spend all my best ‘bad language’ in reprobation of bi-tri-and-4-5-6 or
7-cycles, and every other contrivance and invention for superseding
human feet on God’s ground. To walk, to run, to leap, and to dance are
the virtues of the human body, and neither to stride on stilts, wriggle
on wheels, or dangle on ropes, and nothing in the training of the human
mind with the body will ever supersede the appointed God’s ways of slow
walking and hard working.”
“Oh well, let us go on,” said J----.
A BY-ROAD.
[Illustration]
Because of our sight-seeing we made a late start from Abbeville.--But
then we determined to go no farther than Amiens that day. It was a good
ten minutes’ walk over the _pavé_ from the hotel to the end of the long
Rue St. Gilles, where it is crossed by the railroad.--Here we were kept
waiting another five minutes, in company with a carriage and two covered
carts, while the woman in charge, who had shut the gate, put on her
official hat and cape. Presently a faint whistle was heard.----
“Hold!” said one of the drivers, “I think he comes.”
--And so _he_ did, and at last we were allowed to pass and go our
way.--Another weary kilometre of _pavé_, and then we were on the
highroad between the poplars.
But when we had got off the stones there was still the wind to fight.
It blew in our faces with never-relaxing vigour, rushing through the
trees and over the plain as if in haste to reach the sea. To make
matters worse, the road was bad. The cavalry had ruined it, a
stone-breaker said. We were soon riding on the side-walk.--The few
white-capped, blue-skirted pedestrians we met went obligingly into the
road to let us pass.----
“Pardon, ladies,” said we.
“Of nothing,” said they.
“The road is so bad,” we explained.
“You have reason. _Au revoir_,” cried they.
--The road ran straight along the edge of the upland. Below, a pretty
river wound among reeds and willows, overtopped by tall trees shivering
in the wind. But hard work gave us little chance for pleasure in the
landscape, until at Pont Remy we stopped on the bridge to take breath.
We went back to the pedals with sad misgivings, like people who know
that the worst is still to come. Just beyond, we left the _Route
Nationale_ for a by-road and unmitigated misery. Here we were led to
believe there was no other road between Abbeville and Amiens. Amiens,
“the very city where my poor lady is to come,” we could not miss. And
yet Italian experience made us doubt the advisability of turning off the
highroad.
The wind was now directly in our faces, and the road was deep with sand
and loose with stones, and we had not gone a mile, a mile but scarcely
one, when we lost our tempers outright and sent sentiment to the winds.
First we climbed a long up-grade, passing old crumbling grey churches
decorated with grotesques and gargoyles like those on St. Wulfran’s, in
Abbeville, some perched upon hillocks, with cottages gathered about
them, others adjoining lonely châteaux; and riding through forlornly
poor villages full of houses tumbling to pieces and vicious dogs. Hills
rose to our left; to our right, in the valley below, were wide marshes
covered with a luxurious green growth, and beyond, the river, on the
other side of which was a town with a tall church rising in its centre.
Once we got down to drink syrup and water at an inn where a commercial
traveller catechised us about America.----
“And the commerce, it goes well there? Yes?”
--I suppose he took us for fellow-drummers; and I must admit the idea of
our travelling for pleasure over such roads was the last likely to occur
to him.
Then we went down hill for some distance, but we ran into ridges of sand
and brought up
[Illustration]
suddenly on a stone pile at the bottom. On the level the road became a
shady avenue. But it grew worse as it increased in beauty. We wheeled
first to one side, then to the other. We even tried the grass close to
the trees. But soon we were down and walking, and pushing the wretched
machine through the sand. And now riding was out of the question, it
began to rain. When we came into Hangest----
“We’ll take the train,” said J----.
--But we had first to wait for two hours, during which we ate a lunch at
the “Sign of the Duck,” and sat at the station watching the passing
trains and the signals.--In his demoralisation J----asked at the office
for tickets for _la treizième classe_, and then a man joined us and told
us of the fine roads in his country, so that we wished we were there.
Finally our train came.--J---- had some trouble with the machine. At the
first baggage-car the conductor declared there was not room for it. The
second was full and no mistake. He went back to the first, and while the
conductor remonstrated, pushed it in with the help of a porter. He then
had just time to jump into the nearest carriage, which happened to be
the same in which I had already found a seat, and the train started. The
carriage was full.----
“_C’est complet, Monsieur_,” screamed a little man, in a passion.
