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THE AUTOMOBILIST ABROAD
by
FRANCIS MILTOUN
Author of "Rambles in Normandy," "Rambles in Brittany," "Rambles on
the Riviera," "The Cathedrals of Northern France," "The Cathedrals
of Southern France," "The Cathedrals and Churches of the Rhine," etc.
_With many illustrations from photographs, decorations, maps
and plans_
by Blanche McManus
L.C. Page & Company
Boston MDCCCCVII
Preface
_The general plan of this book is not original. It tells of some
experiences not altogether new, and contains observations and facts
that have been noted by other writers; but the author hopes that,
from the viewpoint of an automobilist at least, its novelty will
serve as a recommendation. As a pastime automobile touring is still
new and is not yet accomplished without some considerable annoyance
and friction. The conventional guides are of little assistance; and
the more descriptive works on travel fail too often to note the
continually changing conditions which affect the tourist alike by
road and rail._
[Illustration: Hotel Bellevue les Andelys]
Contents
Part 1 General Information--The Grand Tour
Chapter 1 An Appreciation Of The Automobile
Chapter 2 Travel Talk
Chapter 3 Roads And Routes
Chapter 4 Hotels And Things
Chapter 5 The Grand Tour
Part 2 Touring In France
Chapter 1 Down Through Tourane: Paris To Bourdeaux
Chapter 2 A Little Tour In The Pyrenees
Chapter 3 In Languedoc And Old Provence
Chapter 4 By Rhône And Saône
Chapter 5 By Seine And Oise--A Cruise In A Canot-Automobile
Chapter 6 The Road To The North
Part 3 On Britain's Roads
Chapter 1 The Bath Road
Chapter 2 The South Coast
Chapter 3 Land's End To John O'Groats
Part 4 In Belgium, Holland, And Germany
Chapter 1 On The Road To Flanders
Chapter 2 By Dykes And Windmills
Chapter 3 On The Road By The Rhine
Appendices
Index
Part I
General Information--The Grand Tour
Chapter I
An Appreciation of the Automobile
[Illustration: An Appreciation of the Automobile]
We have progressed appreciably beyond the days of the old horseless
carriage, which, it will be remembered, retained even the dashboard.
To-day the modern automobile somewhat resembles, in its outlines,
across between a decapod locomotive and a steam fire-engine, or at
least something concerning the artistic appearance of which the
layman has very grave doubts.
The control of a restive horse, a cranky boat, or even a trolley-car
on rails is difficult enough for the inexperienced, and there are
many who would quail before making the attempt; but to the novice in
charge of an automobile, some serious damage is likely enough to
occur within an incredibly short space of time, particularly if he
does not take into account the tremendous force and power which he
controls merely by the moving of a tiny lever, or by the depressing
of a pedal.
Any one interested in automobiles should know something of the
literature of the subject, which, during the last decade, has already
become formidable.
In English the literature of the automobile begins with Mr. Worby
Beaumont's Cantor Lectures (1895), and the pamphlet by Mr. R. Jenkins
on "Power Locomotion on the Highways," published in 1896.
In the library of the Patent Office in London the literature of motor
road vehicles already fills many shelves. The catalogue is
interesting as showing the early hopes that inventors had in
connection with steam as a motive power for light road vehicles, and
will be of value to all who are interested in the history of the
movement or the progress made in motor-car design.
In France the Bibliothèque of the Touring Club de France contains a
hundred entries under the caption "Automobiles," besides complete
files of eleven leading journals devoted to that industry. With these
two sources of information at hand, and aided by the records of the
Automobile Club de France and the Automobile Club of Great Britain
and Ireland, the present-day historian of the automobile will find
the subject well within his grasp.
There are those who doubt the utility of the automobile, as there
have been scoffers at most new things under the sun; and there have
been critics who have derided it for its "seven deadly sins," as
there have been others who have praised its "Christian graces." The
parodist who wrote the following newspaper quatrain was no enemy of
the automobile in spite of his cynicism.
"A look of anguish underneath the car,
Another start; a squeak, a grunt, a jar!
The Aspiration pipe is working loose!
The vapour can't get out! And there you are!"
"Strange is it not, that of the myriads who
Have Empty Tanks and know not what to do,
Not one will tell of it when he Returns.
As for Ourselves, why, we deny it, too."
The one perfectly happy man in an automobile is he who drives,
steers, or "runs the thing," even though he be merely the hired
chauffeur. For proof of this one has only to note how readily
others volunteer to "spell him a bit," as the saying goes.
Change of scene and the exhilaration of a swift rush through space
are all very well for friends in the _tonneau_, but for real
"pleasure" one must be the driver. Not even the manifold
responsibilities of the post will mar one's enjoyment, and there is
always a supreme satisfaction in keeping one's engine running
smoothly.
"Nothing to watch but the road," is the general motto for the
automobile manufacturer, but the enthusiastic automobilist goes
farther, and, for his motto, takes "stick to your post," and, in case
of danger, as one has put it, "pull everything you see, and put your
foot on everything else."
The vocabulary of the automobile has produced an entirely new
"jargon," which is Greek to the multitude, but, oh, so expressive and
full of meaning to the initiated.
An automobile is masculine, or feminine, as one likes to think of it,
for it has many of the vagaries of both sexes. The French Academy has
finally come to the fore and declared the word to be masculine, and
so, taking our clue once more from the French (as we have in most
things in the automobile world), we must call it _him_, and speak of
it as _he_, instead of _her_, or _she_.
That other much overworked word in automobilism, _chauffeur_, should
be placed once for all. The driver of an automobile is not really a
_chauffeur_, neither is he who minds and cares for the engine; he is
a _mécanicien_ and nothing else--in France and elsewhere. We needed a
word for the individual who busies himself with, or drives an
automobile, and so we have adapted the word _chauffeur_. Purists may
cavil, but nevertheless the word is better than _driver_, or
_motor_-_man_ (which is the quintessence of snobbery), or
_conductor_.
The word, _chauffeur_, the Paris _Figaro_ tells us, was known long
before the advent of automobiles or locomotives. History tells that
about the year 1795, men strangely accoutred, their faces covered
with soot and their eyes carefully disguised, entered, by night,
farms and lonely habitations and committed all sorts of depredations.
They garroted their victims, or dragged them before a great fire
where they burned the soles of their feet, and demanded information
as to the whereabouts of their money and jewels. Hence they were
called _chauffeurs_, a name which frightened our grandfathers as much
as the scorching _chauffeur_ to-day frightens our grandchildren.
A motor-car is a fearsome thing,--when it goes, it goes; and when it
doesn't, something, or many things, are wrong. A few years ago this
uncertainty was to be expected, for, though the makers will not
whisper it in Gath, we are only just getting out of the bone-shaker
age of automobiles.
Every one remembers what a weirdly ungraceful thing was the first
safety bicycle, and so was the gaudy painted-up early locomotive--and
they are so yet on certain English lines where their early Victorian
engines are like Kipling's ocean tramp, merely "puttied up with
paint." So with the early automobiles, they jarred and jerked and
stopped--that is, under all but exceptional conditions. Occasionally
they did wonderful things,--they always did, in fact, when one took
the word of their owners; but now they really do acquit themselves
with credit, and so the public, little by little, is beginning to
believe in them, even though the millennium has not arrived when
every home possesses its own runabout.
