My journey through central France took me by Chartres, Orleans, down
the Loire to Nantes, then through La Vendée to Fontenay, Niort,
Poitiers, Saintes, Rochefort, La Rochelle, Bordeaux, Angouleme,
Limoges, and thence back to Paris. On looking at the book for the
first time since I read the proof-sheets I find it amusing. The fault
of it, as an account of the district traversed, is, that it treats
of the localities described on a scale that would have needed twenty
volumes, instead of two, to complete the story of my tour in the same
proportion. I do not remember that any of my critics noted this fault.
Perhaps they feared that on the first suggestion of such an idea I
should have set about mending the difficulty by the production of a
score of other volumes on the subject! I could easily have done so. I
was in no danger of incurring the anathema launched by Sterne--I think
it was Sterne--against the man who went from Dan to Beersheba and
found all barren. I found matter of interest everywhere, and could
have gone on doing so, as it seemed to me in those days, for ever.
The part of France I visited is not much betravelled by Englishmen,
and the general idea is that it is not an interesting section of the
country. I thought, and still think, otherwise. My notion is, that
if a line were drawn through France from Calais to the centre of the
Pyrenean chain, by far the greater part of the prettiest country and
most interesting populations, as well as places, would be found to the
westward of it. I do not think that my bill of fare excited any great
interest in the reading world. But I suppose that I contrived to
interest a portion of it; for the book was fairly successful.
I wrote a book in many respects of the same kind many years
subsequently, giving an account of a journey through certain
little-visited districts of central Italy, under the title of a
_Lenten Journey_. It is not, I think, so good a book as my French
journeys furnished, mainly to my mind because it was in one small
volume instead of two big ones, and both for want of space and want of
time was done hurriedly and too compendiously. The true motto for the
writer of such a book is _nihil a me alienum puto_, whether _humanum_
or otherwise. My own opinion is, to make a perfectly clean breast of
it, that I could now write a fairly amusing book on a journey from
Tyburn turnpike to Stoke Pogis. But then such books should be
addressed to readers who are not in such a tearing hurry as the
unhappy world is in these latter days.
It would seem that I found my two octavo volumes did not afford me
nearly enough space to say my say respecting the country traversed,
for they are brought to an end somewhat abruptly by a hurried return
from Limoges to Paris; whereas my ramble was much more extended,
including both the upper and lower provinces of Auvergne and the
whole of the Bourbonnais. My voluminous notes of the whole of these
wanderings are now before me. But I will let my readers off easy,
recording only that I walked from Murat to St. Flour, a distance of
fifteen miles, in five minutes under three hours. Not bad! My diary
notes that it was frequently very difficult to find my way in walking
about Auvergne, from the paucity of people I could find who could
speak French, the _langue du pays_ being as unintelligible as Choctaw.
This would hardly be the case now.
I don't know whether a knot of leading tradesmen at Bordeaux could
now be found to talk, as did such a party with whom I got into
conversation in that year, 1840. It was explained to me that England,
as was well known, had liberated her slaves in the West Indies
perfectly well knowing that the colonies would be absolutely ruined by
the measure, but expecting to be amply compensated by the ruin of
the French colonies, which would result from the example, and the
consequent extension of trade with the East Indies, from which France
would be compelled to purchase all the articles her own colonies now
supplied her with. One of these individuals told me and the rest of
his audience, that he had the means of _knowing_ that the interest of
the English national debt was paid every year by fresh borrowing, and
that bankruptcy and absolute smash must occur within a few years.
"Ah!" said a much older, grey-headed man, who had been listening
sitting with his hands reposing on his walking-stick before him, and
who spoke with a sort of patient, long-expecting hope and a deep sigh,
"ah! we have been looking for that many a year; but I am beginning to
doubt whether I shall live to see it." My assurances that matters were
not altogether so bad as they supposed in England of course met with
little credence. Still, they listened to me, and did not show angry
signs of a consciousness that I was audaciously befooling them, till
the talk having veered to London, I ventured to assure them that
London was not surrounded by any _octroi_ boundary, and that no impost
of that nature was levied there.[1] Then in truth I might as well have
assured them that London streets were literally paved with gold.
[Footnote 1: It may possibly be necessary to tell untravelled
Englishmen that the _octroi_, universal on the Continent, is an impost
levied on all articles of consumption at the gates of a town.]
On the 30th of May, 1840, I returned with my mother from Paris to
her house in York Street. Life had been very pleasant there to her
I believe, and certainly to me during those periods of it which my
inborn love of rambling allowed me to pass there. But in the following
June it was determined that the house in York Street should be given
up. Probably the _causa causans_ of this determination was the fact of
my sister's removal to far Penrith. But I think too, that there was
a certain unavowed feeling, that we had eaten up London, and should
enjoy a move to new pastures.
I remember well a certain morning in York Street when we--my mother
and I--held a solemn audit of accounts. It was found that during her
residence in York Street she had spent a good deal more than she had
supposed. She had entertained a good deal, giving frequent "little
dinners." But dinners, however little, are apt in London to leave
tradesmen's bills not altogether small in proportion to their
littleness. "The fact is," said my mother, "that potatoes have been
quite exceptionally dear." For a very long series of years she never
heard the last of those exceptional potatoes. But despite the alarming
deficit caused by those unfortunate vegetables, I do not think
the abandonment of the establishment in York Street was caused by
financial considerations. She was earning in those years large sums
of money--quite as large as any she had been spending--and might have
continued in London had she been so minded.