“Certainly, _Monsieur_” said J----, as he fastened the door with a click
behind him.
“I tell you it’s full,” repeated the little man, in his rage dancing to
the window and calling the conductor.
--It was too late. All he could do was to return to his seat and glower
at J----, who calmly sat in the window.----
“We must not make the war,” said a good _curé_ next to him, patting him
gently on the shoulder.
--He restrained his anger with a comforting drink of brandy. _Monsieur
le Curé_ fell to saying his beads, covering his mouth with his
wide-brimmed hat, while all the other passengers laughed and nudged each
other. A man in the corner, carrying a genuine American carpet-bag,
drank something from a gingerbeer bottle, and asked us in good American
what we knew of the hotels in Paris.
At the next station J---- got out, and the man from the country of
beautiful roads, who had been sitting in the adjoining compartment, met
him at the door.----
“I render to you my place, _Monsieur_,” said he.
--And so in perfect peace we made all possible speed to Picquigny, and
from Picquigny to Amiens; not, however, before we saw from the carriage
windows that the road, now running alongside of the railway, was smooth
and hard, that the sun shone, and that the wind blew but mildly.
At Amiens the conductor was waiting on the platform full of apologies.
He had really thought there was no room for the velocipede. _Monsieur_
must pardon him.
The French have a charming way of putting you in a good humour. We
forgot the attack of the irascible traveller, as, let us hope, he
forgave the enormity of J----’s crime.
[Illustration]
AMIENS.
[Illustration]
We should always remember Amiens, even were it not for the cathedral,
because it was there we had the best dinner we ever ate in France.--In
looking over my note-book I find I made at the time elaborate mention of
the _menu_, and applied the adjective _divine_ to a course of fresh
mackerel served with an exquisite sauce.--As there may be readers who
take interest, and perhaps pleasure, in dining well, I will here add
that this excellent meal was eaten at the Hôtel de l’Univers. I can wish
the visitor to Amiens no better luck than a dinner in this hotel
prepared by the same artist.
It was a pity that, before leaving England--we had been so taken up with
Mr. Sterne, whose sentiment was not to be distracted with cathedrals and
old houses--we did not consult Mr. Ruskin, who probably thought of
nothing else while he was in Amiens.--To the unsentimental traveller I
would recommend the traveller’s edition of “Our Fathers have Told Us”
(Part I. chap. iv.), rather than the “Sentimental Journey,” as a
guide-book to the town.
We had two hours of daylight on the afternoon of our arrival, and we
remained in the city until noon the next day, partly because there were
many things to see, and partly on account of a heavy wind and rain storm
in the morning. We were not much troubled by sentiment, though here Mr.
Sterne’s overflowed into three chapters. But it was of a kind so
impossible for us to simulate--not having left an Eliza in England, nor
knowing a fair Countess in the town--we put all thought or hope of it
aside, and went out to look about.
What pleased us most were the many canal-like branches of the Somme, old
tumbled-down houses rising from the water, and little foot-bridges
connecting them with opposite gardens. We liked, too, the wider and less
modest main current of the river, where men or women in flat boats with
pointed prows and square sterns, like inclined planes, were for ever
poling themselves down stream beyond the embankment where the poplars
begin.--But I remember we lingered longest on a bridge over a tiny canal
from which there was a fine view of disreputably shabby back doors,
women appearing and disappearing as they emptied their pails and pots,
and of battered windows from which hung the family wardrobes. It was
then, I believe, we pronounced Amiens the French Venice--an original
idea which most likely occurs to every tourist fortunate enough to find
his way to the banks of the Somme. Indeed I have since read that in the
good old days, before a straight street had been dreamed of by city
officials, the town was known as Little Venice.
[Illustration]
Delightful as were the scenes by the river in the late afternoon, they
were even more so in the early morning, when, from under a borrowed
umbrella, we watched the open-air market. The embankment was carpeted
with greens and full of noisy peasants. The prevailing tint, like that
of the sky above, was a dull bluish grey, relieved here and there by a
dash of white. Fastened to rings in the stone wall of the embankment,
some thirty or forty of the boats with pointed prows lay on the water.