All this proves that we are "getting there" by degrees, and meantime
everybody that has to do with motor-cars has learned a great deal,
generally at somebody else's expense.
To-day every one "motes," or wants to, and likewise a knowledge of
many things mechanical, which had heretofore been between closed
covers, is in the daily litany of many who had previously never known
a clutch from a cam-shaft, or a sparking plug from a fly-wheel.
Most motor enthusiasts read all the important journals devoted to the
game. The old-stager reads them for their hints and suggestions,--
though these are bewildering in their multiplicity and their
contradictions,--and the ladies of the household look at them for the
sake of their pretty pictures of scenery and ladies and veils and
furry garments pertaining to the sport.
Catalogues are another bane of the motorist's life. He may have just
become possessed of the latest thing in a Mercédès (and paid an
enhanced price for an early delivery), yet upon seeing some new make
of car advertised, he will immediately send for a catalogue and
prospectus, and make the most absurd inquiries as to what said car
will or will not do.
[Illustration: Types of Cars]
Since the pleasures of motoring have found their champions in
Kipling, Maeterlinck, and the late W. E. Henley, the delectable
amusement has, besides entering the daily life of most of us,
generously permeated literature--real literature as distinct from
recent popular fiction; "The Lighting Conductor" and "The Princess
Passes," by Mrs. Williamson, and more lately, "The Motor Pirate," by
Mr. Paternoster. "A Motor Car Divorce" is the suggestive title of
another work,--presumably fiction,--and one knows not where it may
end, since "The Happy Motorist," a series of essays, is already
announced.
A Drury Lane melodrama of a season or two ago gave us a "_thrillin'
hair-bre'dth 'scape_," wherein an automobile plunged precipitately--
with an all too-true realism, the first night--down a lath and canvas
ravine, finally saving the heroine from the double-dyed villain who
followed so closely in her wake.
The last entry into other spheres was during the autumn just past,
when Paris's luxurious opera-house was given over to the fantastic
revels of the ballet in an attempt to typify the _apotheosis of the
automobile_. This was rather a rash venture in prognostication, for
it may be easy enough to "apotheosize" the horse, but to what idyllic
heights the automobile is destined to ultimately reach no one really
knows.
The average scoffer at things automobilistic is not very sincerely a
scoffer at heart. It is mostly a case of "sour grapes," and he only
waits the propitious combination of circumstances which shall permit
him to become a possessor of a motor-car himself. This is not a very
difficult procedure. It simply means that he must give up some other
fad or fancy and take up with this last, which, be it here
reiterated, is no _fad_.
The great point in favour of the automobile is its sociability. Once
one was content to potter about with a solitary companion in a buggy,
with a comfortable old horse who knew his route well by reason of
many journeys. To-day the automobile has driven thoughts of solitude
to the winds. Two in the tonneau, and another on the seat beside you
in front--a well-assorted couple of couples--and one may make the
most ideal trips imaginable.
Every one looks straight ahead, there is no uncomfortable twisting
and turning as there is on a boat or a railway train, and each can
talk to the others, or all can talk at once, which is more often the
case. It is most enjoyable, plenty to see, exhilarating motion, jolly
company, absolute independence, and a wide radius of action. What
mode of travel can combine all these joys unless it be ballooning--of
which the writer confesses he knows nothing?
On the road one must ever have a regard for what may happen, and
roadside repairs, however necessary, are seldom more than makeshifts
which enable one to arrive at his destination.
If you break the bolt which fastens your cardan-shaft or a link of
your side-chains, you and your friends will have a chance to harden
your muscles a bit pushing the machine to the next village, unless
you choose to wait, on perhaps a lonely road, for a passing cart
whose driver willing, for a price, to detach his tired horse to haul
your dead weight of a ton and a half over a few miles of hill and
dale. This is readily enough accomplished in France, where the
peasant looks upon the procedure as a sort of allied industry to
farming, but in parts of England, in Holland, and frequently in
Italy, where the little mountain donkey is the chief means of
transportation, it is more difficult.
The question of road speed proves nothing with regard to the worth of
an individual automobile, except that the times do move, and we are
learning daily more and more of the facility of getting about with a
motor-car. A locomotive, or a marine engine, moves regularly without
a stop for far greater periods of time than does an automobile, but
each and every time they finish a run they receive such an
overhauling as seldom comes to an automobile.
In England the automobilist has had to suffer a great deal at the
hands of ignorant and intolerant road builders and guardians. Police
traps, on straight level stretches miles from any collection of
dwellings, will not keep down speed so long as dangerous cobblestoned
alleys, winding through suburban London towns, have no guardian to
regulate the traffic or give the stranger a hint that he had best go
slowly.
The milk and butchers' carts go on with their deadly work, but the
police in England are too busy worrying the motorist to pay any
attention.
Some county boroughs have applied a ten-mile speed limit, even though
the great bulk of their area is open country; but twenty miles an
hour for an automobile is far safer for the public than is most other
traffic, regardless of the rate at which it moves.
[Illustration: "Speed" painting, Louis de Schryver]
Speed, so far as the bystander is concerned, is a very difficult
thing to judge, and the automobilist seldom, if ever, gets fair
treatment if he meets with the slightest accident.
Most people judge the speed of an automobile by the noise that it
makes. This, up to within a few years, put most automobiles going at
a slow speed at a great disadvantage, for the slower they went the
noisier they were; but matters of design and control have changed
this somewhat, and the public now protests because "a great
death-dealing monster crept up silently behind--coming at a terrific
rate." You cannot please every one, and you cannot educate a
non-participating public all at once.
As for speed on the road, it is a variable thing, and a thing
difficult to estimate correctly. Electric cars run at a speed of from
ten to twenty-two miles an hour in England, even in the towns, and no
one says them nay. Hansoms, on the Thames Embankment in London, do
their regular fifteen miles an hour, but automobiles are still held
down to ten.
The official timekeeper of the Automobile Club of Great Britain and
Ireland took the following times (in 1905) in Piccadilly, one of the
busiest, if not the most congested thoroughfare in London.
Holloway horse-drawn bus 11.3 miles per hour
Cyclist 15.85 " " "
Private trap 13.08 " " "
Private buggy 13.55 " " "
Private brougham 14.80 " " "
When one considers how difficult to control, particularly amid
crowded traffic, a horse-drawn vehicle is, and how very easy it is to
control an up-to-date automobile, one cannot but feel that a little
more consideration should be shown the automobilist by those in
authority.
The road obstructions, slow-going traffic which will not get out of
one's way, carts left unattended and the like, make most of the real
and fancied dangers which are laid to the door of the very mobile
motor-car.
[Illustration: London and Paris traffic]
In Holland and Belgium dogs seem to be the chief road obstructions,
or at least dangers, not always willingly perhaps, but still
ever-present. In England it is mostly children.
