DIJON, OR THE WINE COUNTRY.
As an illustration of what a French provincial town is in the way of
hotels, I would take Dijon, where I stopped a night on my way from Lyons
to Paris. From Marseilles to Dijon the country is interesting, giving
fine views of the valley of the Loire and hills and mountains far away.
From thence to Paris the ride is uninteresting. I suppose a great many
people stop at Dijon, as it abounds in magnificent hotels, all of which
seem to flourish. I put up at the Hôtel de Jura, close to the
railway-station, and I feel as proud as a lord as I enjoy the luxury of
that well-appointed hotel. My bedroom is delicious, very unlike that of
an English hotel. Everyone in the house seems smiling and civil. The
dining-room is large and lofty, the cuisine is excellent, and the
smoking-room is elegantly furnished, as much so as a drawing-room in
England. I feel that I am in France, and that there they manage better
than they do with us. I go into the shop, and the shopkeeper and his men
all wear the blue blouse of the country. If I buy anything, it is done
up for me in the most careful manner, and so profuse are the thanks of
the shopkeeper and his wife that I leave with a feeling that my visit has
been a real benefit to the town.
There is much to see in Dijon; it is an ancient city, formerly the
capital of Burgundy, and still the headquarters of its extensive wine
trade. Let us hope that the dealers are honest men, as burgundy is much
in demand in my native land. What I have at the hotel is excellent and
cheap, and this is the great difficulty in France in the way of any
national temperance movement. Like the Cape, like Australia, the wine
trade is an important factor in the national life. It is the Diana of
the Ephesians. Try to check it, and everyone is up in arms. The
traveller is bound to drink. At lunch he has a quart bottle of red or
white wine placed before him, and it is just the same at dinner. The
wine is included in the bill, and it is all the same whether you drink it
or leave it alone. If there is a family dining or lunching together, the
bottle goes round, and perhaps a glass or two will suffice; but a
solitary traveller has his two quart bottles to tackle per day, and what
are you to do?—one is afraid to drink water when travelling, as there may
be poison in the pot. A similar remark applies to milk. It is sadly
liable to infection, and it may be that, when you ask for it, it may
prove no exception to the general rule. I remember how Sir Russell
Reynolds, when on a Continental tour, confined himself to milk, and on
his return to England had a serious illness in consequence. No wonder,
then, that as a rule the ordinary traveller sticks to the wine of the
country, which is little intoxicating, and has a pleasant favour that
helps much in its consumption.
I fancy the burgundy of Dijon is much purer and pleasanter than that of
London. Nevertheless, two quarts of it a day are rather too much. I got
rid of the difficulty by sacrificing my dinner and having tea instead.
Dijon is a very ancient city, and full of very interesting remains.
Indeed, I fancy it is one of the most interesting cities in France. In
an old engraving of it which I have, it is surrounded by a wall, and
seems a city of church spires, and its ecclesiastical buildings are very
old and numerous, but the walls are gone, and handsome boulevards have
taken their place. Its modern fame depends on its wine, its spiced
bread, and its mustard. I buy a mustard-pot—a characteristic specimen of
French ingenuity. It is an earthenware pig. The back is hollow. You
take off the top, and there is the place for the mustard and a long
mustard-spoon, the crooked end of which does duty as a tail. The animal
has his nose in a trough, which is divided into two portions, one for
pepper, the other for salt. I am proud of that mustard-pot, and only use
it on state occasions. At Avignon the mustard-pot was equally a
combination, but of a less artistic character. It was simply a blue
earthenware pot with the mustard in the centre, while just below are two
little recesses, one for the pepper and one for the salt; and these you
see at really good hotels in preference to the costlier electroplate
mustard-pots in use nearer home. At Thetford they make unbreakable
earthenware. I should recommend the company to try a few mustard-pots _à
la Francaise_.
Dijon, says the guide-book—one of that excellent series in red known as
_Guide-Ioannes_, to be purchased for a franc, sometimes less, at all
French railway-stations—is one of the most interesting cities in France,
containing 63,425 inhabitants. It is situated at the junction of the
Ouche and the Suzon, at the foot of the mountains of the Côte d’Or, and
at the commencement of a fruitful valley which stretches as far as the
Jura. It is lovely—when I was there it rained, and I did not see much of
its loveliness—well built and salubrious. Its principal attractions are
the Cathedral of St. Benigne, the Churches of Notre Dame and St. Michel,
and the Palace of the Dukes of Burgundy, the Palace of Justice, the
museum containing the tombs of the Dukes of Burgundy and the remains of
the Chartreuse de Chamoi. Wherever you go you meet with old houses and
architecture of the most interesting character. It is a place to be
visited carefully by the artist. He will find much to interest him at
every step. In England we have nothing like it. In the troubles and
wars which led, after many ages, to the establishment of a united France
under one monarch, Dijon became a place of great importance and the seat
of a legislative assembly. Originally a second-rate Roman settlement, it
had become Christianized by the preaching of St. Benigne, who died a
martyr for his faith, and to whom, as I have already stated, the great
cathedral was consecrated; yet it did not become the seat of a bishopric
till 1731. For ages the Dukes of Burgundy resided there, and at a later
time it gave to France its grand pulpit orator, Bossuet, and to the
Church St. Bernard. In 1477 the French King gained possession of the
city, and the rule of the Dukes of Burgundy came to an end.