Two, piled high with cabbages and carrots, the brightest bit of colour
in the picture, were being poled towards the market-place. Others, laden
with empty baskets, satisfied-looking women in the prow, a man at the
stern, were on their homeward way. And above the river and the busy
people and the background of houses the great cathedral loomed up, a
“mass of wall, not blank, but strangely wrought by the hands of foolish
men of long ago.”
We found a priest saying Mass in the chapel behind the choir, the
eastern light shining on him at the altar. His congregation consisted of
four poor women and one great lady in silk attire kneeling in the place
of honour. In the nave and aisles were a handful of tourists and two
sentimental travellers--_i.e._, ourselves, who scorned to be classed as
tourists--uttering platitudes under their breath about the unspeakable
feeling of space and height, as if the cathedral existed but to excite
their wonder.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
We went also to the old belfry, a fine substantial pile, allowed to
stand, I suppose, because to remove it would be too herculean a task.
Our attention was distracted from it to a pair of French twins
staggering by, arm in arm, both wearing baggy brown velveteen trousers,
striped shirts and open coats, and little round caps, which rested on
each curly head at exactly the same angle. It was rather absurd to
discover that they were no greater oddities to us than we were to them.
Of one accord they stopped to stare solemnly at J----’s knee-breeches
and long stockings. Indeed I might as well say here, as in any other
place, that we were greater objects of curiosity off the machine than
on it.--Always, as in Calais, the eminently quiet and respectable
Cyclists’ Touring Club uniform seemed to strike every French man and
woman as a problem impossible to solve but easy to ridicule.
[Illustration]
WIND, POPLARS, AND PLAINS.
There is nothing more pleasing to a traveller, or more terrible to
travel-writers, than a large rich plain, unless it be a straight white
poplar-lined road, good as asphalt. After Amiens, as after Abbeville and
Neuchâtel, there was a poplared avenue over a breezy upland to carry us
to the next town, that town little more but a new place to start from to
the next plain and poplars, and so on. There were _cantonniers_ still at
work, sweeping the highway with great brooms.----
[Illustration]
“You sweep them everyday?” asked J---- of one.
“Every day--yes,” he answered.
--And there was still a strong wind rushing down between the trees and
blowing my skirts about my feet. Riding against it was such hard work
that I walked many kilometres during the morning. But indeed there was
scarce any walking with ease.
[Illustration]
We were glad many of the towns and villages were in little valleys.
After hours, perhaps, of steady pedalling, it was pleasant to coast down
a long hill, while a country postman stopped in his struggle with a
French operatic umbrella turned inside out by the wind, to smile and
show the loss of all his front teeth, as he cried----
[Illustration]
“Ah, but it goes well!”
--And then, alas! came another hill, this time to be climbed, and the
admiration changed to sympathy. I remember in particular an old woman on
the hill outside of Amiens, who was sorry there was still a long way up
the mountain. When we asked her how far it was to the top----
“Behold!” said she, and pointed a few yards ahead.
[Illustration]
In an insignificant village near the Forest of Drouy--the one wooded
oasis in the treeless plain--our _café-au-lait_ was for the first time
served in the basins to whose size our eyes and appetites were quickly
to be accustomed. In a second, where there was an old grey church with
grinning gargoyles, a pedler’s cart, big bell hanging in front, tempting
wares displayed, blocked the way.----
[Illustration]
“It is a _bon marché_ you have here,” said J----
[Illustration]
to the pedler, with a politeness that would not have disgraced a
Frenchman.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
--In Breteuil, a good-sized town with fair share of _pavé_, we met
another funeral party--gentlemen in long black frock-coats and
antiquated silk hats. They had come down from Paris to bury a most
virtuous lady, we learned from the proprietor of the _café_. They were
vastly taken with the tricycle, however, testing its saddles while we
drank our syrup and water.
[Illustration]
It was a beautiful ride we should now have to St. Just, the proprietor
foretold. It would be level all the way.--“What! no hills?” we asked.