In France not all the difficulties one meets with _en route_ are
willful obstructors of one's progress. In La Beauce the geese and
ducks are prudent, in the Nivernais the oxen are placid, and in
Provence the donkeys are philosophical; but in Brittany the horses
and mules and their drivers take fright immediately they suspect the
coming of an automobile, and in the Vendée the market-wagons, and
those laden with the product of the vine, career madly at the
extremities of exceedingly lusty examples of horse flesh to the
pending disaster of every one who does not get out of the road.
Sheep and hens are everywhere that they ought not to be, and there
seems no way of escaping them. One can but use all his ingenuity and
slip through somehow. Dogs are bad enough and ought to be
exterminated. They are the silliest beasts which one finds
uncontrolled on the roadways. Children, of course, one defers to, but
they are outrageously careless and very foolish at times, and in
short are the greatest responsibility for the driver in the small
towns of England and France. In France some effort is being made in
the schools to teach them something about a proper regard for
automobile traffic, and with good results; but no one has heard of
anything of the sort being attempted in England.
Chapter II
Travel Talk
[Illustration: Travel Talk]
Touring abroad is nothing new, but, as an amusement for the masses,
it has reached gigantic proportions. The introduction of the railroad
gave it its greatest impetus, and then came the bicycle and the
automobile.
With the railway as the sole means of getting about one was more or
less confined to the beaten track of travel in Continental Europe,
but the automobile has changed all this.
To-day, the Cote d'Azur, from St. Raphael to Menton, as well as the
strip of Norman coast-line around Trouville, in summer, is scarcely
more than a boulevard where the automobile tourist strolls for an
hour as he does in the Bois. The country lying back and between these
two widely separated points is becoming known, and even modern taste
prefers the idyllic countryside to a round of the same dizzy
conventions that one gets in season at Paris, London, or New York.
France is the land _par excellence_ for automobile touring, not only
from its splendid roads, but from the wide diversity of its sights
and scenes, and manners and customs, and, last but not least, its
most excellent hotels strung along its highways and byways like
pearls in a collarette.
This is not saying that travel by automobile is not delightful
elsewhere; certainly it is equally so in many places along the Rhine,
in Northern Italy, and in England, where the chief drawback is the
really incompetent catering of the English country hotel-keeper to
the demands of the traveller who would dine off of something more
attractive than a cut from a cold joint of ham, and eggs washed down
with stodgy, bitter beer.
The bibliography of travel books is long, and includes many famous
names in literature. Marco Polo, Froissart, Mme. de Sévigné, Taine,
Bayard Taylor, Willis, Stevenson, and Sterne, all had opportunities
for observation and made the most of them. If they had lived in the
days of the automobile they might have sung a song of speed which
would have been the most melodious chord in the whole gamut.
A modern writer must be more modest, however. He can hardly hope to
attract attention to himself or his work by describing the usual
sights and scenes. The most he can do is to set down his method of
travel, his approach, and his departure, and, for example, to tell
those who may come after that the great double spires of Notre Dame
de Chartres are a beacon by land for nearly twenty kilometers in any
direction, as he approaches them by road across the great plain of La
Beauce, the granary of France, rather than give a repetition of the
well-worn guidebook facts concerning them.
[Illustration: Ideal Car]
Chartres is taken as an example because it is one of those "stock"
sights, before mentioned, which any itinerary coming within the scope
of the _grand tour_ is bound to include.
Almost the same phenomenon is true of Antwerp's lacelike spire, the
great Gothic wonder of Cologne and, to a lesser extent, that of
Canterbury in England; thus the automobilist _en route_ has his
beacons and landmarks as has the sailor on the seas.
Man is an animal essentially mobile. He moves readily from place to
place and is not tied down by anything but ways and means and,
perhaps, confinement at laborious affairs. Even in the latter case he
occasionally breaks away for a more or less extended period, and
either goes fishing in Canada, shooting in Scotland, or automobiling
in France, with perhaps a rush over a Swiss pass or two, and a dash
around the Italian lakes, and back down the Rhine for a little tour
in Great Britain.
This is as delightful a holiday as one could imagine, and the foreign
tour--which has often been made merely as a succession of nights of
travel in stuffy sleeping-cars or a round of overfeeding orgies at
Parisian hotels and restaurants--has added charms of which the
generation before the advent of automobiles knew nought.
The question of comfortable travel is a never-ending one. The
palanquin, the sedan-chair, the rickshaw, even the humble horse-drawn
buggy have had their devotees, but the modern touring automobile has
left them all far behind, whether for long-distance travel or
promenades at Fontainebleau, in the New Forest or the Ardennes.
There is no question but that, when touring in an automobile, one has
an affection for his steel-and-iron horse that he never felt for any
other conveyance. The horse had some endearing qualities, no doubt,
and we were bound to regard his every want; but he was only a part of
the show, whereas the automobile, although it is nought but an
inanimate combination of wheels and things, has to be humoured and
talked to, and even cursed at times, in order to keep it going. But
it works faithfully nevertheless, and never balks, at least not with
the same crankiness as the horse, and always runs better toward night
(this is curious, but it is a fact), which a horse seldom does. All
the same an automobile is like David Balfour's Scotch advocate: hard
at times to ken rightly--most of the time, one may say without undue
exaggeration. Often an automobile is as fickle as a stage fairy, or
appears to be, but it may be that only your own blind stupidity
accounts for the lack of efficiency. Once in awhile an automobile
gets uproariously full of spirits and runs away with itself, and
almost runs away with you, too, simply for the reason that the
carburetion is good and everything is pulling well. Again it is as
silent and immovable as a sphinx and gives no hint of its present or
expected ailments. It is most curious, but an automobile invents some
new real or fancied complaint with each fresh internal upheaval, and
requires, in each and every instance, an entirely new and original
diagnosis.
With all its caprices, however, the automobile is the most efficient
and satisfactory contrivance for getting about from place to place,
for business or pleasure, that was ever devised.
Comparatively speaking, the railway is not to be thought of for a
moment. It has all the disadvantages of the automobile (for indeed
there are a few, such as dust and more or less cramped quarters, and,
if one chooses, a nerve-racking speed) and none of its advantages,
and, whether you are a mere man or a millionaire, you are tied down
to rails and a strict itinerary, whereas you may turn the bonnet of
your automobile down any by-road that pleases your fancy, and arrive
ultimately at your destination, having made an enjoyable detour which
would not otherwise have been possible.
Too great a speed undoubtedly detracts from the joy of travel, but a
hundred and fifty, two hundred and fifty, or three hundred kilometres
a day on the fine roads of France, or a hundred or a hundred and
fifty miles on the leafy lanes of England's southern counties will
give the stranger more varied impressions and a clearer understanding
of men and matters than the touring of a country from end to end in
express-trains which serve your meals _en route_, and whisk you from
London to Torquay between tea and dinner, or from Paris to the Cote
d'Azur between breakfast and nightfall.
Just how much pleasure and edification one can absorb during an
automobile tour depends largely upon the individual--and the mood.
Once the craving for speed is felt, not all the historic monuments in
the world would induce one to stop a sweetly running motor; but again
the other mood comes on, and one lingers a full day among the charms
of the lower Seine from Caudebec to Rouen, scarce thirty miles.
