bridge brought more.
_Chateaubriands_ smothered in mushrooms were being served by hurrying
waiters. Roast ducks and patés came from the busy kitchen. Champagne
frappéed itself in silver coolers, and older wines slumbered in cradles.
Beneath the veranda flowed the Seine, inky black in the night, and
framed by a mass of towering trees that would have graced a Corot. Now
and then a returning fishing-boat wrinkled the surface of the dark
water, while the boat-lantern was reflected in ribbons of light in the
depths of the stream.
The next morning I passed the tiny villa where the jolly breakfast had
occurred. It was closed; roses still bloomed in the tangled garden; a
sign over the porch read: “_À louer._”
The Bouffes-Parisiennes had opened.
[Illustration]
Twilight found me at the Mureaux at the opening of a pale blue-and-gold
hotel with a pretty, formal garden running to the river’s edge and a
banquet grove in the rear. I was informed by the _maître d’hôtel_ that
“_tout Paris_” would be present the next day. There was to be a grand
regatta and speeches by eminent Parisian sportsmen for whom sixty
covers were to be laid in the grove. Madame ran the hotel, continued
this important personage; he had nothing to do with that, he had charge
of the restaurant only, but that was enough. _Parbleu!_ He flew about,
pale and distracted, his shining bald pate in odd contrast to his black
side-whiskers, which I presumed were dyed, since he had easily passed
through sixty years, most of them in watching other people’s dinners.
The place was in a state of demoralization. The _maître d’hôtel_ swore:
waiters hired for the coming event pottered around, picking up this and
that and letting it drop—as useless as the clown in the circus who
gets in every one’s way. All the furniture in the hotel seemed to have
been unloaded at once and distributed by the delivery man. There were
Louis XVI. clocks in the bedrooms, ornaments placed in impossible
places, gorgeously carved canopied bedsteads for which the mattresses
had been forgotten. It grew dark; and there had been trouble with the
gas company—and there were no candles. A small printed sign on my door
read,
Touch the button:
Once for the lights;
Twice for the _femme de chambre_;
Thrice for the _garçon_.
[Illustration:
Photo by F. Berkeley Smith
A FAMOUS INN]
I tried the top line and waited; nothing happened. Then I pushed twice
for the _femme de chambre_, but no white-capped Marie came tripping
down the Brussels-carpeted hall to knock gently at my door. Then I
pushed vigorously three times for the _garçon_. He had refused the job,
I afterwards learned, and was at his home in Touraine. At the end of
twenty minutes a boy carrying a gilt tête-à-tête chair to the room
above heard my cries.
“Candles, you imbecile!” I shouted; “don’t you see it is dark here?”
He stared at me stupidly for a moment and exclaimed:
“_Ah! si, si! les bougies!_” and went clattering down the stairs.
In ten minutes he returned.
“Did you find any?” I roared.
“_Oui, oui! monsieur, parfaitement!_ Two, but the cook is using them.”
The morning dawned chill and gray; already some of the visitors had
arrived. Some were heavy, serious-looking gentlemen in Duc d’Orléans
beards and yachting clothes. Others wore a judicial air more in keeping
with their costume, which included top hats and frock coats. Flags and
pennants fluttered from the terraces. Bunting draped from the shield of
the République Française ornamented the judges’ stand from which the
prizes were to be given.
[Illustration: ONE OF THE JUDGES OF THE REGATTA]
Orders were shouted on the river through megaphones for the laying of
the course. The _maître d’hôtel_ looked haggard and careworn. He gave
orders which were never carried out.
“_Imbécile_, have you prepared your butter?” he cried to one of his
staff, a clean-shaven little man whose face bore the intelligence of a
ground mole. “Idiot,” he bawled at a third, “didn’t I tell you the
six-franc ducks were on the left side of the cold room back of the
two-franc _pâtés de foie gras_?”
Only the two chefs hired from Paris seemed placid. They stirred their
sauces, poked up their fires, and then leaned out of their kitchen
window as coolly as an engineer and fireman waiting for orders to go
ahead. It was noon. The crowd along the terrace was cheering. The
rowers had arrived—a score of spindle-legged youths with their
overcoats thrown over their shoulders to protect them from the chill
wind. Bleak clouds hung heavily in the northwest. Suddenly came a
blinding flash of lightning, the thunder boomed, and down came the rain.
It struck in sheets in the garden and drenched the beautiful
blue-and-gold hotel and the waiting crowd, and pattered the river into
a dull leaden gray.
It filled the wine-glasses and the soup-plates for the feast of sixty,
formed in little pools around the _hors d’oeuvres_, and soaked the
linen. It totally demoralized the head waiter, madame the proprietress,
and the regatta. But the two chefs leaning out of their window again,
smiled. They had been paid.