None, he declared, that deserved the name.--It is needless to add that
we at once came to three or four up which we pushed the machine, because
of their steepness. But much could we forgive him. He it was who
counselled us to spend the night at the Cheval Blanc in St. Just, where
we had a plenteous brave dinner and the greatest civility that ever we
had from any man, as Pepys would say. Besides, the latter part of the
ride was lovelier than his foretelling. The wind abated, and work was so
easy we could look out over the fields to the distant villages, their
church spires white in the sunlight or turned to grey, even as we
watched, by a passing cloud. It is for just such happy intervals the
cycler braves wild winds and high hills. The day, it is true, was from
beginning to end uneventful. But we had not looked or hoped for
adventures.--Of his journey between Amiens and Paris our Master says not
a word. Mr. Tristram Shandy recalls his but to regret that he was then
prevented, by troublesome postillions, from gratifying his kindly
propensity to sleep. Therefore we felt, that to-day at least, we had no
sentimental shortcomings with which to reproach ourselves.
[Illustration]
The sun had set, and Gipsies by the roadside were preparing their
evening meal when we came to the _pavé_ of St. Just.
[Illustration]
THE COMMERCIAL GENTLEMEN OF ST. JUST.
At the Cheval Blanc the landlady gave us a room over the stable on the
farther side of a large court-yard.
[Illustration]
From the window we looked down into the court on chickens and ducks, and
on a woman watering a small vegetable garden, and the poultry and
vegetables reminded us that we had not dined. So we went to the _café_
of the hotel, where _Madame_ stayed our hunger with the overgrown lady
fingers that are served with dessert at every well-regulated _table
d’hôte_, and where a small man in a frock-coat and Derby hat, with a
very loud voice, exchanged political opinions with a large man in a blue
blouse with no voice to speak of; while a third, in white blouse and
overalls, stood and listened in neutral silence.
The discussion was at its liveliest when the dinner-bell rang, and we
hurried off in such indecent haste that we were the first to arrive in
the dining-room. We knew as soon as we saw the pots of mignonette and
geranium and the well-trimmed, well-shaded lamps on the table, that
whoever had placed them there must have prepared dishes worthy to be
served by their sweet scent and soft light, and we were not
disappointed.--I have seldom eaten a better dinner. We were ten
altogether at table. Seven men were guests like ourselves. One was an
unwearying sportsman of France. The six others we soon discovered to be
commercial gentlemen, though what so many travellers could find to do in
one such small place was a mystery we do not pretend to solve. _Madame_,
the landlady, was the tenth in the company. She presided in person, not
at the head, but at the centre of one side of the table. We sat directly
opposite, encompassed about with drummers and touters.----
“_Monsieur_ and _Madame_ arrived from Amiens on a velocipede,” said the
landlady, opening the conversation and the soup-tureen at the same
moment.
--The sportsman started to speak, hesitated, coughed, and fell to
feeding his dogs with bread. The commercial gentlemen wanted to know at
what hotel we stopped in Amiens.
At this moment a diversion was made by the entrance of a stout man with
the smile of a clown and the short forked beard of a Mephistopheles, who
took his place on _Madame’s_ right.----
“_Mon Dieu, Madame_,” said he, as a plate of soup was put in front of
him and the tureen carried away, “I came next to you because I love you;
and you would starve me? You would give me no more soup!”
“But you are greedy,” said _Madame_.
--The soup, however, was left on a side table.----
“I have been starved already to-day,” he went on, before we had time to
answer the question put to us. “I slept last night at a _grand hôtel_.
It was so _grand_ that this morning for breakfast they could give me but
cutlets of mutton and cutlets of pork and ham--and ham, one knows it
well, it counts for nothing. Is this not true, _Madame_?”
--He had had a wide and remarkable experience of hotels. He knew one.
_Ma foi!_ they swept it every day. But he knew another. _Dame!_ there
the floors were waxed and rubbed daily, so that if a beefsteak were to
fall on them it would be as clean as if it fell upon a plate. For his
part, however, he thought no hotel would be perfect until it made a law
to give each guest a partridge and half a bottle of wine with his
candle, in case of hunger during the night.
A little man with a light moustache, on _Madame’s_ left, as he amiably
filled her glass with wine and seltzer, recalled a certain town where
the hotels were closed at ten. He arrived at midnight; every door was
shut. What did he do? He could not sleep in the street. He went to the
_Mairie_.
The man next to J---- had heard of a hotel where if you stayed out after
ten they would not permit you to enter even if they had your baggage.