Les Andelys-sur-Seine, your guide-book tells you, is noted for its
magnificent ruins of Richard Coeur de Lion's Château Gaillard, and
for the culture of the sugar-beet, and so, often, merely on account
of the banal mention of beet-roots, you ignore the attractions of
Richard's castle and make the best time you can Parisward by the
great Route Nationale on the other side of the Seine. This is wrong,
of course, but the mood was on, and the song of speed was ringing in
your ears and nothing would drive it out.
Our fathers and grandfathers made the grand tour, in a twelvemonth,
as a sort of topping-off to their early education, before they
settled down to a business or professional life.
They checked off in their guide-books Melrose Abbey, the Tower of
London, the Cathedral of Canterbury, and those of Antwerp, Cologne,
Rome, Venice, and Paris, as they did the Cheshire Cheese, Mont Blanc,
and the ruins of Carnac. It was all a part of the general scheme of
travel, to cover a lot of ground and see all they could, for it was
likely that they would pass that way but once. Why, then, should one
blame the automobilist--who really travels very leisurely in that he
sees a lot of the countryside manners and customs off the beaten
track--if he rushes over an intermediate stretch of country in order
to arrive at one more to his liking?
One sees the thing every day on any of the great highroads in France
leading from the Channel ports. One's destination may be the
Pyrenees, the Cote d'Azur, Italy, or even Austria, and he does the
intermediate steps at full speed. The same is true if he goes to
Switzerland by the Rhine valley, or to Homburg by passing through
Belgium or Holland. He might be just as well pleased with a fortnight
in the Ardennes, or even in Holland or in Touraine, but, if his
destination is Monte Carlo or Biarritz, he is not likely to linger
longer by the way than the exigencies of food, drink, and lodging,
and the care of his automobile demand.
When he has no objective point he loiters by the way and no doubt
enjoys it the more, but it is not fair to put the automobilist down
as a scorcher simply because he is pushing on. The best guide-books
are caprice and fantasy, if you are hot pressed for time.
Mile-stones, or rather _bornes kilométriques_, line the roadways of
Continental military Europe mercilessly, and it's a bad sign when the
chauffeur begins to count them off. All the same, he knows his
destination a great deal better than does some plodding tourist by
rail who scorns him for rushing off again immediately after lunch.
One of the charms of travel, to the tried traveller, is, just as
in the time of the Abbé Prévost, the ability to exchange remarks
on one's itinerary with one's fellow travellers. In France it
does not matter much whether they are automobilists or not. The
_commis-voyageur_ is a more numerous class here, apparently, than in
any other country on the globe, and the detailed information which he
can give one about the towns and hotels and sights and scenes _en
route_, albeit he is more familiar with travel by rail than by road,
is marvellous in quantity and valuable as to quality.
The automobile tourist, who may be an Englishman or an American, has
hitherto been catered to with automobile novels, or love stories, or
whatever one chooses to call them, or with more or less scrappy,
incomplete, and badly edited accounts of tours made by some
millionaire possessor of a motor-car, or the means to hire one. Some
of the articles in the press, and an occasional book, have the merit
of having been "good stuff," but often they have gone wrong in the
making.
The writer of this book does not aspire to be classed with either of
the above classes of able writers; the most he would like to claim is
that he should be able to write a really good handbook on the
subject, wherein such topographical, historical, and economic
information as was presented should have the stamp of correctness.
Perhaps four years of pretty constant automobile touring in Europe
ought to count for something in the way of accumulated pertinent
information concerning hotels and highways and by-ways.
Not all automobilists are millionaires. The man of moderate means is
the real giver of impetus to the wheels of automobile progress. The
manufacturers of motor-cars have not wholly waked up to this fact as
yet, but the increasing number of tourists in small cars, both in
England and in France, points to the fact that something besides the
forty, sixty, or hundred horse-power monsters are being manufactured.
Efficiency and reliability is the great requisite of the touring
automobile, and, for that matter, should be of any other. Efficiency
and reliability cover ninety-nine per cent. of the requirements of
the automobilist. Chance will step in at the most inopportune moments
and upset all calculations, but, with due regard given to these two
great and fundamental principles, the rest does not much matter.
It is a curious fact that the great mass of town folk, in France and
probably elsewhere, still have a fear and dread of the mechanism of
the automobile. "_C'est beau la mécanique, mais c'est tout de même un
peu compliqué_," they say, as they regard your labours in posing a
new valve or tightening up a joint here and there.
The development of the automobile has brought about a whole new
development of kindred things, as did the development of the
battle-ship. First there was the battle-ship, then the cruiser, and
then the torpedo-boat, and then another class of boats, the
destroyers (destined to catch torpedo-boats), and finally the
submarine. With the automobile the evolution was much the same; first
it was a sort of horseless carriage, for town use, then something a
little more powerful that would climb hills, so that one might
journey afield, and then the "touring-car," and then the racing
machine, and now we have automobile omnibuses, and even automobile
ambulances to pick up any frightened persons possessed of less
agility than a kangaroo or a jack-rabbit might inadvertently have
been bowled over. These disasters are seldom the automobilist's
fault, and, happily, they are becoming fewer and fewer; but the
indecision that overcame the passer-by, in the early days of the
bicycle, still exists with many whenever an automobile comes in
sight, and they back, and fill, and worry the automobilist into such
a bad case of nerves that, in spite of himself, something of the
nature of an accident, for which he is in no way responsible, really
does happen.
Once the writer made eleven hundred kilometres straight across
France, from the Manche to the Mediterranean, and not so much as a
puncture occurred. On another occasion a little journey of half the
length resulted in the general smashing up, four times in succession,
of a little bolt (no great disaster in itself), within the interior
arrangements of the motor, which necessitated a half a day's work on
each occasion in taking down the cylinder and setting it up again,
and each time in a small town far away from any properly equipped
machine-shop, and with the assistance only of the local locksmith.
It's astonishing how good a job a locksmith in France can do, even on
an automobile, the mechanism of which he perhaps has never seen
before. Officially the locksmith in France is known as a _serrurier_,
but in the slang of the land he is the _cambrioleur du pays_, a name
which is expressive, but which means nothing wicked. He can put a
thread on a bolt or make a new nut to replace one that has
mysteriously unscrewed itself, which is more than many a mere bicycle
repairer can do.
The automobilist touring France should make friends with the nearest
_cambrioleur_ if he is in trouble. In England this is risky, a
"gas-pipe thread" being the average lay workman's idea of "fixing you
up."
Away back in Chaucer's day folk were "longen to gon on pilgrimages,"
and it does not matter in the least what the ways and means may be,
the motive is ever the same: a change of scene.
This book is no unbounded eulogy of the automobile, although its many
good qualities are recognized. There are other methods of travel
that, in their own ways, are certainly enjoyable, but none quite
equal the automobile for independence of action, convenience, and
efficiency. It is well for all motor-car users, however, to realize
that they are not the only road users, and to have a due regard for
others,--not only their rights, but their persons. This applies even
more forcibly, if possible, to the automobilist _en tour_.