No doubt I had much to do with the determination we came to. But
for my part, if it had at that time been proposed to me, that our
establishment should be reduced to a couple of trunks, and all our
worldly possessions to the contents of them, with an opening vista of
carriages, diligences, and ships _ad libitum_ in prospect, I should
have jumped at the idea. A caravan, which in addition to shirts and
stockings could have carried about one's books and writing tackle
would have seemed the _summum bonum_ of human felicity.
So we turned our backs on London without a thought of regret and once
again "took the road;" but this time separately, my mother going to
my sister at Penrith and I to pass the summer months in wanderings
in Picardy, Lorraine, and French Flanders, and the ensuing winter in
Paris.
I hardly know which was the pleasanter time. By this time I was
no stranger to Paris, and had many friends there. It was my first
experiment of living there as a bachelor, as I was going to say, but I
mean "on my own hook," and left altogether to my own devices. I found
of course that my then experiences differed considerably from those
acquired when living _en famille_. But I am disposed to think that the
tolerably intimate knowledge I flatter myself I possessed of the Paris
and Parisians of Louis Philippe's time was mainly the result of this
second residence. I remember among a host of things indicating the
extent of the difference between those days and these, that I lived
in a very good apartment, _au troisième_, in one of the streets
immediately behind the best part of the Rue de Rivoli for one hundred
francs a month! This price included all service (save of course a tip
to the porter), and the preparation of my coffee for breakfast if I
needed it. For dinner, or any other meal, I had to go out.
"Society" lived in Paris in those days--not unreasonably as the result
soon showed--in perpetual fear of being knocked all to pieces by an
outbreak of revolution, though of course nobody said so. But I lived
mainly (though not entirely) among the _bien pensants_ people, who
looked on all anti-governmental manifestations with horror. Perhaps
the restless discontent which destroyed Louis Philippe's government
is the most disheartening circumstance in the whole course of recent
French history. That the rule of Charles Dix should have occasioned
revolt may be regrettable, but is not a matter for surprise. But that
of Louis Philippe was not a stagnant or retrogressive _régime. "La
carrière_" was very undeniably open to talent and merit of every
description. Material well-being was on the increase. And the door
was not shut against any political change which even very advanced
Liberalism, of the kind consistent with order, might have aspired to.
But the Liberalism which moved France was not of that kind.
One of my most charming friends of those days, Rosa Stewart, who
afterwards became and was well known to literature as Madame Blaze de
Bury, was both too clever and too shrewd an observer, as well as, to
me at least, too frank to pretend any of the assurance which was then
_de mode_. She saw what was coming, and was fully persuaded that it
must come. I hope that her eye may rest on this testimony to her
perspicacity, though I know not whether she still graces this planet
with her very pleasing presence. For as, alas! in so many scores of
other instances, our lives have drifted apart, and it is many years
since I have heard of her.
One excursion I specially remember in connection with that autumn was
partly, I think, a pedestrian one, to Amiens and Beauvais, made
in company with the W---- A----, of whom my brother speaks in his
autobiography; which I mention chiefly for the sake of recording my
testimony to the exactitude of his description of that very singular
individual. If it had not been for the continual carefulness
necessitated by the difficulty of avoiding all cause of quarrel, I
should say that he was about the pleasantest travelling companion I
have ever known.
In the beginning of April, 1841, after a little episode of spring
wandering in the Tyrol and Bavaria (in the course of which I met my
mother at the château of her very old friend the Baroness de Zandt,
who has been mentioned before, and was now living somewhat solitarily
in her huge house in its huge park near Bamberg), my mother and I
started for Italy. Neither of us had at that time conceived the idea
of making a home there. The object of the journey, which had been long
contemplated by my mother, was the writing of a book on Italy, as she
had already done on Paris and on Vienna.
Our journey was a prosperous one in all respects, and our flying visit
to Italy was very pleasant. My mother's book was duly written, and
published by Mr. Bentley in 1842. But the _Visit to Italy_, as the
work was entitled (with justly less pretence than the titles of either
of its predecessors had put forward), was in truth all too short. And
I find that almost all of the huge mass of varied recollections which
are connected in my mind with Italy and Italian people and things
belong to my second "visit" of nearly half a century's duration!
We made, however, several pleasant acquaintances and some fast
friends, principally at Florence, and thus paved the way, although
little intending it at the time, for our return thither.
Our visit was rendered shorter than it would probably otherwise have
been by my mother's strong desire to be with my sister, who was
expecting the birth of her first child at Penrith. And for this
purpose we left Rome in February, 1842, in very severe weather. We
crossed the Mont Cenis in sledges--which to me was a very acceptable
experience, but to my mother was one, which nothing could have induced
her to face, save the determination not to fail her child at her need.
How well I remember hearing as I sat in the _banquette_ of the
diligence which was just leaving Susa for its climb up the mountain
amid the snow, then rapidly falling, the driver of the descending
diligence, which had accomplished its work and was just about entering
the haven of Susa, sing out to our driver--"_Vous allez vous amuser
joliment là haut, croyez moi_!"
We did not, however, change the diligence for the sledges till we came
to the descent on the northern side. But as we made our slow way to
the top our vehicle was supported from time to time on either side by
twelve strapping fellows, who put their shoulders to it.
I appreciated during that journey, though I was glad to see the
mountain in its winter dress, the recommendation not to let your
flight be in the winter.