The proprietor would come to a window above when you knocked, and throw
your trunks down rather than open the door. He then made no charge.----
“_Ma foi!_” thought Mephistopheles, who could no more have begun a
sentence without an ejaculation than he could have eaten his dinner
without wine, “he would take the _pavé_ and throw it at the head of such
a proprietor.”
--Then they turned to hear our experience. They appealed to J----.
“_O, nous_,” he began bravely, “_nous avons été en France pour deux
jours seulement_”--then suddenly to me, “Oh, bother, you tell the fellow
what he wants, and ask them if they know any decent hotels on the
route,” and he took out our route-form.
--I explained our intention to ride through France into Italy, and asked
if they would have the goodness to recommend hotels by the way.
We could not have paid them a greater compliment. The next minute the
route-form was passed from one to the other, and by the name of each
town was written the name of a commercial hotel which meant a good
dinner and a moderate bill. But not one of the houses in the _C. T. C.
Handbook_ was on the list.--Mr. Howells, in his _Italian Journeys_,
declares it to be the evident intention of a French drummer, “not only
to keep all his own advantages, but to steal some of yours upon the
first occasion.” I wish he could have seen these men at St. Just, as
each helped his neighbour to wine before filling his own glass. A
commercial gentleman apparently would not think of not sharing his
bottle with some one, or of not calling for another when his first was
empty, in obedience to the sign seen in so many hotels, “_Vin à
discrétion_.” It must be admitted that this is only what an Englishman
would call “good form” in commercial circles, since one bottle always
stands between two covers. But then, when did “good form” ever serve
such practical ends in England?
We saw nothing of the French travellers’ ill-breeding of which Mr.
Howells so bitterly complains. If they talked, well, is it not their
business to talk? Besides, they never once referred to trade or praised
their wares. I know men of far higher professions who cannot boast of a
like discretion. Indeed, is it not a common thing for great men to give
dinners for the express purpose of talking “shop”?--It is true
Mephistopheles, when he wanted to call _Madame’s_ attention, beat on the
table with his knife-handle and shouted in a voice of thunder----
“_Madame! Madame Emilie! Emilie! Bon Dieu!_ gentlemen, she will not
listen!”
--But if she took this in perfect good nature it was not for us to
object. That she did not find fault was clear. While we were eating
mutton I noticed he was served with a special dish of birds.
The excellence of the dinner and the good-humour of the company came to
a climax with the course of beans. Mephistopheles asserted
enthusiastically that had they not been invented already he would have
invented them himself. _Monsieur_ on _Madame’s_ left wondered who
brought them into France. Somebody suggested the Bishop of Soissons. As
they all laughed this must have been a joke, but we could not understand
it; and though I have since spent hours over it in the British Museum, I
still fail to see the point.--The traveller next to J---- said nothing,
but was twice helped to the favourite dish.
Afterwards in the _café_ _Madame_ introduced us to an Englishman who had
lived thirty years in St. Just, and who was always glad to see his
countrymen. We explained we were Americans, but he assured us it was an
equal pleasure--he always liked to speak the English.--Whatever else St.
Just had done for him, it had made him forget his mother tongue.--He was
much pleased with our tandem, which he had examined while we were at
dinner. He rode a bicycle, and was therefore competent to judge its
merits. He also thought ours a fine journey when we showed him our route
on the map.
In the meantime, the commercial gentlemen had settled down to coffee and
the papers, and the evening promised to be peaceful. But presently the
little man with the light moustache, who had sat on _Madame’s_ left,
put his paper down to comment on the advantages of naturalisation, on
which subject he had just been reading an editorial. It was a great
thing for the country, he thought, that the children of foreigners
should be permitted to become Frenchmen.
But Mephistopheles was down upon him in an instant. He would not hear of
naturalisation.----
“_Mon Dieu!_ I am a Frenchman. I go to America or Austria. A son is born
to me there. Is he an American or an Austrian? No, _Monsieur_, he is a
Frenchman!” and he glared defiance.
--But the little man reasoned that, on the other hand, France was too
hospitable not to take in strangers.
Mephistopheles swore it was not logical, and, what was more, it was
against _la morale_, and _la morale_ was _prime_. This was his clinching
argument.