‘The Lord of Craon,’ writes old Philip de Commines—the father of modern
history, whose memoirs, writes Mr. Hallam, almost make an epoch in
historical literature—‘when he drew near Burgundy, sent forward the
Prince of Orange and others to Dijon to use persuasion and require the
people to render obedience to the King, and they managed the matter so
adroitly, principally by means of the Prince of Orange, that the city of
Dijon and all the other towns in the duchy of Burgundy, together with
many others in the country, gave in their allegiance to the King.’
Whether the people gained much by the change is not very clear.
Apparently, Commines did not think Dijon had much cause for thankfulness.
‘In my opinion,’ he writes, ‘of all the countries in the world with which
I was ever acquainted, the government is nowhere so well managed, the
people nowhere less obnoxious to violence and oppression, nor their
houses less liable to be destroyed by violence or oppression, than in
England, for these calamities only fall upon the authors of them.’ I
suppose the people of Dijon were of a similar way of thinking, as the
writer of the guide-book tells us that ‘_Dijon adopta avec enthousiasme
les principes de la Révolution_.’ Happily its victims during that reign
of terror were few. In the war with France the Germans got hold of
Dijon; but Garibaldi came to the rescue. Now Dijon is at peace, and long
may it so remain, its hotels affording rest and refreshment to the weary
traveller, and its wine, when taken in moderation, making glad the heart
of man. Let me make one remark as a hint to the tourist. Possibly he
sees in the Continental Bradshaw an advertisement of a hotel where the
charges are rather less than those of others. He goes there, but he
finds no reduction. The excuse is that the lower charge is not for the
hasty traveller, but for the one who comes to stay.
As a recent writer in _Temple Bar_ remarks, the general air of pride and
prosperity indicates that the capital of the duchy thrives excellently as
a member of the Republic. The Rue de Liberté reminds us of some of our
old English towns. Step aside into any of the cross-streets, and you
find yourself in a labyrinth of crooked by-ways and carved doors, by the
side of low angular bell-towers, which seem to have come straight from
some old Flemish city, or you come to quaint, quiet, detached squares,
planted with young trees, with white detached houses all round some of
them, remnants of feudal hotels. In the Salle des Gardes of the old
palace the tombs of the two greatest Dukes may still be seen. The
palace, a huge, stately, modernized building, is now a museum, a
picture-gallery, and the headquarters of all local and departmental
business. It is there that the French Protestants of to-day worship.
The Church of Notre Dame, of which the great Condé declared that it
should be packed in a jeweller’s box to preserve it, is beautiful outside
as in. It is the mother-church, to which the Dijonais cling, where their
children are baptized and brought on their First Communion. It is
crowded of a Sunday. Nor is St. Michel externally less impressive; but
the interior is described as dowdy and disappointing. But, after all, I
fancy the chief visitors to Dijon are the wine-merchants, and others
interested in the wine trade. The railway time-tables are full of
familiar names of vineyards. In a journey of thirty miles southwards,
you meet with, the well-known names of Chambertin, Vougeot, Beaune, and
Meursault, and you think, perhaps, of feasting and gaiety a long time
ago. But the country lacks the picturesque. You may travel far on the
main line without seeing anything in the shape of pleasant landscape.
The country around is undulating, but on the whole flat. There are many
walks with pleasant memories—one leads to Talant, the ancient palace of
the Dukes of Burgundy, now the seat of an archaic village with a
marvellous church, where they show you an ancient picture said to have
been painted by St. Luke. From the common at the foot of the hill you
get a good view of Dijon, with the cathedral towers in the foreground,
and the cupola of St. Michel standing up above. In an old château
near-by was the birthplace of the great St. Bernard. Far off is the
rolling expanse of land which stretches away to the frontiers of
Champagne. ‘It was among these fields and villages,’ says the writer in
_Temple Bar_ to whom I have already referred, ‘that the three battles of
Dijon were fought during the Franco-Prussian War, and here and there, at
turnings in the road and in wide ploughed land, monuments covered with
withered wreaths recall the event, and make the sad landscape all the
sadder; yet France pines for war, and the clang of martial strains
everywhere makes it little better than an armed camp. It is the same
everywhere. The one great problem of European statesmen seems to be to
find a sufficiency of soldiers and sailors, as if we still lived in the
dark ages, when might was right, and the sole arbiter of nations was the
sword. It is awful to think of; it is a disgrace alike to Christianity
and civilization that such should be the case. It is not now that we can
sing, as we did in the great Exhibition year, more than forty years ago,
of the triumph of Captain Pen over Captain Sword. Still, we can pray
with Campbell:
‘The cause of truth and human weal,
O God above!
Transfer it from the sword’s appeal
To Peace and Love.
Peace, Love! the cherubim that join
Their spread wings o’er devotion’s shrine;
Prayers sound in vain, and temples shine,
Where they are not.’