One must in duty bound regulate his pace and his actions by the
vagaries of others, however little he may want to, or unfortunate
consequences will many times follow. Always he must have a sharp look
ahead and must not neglect a backward glance now and then. He must
not dash through muddy roads and splash passers-by (a particularly
heinous offence in England), and in France he must observe the rule
of the road (always to the right in passing,--no great difficulty for
an American, but very puzzling to an Englishman), or an accident may
result which will bring him into court, and perhaps into jail, unless
he can assuage the poor peasant's feelings for the damaged forelegs
of his horse or donkey by a cash payment on the spot.
Maeterlinck's "wonderful, unknown beast" is still unknown (and
feared) by the majority of outsiders, and the propaganda of education
must go on for a long time yet. Maeterlinck's great tribute to the
automobile is his regard for it as the conqueror of space. Never
before has the individual man been able to accomplish what the
soulless corporations have with railway trains. In steamboat or train
we are but a part and parcel of the freight carried, but in the
automobile we are stoker, driver, and passenger in one, and regard
every road-turning and landmark with a new wonder and appreciation.
We are the aristocrats of tourists, and we are bound therefore to
have a kindly regard for other road users or a revolution will spring
up, as it did in feudal times.
Take Maeterlinck's wise sayings for your guide, and be tolerant of
the rights of others. This will do automobilism more good than can be
measured, for it has come to stay, and perhaps even advance. The days
of the horse are numbered.
"In accord with the needs of our insatiable, exacting soul, which
craves at once for the small and the mighty, the quick and the slow;
here it is of us at last, it is ours, and offers at every turn
glimpses of beauty that, in former days, we could only enjoy when the
tedious journey was ended."
The "tour abroad" has ever been the lodestone which has drawn
countless thousands of home-loving English and Americans to
Continental Europe. Pleasure--mere pleasure--has accounted for many
of these pilgrims, but by far the largest proportion have been those
who seek education and edification combined.
One likes to be well cared for when he journeys, whether by road or
rail, and demands accordingly, if not all the comforts of home, at
least many things that the native knows or cares little of. A
Frenchman does not desire a sitting-room, a reading-room, or a fire
in his sleeping-room, and, according to his lights, he is quite
right. He finds all this at a café, and prefers to go there for it.
The steam-heated hotel, with running water everywhere, is a rarity in
France, as indeed it is in England.
Outside Paris the writer has found this combination but seldom in
France; at Lyons, Marseilles, Moulins in the Allier, and at
Chatellerault in Poitou only. Modernity is making its way in France,
but only in spots; its progress is steady, but as yet it has not
penetrated into many outlying districts. Modern _art nouveau_ ideas
in France, which are banal enough, but which are an improvement over
the Eastlake and horsehair horrors of the Victorian and
Louis-Philippe periods, are tending to eliminate old-fashioned ideas
for the benefit of the traveller who would rather eat his meals in a
bright, airy apartment than in stuffy, dark hole known in England as
a coffee-room.
In France, in particular, the contrast of the new and old that one
occasionally meets with is staggering. It is all very well in its
way, this blending of antiquity and modernity, and gives one
something of the thrill of romance, which most of us have in our
make-up to a greater or lesser extent; but, on the other hand,
romance gets some hard knocks when one finds a Roman sarcophagus used
as a watering-trough; or a chapel as an automobile garage, as he
often will in the Midi.
One thing the American, and the Britisher to a lesser extent, be he
automobilist or mere tourist, must fully realize, and that is that
the tourist business is a more highly developed industry in
Continental Europe than it is anywhere else. In Switzerland one may
well say that it is a national industry, and in some parts of France
(always omitting Paris, which is not France) it is practically the
same thing; Holland and Belgium are not far behind, and neither is
the Rhine country; so that the tourist in Europe finds that creature
comforts are always near at hand. The automobilist does not much care
whether they are near at hand or not. If he doesn't find the
accommodations he is looking for on the borders of Dartmoor, he can
keep on to Exmoor, and if Nevers won't suit his purpose for the night
he can get to Moulins in an hour.
A hotel that is full and overflowing is no more a fear or a
dread; the automobilist simply takes the road again and drops
in on some market-town twenty, thirty, or fifty miles away and
finds accommodations that are equally satisfactory, with the
possibility--if he looks in at some little visited spot like Meung
or Beaugency in Touraine, Ecloo in Holland, or Reichenberg on the
Rhine--that he will be more pleased with his surroundings than he
would be in the large towns which are marked in heavy-faced type in
the railway guides, and whose hotels are starred by Baedeker.
In most countries the passport is no longer a necessary document in
the traveller's pocketbook, though the Britisher still fondly arms
himself with this "protection," and the American will, if it occurs
to him, be only too glad to contribute his dollars to the fees of his
consulate or embassy in order to possess himself of a gaudy thing in
parchment and gold which he can wave in front of any one whom he
thinks transgresses his rights as an American citizen: "from the land
of liberty, and don't you forget it."
This is all very well and is no doubt the very essence of a proper
patriotism, but the best _pièce d'identité_ for the foreigner who
takes up his residence in France for more than three months is a
simple document which can be obtained from the commissaire de police.
It will pass him anywhere in France that a passport will, is more
readily understood and accepted by the banker or post-office clerk as
a personal identification, and will save the automobile _chauffeur_
many an annoyance, if he has erred through lack of familiarity with
many little unwritten laws of the land.
The automobilist _en tour_ always has the identification papers of
his automobile; in England his "License," and in France his
"Certificat de Capacité" and "Récépisse de Déclaration," which will
accomplish pretty much all the passport of other days would do if one
flourished it to-day before a stubborn octroi official or the
caretaker of a historical monument.
The membership card of the Italian, Swiss, or French touring clubs
will do much the same thing, and no one should be without them, since
membership in either one or all is not difficult or costly. (See
Appendix.)
France is the land _par excellence_ for the tourist, whether by road
or rail. The art of "_le tourisme_" has been perfected by the French
to even a higher degree than in Switzerland. There are numerous
societies, clubs, and associations, from the all-powerful Touring
Club de France downward, which are attracting not only the French
themselves to many hitherto little-known corners of "_la belle
France_," but strangers from over the frontiers and beyond the seas.
These are not the tourists of the conventional kind, but those who
seek out the little-worn roads. It is possible to do this if one
travels intelligently by rail, but it is a great deal more
satisfactorily done if one goes by road.
Here and there, scattered all over France, in Dauphiné, in Savoie,
and in the Pyrenees, one finds powerful "Syndicats d'Initiative,"
which not only care for the tourist, but bring pressure to bear on
the hotel-keeper and local authorities to provide something in the
way of improvements, where they are needed, to make a roadway safe,
or to restore a historical site or monument.
In the Pyrenees, and in the Alps of Savoie and Dauphiné, one finds
everywhere the insignia of the "Club-Alpin Français," which caters
with information, etc., not only to the mountain-climber, but to the
automobilist and the general tourist as well.
More powerful and effective than all--more so even than the famous
Automobile Club de France--is the great Touring Club de France,
which, with the patronage of the President of the Republic, and the
influence of more than a hundred thousand members, is something more
than a mere touring club.