[Illustration:
Photo by F. Berkeley Smith
AU GOUJON FOLICHON]
I made out my bill, had it approved by the now hysterical madame,
jumped into my boat and pulled away from the wreck. A mile below, a
team passed me rattling along in the direction of the railroad station.
On the front seat a bald-headed man with a newspaper bundle under his
arm was gesticulating wildly to the driver. It was the _maître d’hôtel_.
Below the Mureaux upon an island I came across a small cabin of a
restaurant in the middle of a garden patch. Seine nets were drying in
the door-yard, and under the eaves of the house ran a sign reading in
large letters AU GOUJON FOLICHON.
There was another excellent omelet to be had, and a _friture de Seine_
of fresh and foolish _goujons_ whose greediness early that very morning
had proved their ruin. Madame in charge of this fisherman’s rest showed
me her strawberry patch, still bearing fruit—quite a rarity for the
season.
She had a brother-in-law in Brooklyn, America, did I know him? She
insisted upon generously giving me all of her ripe strawberries. I must
tell her brother-in-law if I met him I had seen her.
When I pushed off down the river the chimney of the Goujon Folichon was
smoking with the frying of more ill-fated foolish goujons, and madame
was waving _bon voyage_ from the window.
[Illustration:
Photo by F. Berkeley Smith
A RIVERSIDE FARM]
There was a fête at Limay. The only hotel in this apology for a town
was shaken by the trampling feet of dancing swains when I arrived. They
informed me that the ball would continue all night and the next day.
Inside the ballroom the town band pumped away amid the discordant
shrieking of two cheap clarinets, the drone of a mournful baritone
horn, and the thump of a bass drum. The effort was anything but
conducive to sleep. I crossed the bridge and entered Mantes, a
splendidly built old city with a rare Gothic cathedral.
Later in the evening I returned to Limay. The fête was in full swing,
so was the ball. Festoons of lanterns were strung across the main
street. I followed the crowd up the cobble-stoned hill to a small
square back of a church. Here shooting galleries popped away and wheels
of fortune whizzed for prizes. A patient horse ground simultaneously
the organ and a merry-go-round. At the sound of a ta-ra-ta-ta of
trumpets in the distance, the excited crowd rushed back to the top of
the cobble-stoned hill and waited breathlessly with flushed cheeks and
dancing eyes. The great parade had started. Cherry branches bearing
lanterns flared in advance of the column. Nearer they came. I could see
the flashing of brass helmets. In a moment they had passed—eight
_pompiers_, the noble volunteer fire brigade of the town—amid cheers
and sighs of regret from the crowd that it was all over. Not for
another year would Limay blaze in glory.
[Illustration:
Photo by F. Berkeley Smith
A TYPICAL BARN]
A fair wind the next day filled my sail as far as Vetheuil. The river
had accommodatingly taken a favorable turn, for the wind itself never
seemed to vary. It was a pleasant surprise after so much rowing.
Vetheuil seems to have been built upon the stepping-stones which lead
to its picturesque cathedral. At the original inn of the Cheval Blanc
there was a party of good bohemians: two painters from Montmartre and
their models. They returned for dinner after a day’s fishing, sunburned
and happy, and filled the dingy apartment that served for both billiard
and dining-room with their songs.
There was something imposing in the name of the inn at Bosnières—“The
Grand Hotel of the Two Hemispheres.” From my room over the stable I
could watch the life and bustle below in the tiny court. My modest
arrival seemed to throw this hostelry with the all-embracing name into
a state of confusion.
[Illustration:
Photo by F. Berkeley Smith
LES ANDELYS]
Marie, the ruddy-cheeked maid of all work, went clattering down the
street in her _sabots_ after two eggs for my supper. The boy who was
milking the cow under my suite was pressed into service to secure a
cutlet from the neighboring butcher, while madame herself went after a
good bottle of wine at her cousin, the _marchand de vin_. At seven this
collation, or rather collection, was served.
Here was an excellent system by which to avoid heavy losses through
overstocking. The Grand Hotel of the Two Hemispheres controlled it to a
nicety.
Sixty kilometers still lay between Bosnières and Rouen. The wind which
had freshened in the night, was blowing its contrariest, and progress
down the river proved slow. A steam-tow came round a bend, the white
and green funnel of the tug belching a saffron smoke, which indicated
full speed. I got out my thirty meters of rope and waited. I could see
the fat red-faced pilot of the steam-tug shaking his head at me in the
negative.
“_Voulez-vouz me remorquer?_” I cried.
“_C’est défendu_,” he bawled, and warned me off with a gesture.
[Illustration:
Photo by F. Berkeley Smith
FEUDAL FORTRESS, LES ANDELYS]