In the fourteen years of its existence not only has the Touring Club
de France helped the tourist find his way about, but also has taken a
leading part in the clearing away of the debris in many a moss-grown
ruin and making of it a historical monument as pleasing to view as
Jumièges on the Seine, or world-famed Les Baux in Provence.
It has appointed itself the special guardian of roads and roadways,
so far as the placing of signboards along the many important lines of
communication is concerned; it has been the means of having dug up
untold kilometres of Renaissance pavement; has made, almost at its
own expense, a magnificent forty-kilometre road known as the Corniche
de l'Esterel; and has given the backward innkeeper such a shock that
he has at last waked up to the needs of the twentieth-century
traveller. All this is something for a touring organization to have
accomplished, and when one can become a part and parcel of this great
organization, and a sharer in the special advantages which it has to
offer to its members for the absurdly small sum of five francs per
annum, the marvel is that it has not half a million members instead
of a hundred thousand.
Chapter III
Roads & Routes
[Illustration: Roads & Routes]
"Chacun suit dans ce monde une route incertaine,
Selon que son erreur le joue et le promene."--Boileau
The chief concern of the automobilist to-day, after his individual
automobile, is the road question, the "Good Roads Question," as it
has become generally known. In a new country, like America, it is to
be expected that great connecting highways should be mostly in the
making. It is to be regretted that the development should be so slow,
but things have been improving in the last decade, and perhaps
America will "beat the world" in this respect, as she has in many
others, before many future generations have been born.
In the excellence and maintenance of her roads France stands
emphatically at the head of all nations, but even here noticeable
improvement is going on. The terrific "Louis Quatorze pavé," which
one finds around Paris, is yearly growing less and less in quantity.
The worst road-bed in France is that awful stretch from Bordeaux, via
Bazas, to Pau in Navarre, originally due to the energy of Henri IV.,
and still in existence for a space of nearly a hundred kilometres.
One avoids it by a détour of some twenty odd kilometres, and the
writer humbly suggests that here is an important unaccomplished work
for the usually energetic road authorities of France.
After France the "good roads" of Britain come next, though in some
parts of the country they are woefully inadequate to accommodate the
fast-growing traffic by road, notably in London suburbs, while some
of the leafy lanes over which poets rhapsodize are so narrow that the
local laws prevent any automobile traffic whatever. As one
unfortunate individual expressed it, "since the local authorities
forbid automobiles on roadways under sixteen feet in width, I am
unable to get my motor-car within nine miles of my home!"
In England something has been done by late generations toward roads
improvement. The first awakening came in 1820, and in 1832 the
London-Oxford road had been so improved that the former time of the
stage-coaches had been reduced from eight to six hours. Macadam in
1830, and Stevenson in 1847, were the real fathers of the "Roads
Improvement Movement" in England. The great faults of English roads
are that they are narrow and winding, almost without exception. There
are 38,600 kilometres of highways (the figures are given on the
metric scale for better comparison with Continental facts and
figures) and 160,900 of by-roads. There are sixty-six kilometres of
roads to the square kilometre _(kilometre carré)_.
In Germany the roads system is very complex. In Baden, the
Palatinate, and the Grand Duchy of Hesse they cede nothing to the
best roads anywhere, but in the central and northern provinces they
are, generally speaking, much poorer. There are fifty-four kilometres
of roads of all grades to the kilometre _carré_.
In Belgium the roads are greatly inferior to those of France, and
there are immeasurable stretches of the vilest pavement the world has
known, not only near the large towns, but great interior stretches as
well. There are 17,500 kilometres of Chemins Vicinaux and 6,990
kilometres of Chemins de Grands Communications. They average, taken
together, eighty-three kilometres to the kilometre _carré_.
In Switzerland the roads are thoroughly good everywhere, but many,
particularly mountain-roads, are entirely closed to automobile
traffic, and the regulations in many of the towns are so onerous that
it is anything but agreeable to make one's way through them. There
are thirty-two kilometres to the kilometre _carré_. The Simplon Pass
has only recently (1906) been opened to automobile traffic. No
departure can be made from Brigue, on the Swiss side, or from Gondo,
in Italy, after three P.M. Speed _(vitesse)_ must not exceed ten
kilometres on the stretches, or two kilometres around the corners.
Fines for infringement of the law run from twenty to five hundred
francs.
Italy, with a surface area one-half that of France, has but a quarter
of the extent of the good roads. They are of variable quality, but
good on the main lines of travel. In the ancient kingdom of Sardinia
will be found the best, but they are poor and greatly neglected
around Naples, and, as might be expected, in Sicily.
In Austria the roads are very variable as to surface and maintenance,
and there are numerous culverts or _canivaux_ across them. There are
21,112 kilometres of national roads, 66,747 kilometres of provincial
roads, and 87,859 of local roads. They average fourteen kilometres to
the kilometre _carré_.
The history of the development of the modern roadway is too big a
subject to permit of its being treated here; suffice it to recall
that in England and France, and along the Rhine, the lines of the
twentieth-century main roads follow the Roman roads of classic times.
In France, Lyons, in the mid-Rhône valley, was a great centre for the
radiating roadways of Gaul. Strategically it was important then as it
is important now, and Roman soldiery of the past, as the automobilist
of to-day, had here four great thoroughfares leading from the city.
The first traversed the valleys of the Rhine and the Meuse; the
second passed by Autun, Troyes, Chalons, Reims, Soissons, Noyon, and
Amiens; the third branched in one direction toward Saintes, and in
another to Bordeaux; while the fourth dropped down the Rhône valley
direct to Marseilles.
More than thirty thousand kilometres of roadways were in use
throughout Gaul during the Roman occupation, of which the four great
routes _(viæ publicæ)_ formed perhaps four thousand.
Of the great highways of France, the _Grandes Routes Nationales_, of
which all travellers by road have the fondest and most vivid
memories, it is well to recall that they were furthered, if not
fathered, by none other than Napoleon, who, for all he laid waste,
set up institutions anew which more than compensated for the
destructions.
The great roadways of France, such as the Route de Bretagne, running
due west from the capital, and those leading to Spain, Switzerland,
Italy, and the Pays Bas, had their origin in the days of
Philippe-Auguste. His predecessors had let the magnificently traced
itineraries of the Romans languish and become covered with grass--if
not actually timber-grown.
The arrangement and classification laid down by Philippe-Auguste have
never been changed, simply modified and renamed; thus the _Routes
Royales_--such as followed nearly a straight line from Paris by the
right bank of the Loire to Amboise and to Nantes--became the _Routes
Nationales_ of to-day.
Soon wheeled traffic became a thing to be considered, and royal
cortèges moved about the land with much the same freedom and
stateliness of the state coaches which one sees to-day in pageants,
as relics of a past monarchical splendour.
Louis XI. created the "_Service des Postes_" in France, which made
new demands upon the now more numerous routes and roadways, and Louis
XII., François I., Henri II., and Charles IX., all made numerous
ordinances for the policing and maintenance of them.
Henri IV., and his minister Sully, built many more of these great
lines of communication, and thus gave the first real and tangible aid
to the commerce and agriculture of the kingdom. He was something of
an aesthetic soul too, this Henri of Bearn, for he was the originator
of the scheme to make the great roadways of France tree-shaded
boulevards, which in truth is what many of them are to-day. This
monarch of love, intrigues, religious reversion, and strange oaths
passed the first (and only, for the present is simply a continuance
thereof) _ordonnance_ making the planting of trees along the national
highroads compulsory on the local authorities.
Under Louis XIV., Colbert continued the good work and put up the
first mile-stone, or whatever its equivalent was in that day,
measuring from the Parvis de Notre Dame at Paris. Some of these Louis
XIV. _bornes_, or stones, still exist, though they have, of course,
been replaced throughout by kilometre stones.
The foregoing tells in brief of the natural development of the
magnificent roads of France. Their history does not differ greatly
from the development of the other great European lines of travel,
across Northern Italy to Switzerland, down the Rhine valley and,
branching into two forks, through Holland and through Belgium to the
North Sea.
[Illustration: On French Roads]
In England the main travel routes run north, east, south, and west
from London as a radiating centre, and each took, in the later
coaching days, such distinctive names as "The Portsmouth Road," "The
Dover Road," "The Bath Road," and "The Great North Road." Their
histories have been written in fascinating manner, so they are only
referred to here.
It is in France, one may almost say, that automobile touring begins
and ends, in that it is more practicable and enjoyable there; and so
_la belle France_ continually projects itself into one's horizon when
viewing the subject of automobilism.
It may be that there are persons living to-day who regret the passing
of the good old times when they travelled--most uncomfortably, be it
remarked--by stage-coach and suffered all the inclemencies of bad
weather _en route_ without a word of protest but a genial grumble,
which they sought to antidote by copious libations of anything liquid
and strong. The automobile has changed all this. The traveller by
automobile doesn't resort to alcoholic drinks to put, or keep, him in
a good humour, and, when he sees a lumbering van or family cart
making its way for many miles from one widely separated region to
another, he accelerates his own motive power and leaves the good old
ways of the good old days as far behind as he can, and recalls the
words of Sidney Smith:
"The good of other times let others state,
I think it lucky I was born so late."
A certain picturesqueness of travel may be wanting when comparing the
automobile with the whirling coach-and-four of other days, but there
is vastly more comfort for all concerned, and no one will regret the
march of progress when he considers that nothing but the means of
transportation has been changed. The delightful prospects of hill and
vale are still there, the long stretches of silent road and, in
France and Germany, great forest routes which are as wild and
unbroken, except for the magnificent surface of the roads, as they
were when mediæval travelers startled the deer and wild boar. You may
even do this to-day with an automobile in more than one forest tract
of France, and that not far from the great centres of population
either.
The invention of carriage-springs--the same which, with but little
variation, we use on the automobile--by the wife of an apothecary in
the Quartier de St. Antoine at Paris, in 1600, was the prime cause of
the increased popularity of travel by road in France.
In 1776, the routes of France were divided into four categories:
1. Those leading from Paris to the principal interior cities and
seaports.
2. Those communicating directly between the principal cities.
3. Those communicating directly between the cities and towns of one
province and those of another.
4. Those serving the smaller towns and bourgs.
Those in the first class were to be 13.35 metres in width, the second
11.90, the third 10, the fourth 7.90. The road makers and menders of
England and America could not get better models than these.
The advent of the automobile has brought a new factor into the matter
of road making and mending, but certainly he would be an ignorant
person indeed who would claim that the automobile does a tithe of the
road damage that is done by horse-drawn traffic.
At a high rate of speed, however, the automobile does raise a fine
sandy dust, and exposes the macadam. A French authority states that
up to twenty to twenty-five kilometres an hour the automobile does
little or no harm to the roads, but when they increase to over fifty
kilometres an hour they do damage the surface somewhat. Just what the
ultimate outcome of it will be remains to be seen, but France is
unlikely to do anything which will work against the interests of the
automobilist.
In consequence of this newer and faster mode of travelling, it is
being found that on some parts of the roads the convexity of the
surface is too great, and especially at curves, where fast motors
frequently skid on the rounded surface. To obviate this a piece of
road near the Croix d'Augas in the Orleannais has had the outer side
of the curve raised eight centimetres above the centre of the road,
in somewhat the same manner as on the curve of a railway. Since this
innovation has proved highly successful and pleasing to the devotees
of the new form of travel, it is likely to be further adopted.
In the early period of the construction of French roads the earth
formation was made horizontal, but Trésaguet, a French engineer,
introduced the rounded form, or camber, and this is the method now
almost generally adopted, both in France and England. Only some
14,000 kilometres of the national routes have a hand-set foundation,
the others being what are termed broken-stone roads--the stone used
is broken in pieces and laid on promiscuously, after the system
introduced by Macadam. Some of the second and third class, roads are
constructed of gravel, and others, of earth.
From the official report of 1893 it appears that the cost of
maintenance of roads in France was as follows:
COST OF LABOUR AND MATERIALS
Annual Total Annual Cost
Cost per Kilometre
(AV.)
Routes Nationales 22,570,300 fcs. 775 fcs.
Routes Départmentales 14,555,850 600
Chemins Communication 82,474,450 423
Chemins Vicinaux 44,211,125 200
The above is for materials and labour on the roadways only, and
something between 33 1/3 per cent, and 50 per cent. is added for the
maintenance of watercourses and sidewalks, the planting of trees, and
for general administrative expenses.
[Illustration: Kilometre Stones in France]
Excepting for twenty kilometres or so around Paris, the vehicular
traffic on the country roads of France does not seem to be in any way
excessive. The style of vehicles in France that carry into the cities
farm and garden produce, wood, stone, etc., are large wagons with
wheels six to seven feet in diameter. These wagons are more easily
hauled and naturally do less damage to the roads than narrow-tired,
low-wheeled trucks or drays. The horses in Paris, and in the country,
are nearly all plain shod, with no heels or toes to act like a pick
to break up the surface. Sometimes even one sees draught-horses with
great flat, iron shoes extending out beyond the hoof in all
directions.
The question of the speed of the automobile on the roads, in France
and England, as indeed everywhere else, has been the moot point in
all legislation that has been attempted.
The writer thinks the French custom the best. You may legally go at
thirty kilometres an hour, and no more. If you exceed this you do it
at your own risk. If an accident happens it _may_ go hard with you,
but if not, all is well, and you have the freedom of the road in all
that the term implies. In the towns you are often held down to ten,
eight, or even six kilometres an hour, but that is merely a local
regulation, for your benefit as much as for the safety of the public,
for many a French town has unthought-of possibilities of danger in
its crooked streets and unsafe crossings.
Good roads have much to do with the pleasure of automobilism, and
competent control and care of them will do much more. Where a picked
bit of roadway has been chosen for automobile trials astonishing
results have been obtained, as witness the Gordon-Bennett Cup records
of the last six years, where the average speed per hour consistently
increased from thirty-eight miles to nearly fifty-five, and this for
long distances (three hundred and fifty miles or more).
To meet the new traffic conditions the authorities must widen the
roads here and there, remove obstructions at corners, make encircling
boulevards through narrowly laid out towns, and erect warning signs,
like the following, a great deal more numerously than they have as
yet.
They have very good automobile laws in France in spite of their
anomalies. You agree to thirty-seven prescribed articles, and go
through sundry formalities and take to the road with your automobile.
In the name of the President of the Republic and the "_peuple
français,_" you are allowed thirty kilometres an hour in the open
country, and twenty in the towns. You can do anything you like beyond
this--at your own risk, and so long as no accident happens nothing
will be said, but you must pull up when you come to a small town
where M. le Maire, in the name of his forty-four electors, has
decreed that his village is dangerously laid out for fast
traffic,--and truth to tell it often is,--and accordingly you are
limited to a modest ten or even less. It is annoying, of course, but
if you are on a strange itinerary you had best go slow until you know
what trouble lies ahead.
In theory _la vitesse_ is national in France, but in practice it is
communal, and the barriers rise, in the way of staring warnings
posted at each village-end, like the barriers across the roads in the
times of Louis XI.
Except in Holland, where some "private roads" still exist, and in
certain parts of England, the toll-gate keeper has become almost an
historical curiosity. It is true, however, that in England one does
meet with annoying toll-bridges and gates, and in France one has
equally annoying _octroi_ barriers.
One recognizes the vested proprietary rights, many of which, in
England, are hereditary, of certain toll-gates and bridges, but it is
hard in these days, when franchises for the conduct of public
services are only granted for limited periods, that legislation, born
of popular clamour, should not confiscate, or, better, purchase at a
fair valuation, these "rights," and make all roads and bridges free
to all.
In France there are no toll-gates or bridges, or at least not many
(the writer recalls but one, a bridge at La Roche-Guyou on the Seine,
just above Vernon), but there are various state ferries across the
Seine, the Rhône, the Saône, and the Loire, where a small charge is
made for crossing. These are particularly useful on the lower Seine,
in delightful Normandy, as there are no bridges below Rouen.
In France one's chief delays on the road are caused by the _octroi_
barriers at all large towns, though only at Paris and, for a time, at
St. Germain do they tax the supplies of _essence_ (gasoline) and oil,
which the automobilist carries in his tanks.
The _octroi_ taxes are onerous enough in all conscience, but it is a
pity to annoy automobilists in the way the authorities do at the
gates of Paris, and it's still worse for a touring automobile to be
stopped at the barrier of a town like Evreux in Normandy, or Tarare
in the Beaujolais. Whatever does the humble (and civil, too) guardian
do it for, except to show his authority, and smile pleasantly, as he
waves you off after having brought you to a full stop at the bottom
of a twisting cobble-stoned, hilly street where you need all the
energy and suppleness of your motor in order to reach the top.
There are not many of these abrupt stops, outside the large towns,
and nowhere do they tax you on your oil or _essence_ except at
Paris--where you pay (alas!) nearly as much as the original cost.
At Rouen the guardian comes up, looks in your tonneau to see if you
have a fish or a partridge hidden away, and sends you on your way
with a bored look, as though he disliked the business as much as you
do. At Tours, if you come to the barrier just as the official has
finished a good lunch, he simply smiles, and doesn't even stop
you. At Marseilles you get up from your seat and let the official
poke a bamboo stick down among your _chambres d'air_, and say
nothing--provided he does not puncture them; if he does, you say a
good deal, but he replies by saying that he was merely doing his
duty, and meant no harm.
At Nantes, at Rennes, at Orleans, and Bordeaux, all of them _grandes
villes_, every one is civil and apologetic, but still the procedure
goes on just the same.
At Lyons the _octroi_ tax has been abolished. Real progress this!
In the old coaching days road speeds fell far behind what they are
to-day in a well-constructed and capable automobile, but, as they put
in long hours on the road, they certainly did get over the ground in
a fairly satisfactory manner. Private conveyances, with private
horses, could not hope to accomplish anything like it, simply because
there is a limit to the working powers and hours of the individual
horse. With the old mail-coaches, in England, and the _malle-poste_
and the _poste-chaise_, in France, things were different, for at
every _poste_, or section, was a new relay; and on the coach went at
the same pace as before.
[Illustration: Days Gone By]
The London-Birmingham coaches in 1830 covered the 109 miles between
the two points at an average speed of 15.13 miles per hour, the
highest speed being eighteen, and the lowest eleven miles.
In France the speeds were a little better. From Lyons the old
mail-coaches used to make the journey to Paris in four days by way of
Auxerre, and in five by Moulins, though the distance is the same, one
hundred and twenty leagues. To-day the automobile, which fears not
hills, take invariably the Moulins road, and covers the distance
between breakfast and dinner; that is, if the driver is a "scorcher;"
and there are such in France.
In 1834 there were thirteen great lines of _malle-postes_ in France
as follows:
To Calais. By Clermont, Amiens, and Abbeville.
To Lille. By Senlis, Noyon, St. Quentin, Cambrai, and Douai.
To Mezières. By Soissons, Reims, and Rhetel.
To Strasbourg. By Chalons-sur-Marne, Metz, and Sarrebourg.
To Besançon. By Troyes and Dijon.
To Lyon. By Melun, Auxerre, Autun, and Macon.
To Clermont-Ferrand. By Fontainebleau, Briare, Nevers, and Moulins.
To Toulouse. By Orleans, Chateauroux, Limoges, and Cahors.
To Bordeaux. By Orleans, Blois, Tours, Poitiers, and Angoulême.
To Nantes. By Chartres, Le Mans, La Fleche, and Angers.
To Brest. By Alençon, Laval, Rennes, and St. Brieuc.
To Caen. By Bonnières, Evreux, and Lisieux.
To Rouen. By Neuilly-sur-Seine, Pontoise, Gisors, Ecouis, and
Fleury-sur-Andelle.
Besides the _malle-poste_ there was another organization in France
even more rapid. The following is copied from an old advertisement:
AVIS AU PUBLIC
"_Messageries Royales--Nouvelles Diligences_
"Le Public est averti:
"Il partira de Paris toutes les semaines, pour Dunkerque, passant par
Senlis, Compiègne, et Noyon, une diligence le lundi à 6 heures du
matin. Elle repartira de Dunkerque à Paris, le mercredi à 6 heures du
matin. Il partira aussi dans chaque sens une voiture pour les gros
bagages et objets fragiles, le jeudi de chaque semaine.
"Les bureaux de ces diligences sont établis à Paris, rue St. Denis,
vis-à-vis les Filles-Dieu."
From Paris to Bordeaux, 157 leagues, the Messageries Royales made the
going at an easy pace in five days. To-day the express-trains do it
in six and one-half hours, and the ever-ready automobile has knocked
a half an hour off that, just for a record. "_Tempus fugit._"
The subject of roads and roadmaking is one that to-day more than ever
is a matter of deep concern to those responsible for a nation's
welfare.
It might seem, in these progressive days, that it was in reality a
matter which might take care of itself, at least so far as originally
well-planned or well-built roads were concerned. This, however, is
not the case; the railway has very nearly reached the limit of its
efficiency (at any rate in thickly settled parts), and the electric
roads have merely stepped in and completed its functions.
It is certain that an improved system of road administration or
control is needed. The turnpike or the highroad served its purpose
well enough in coaching days as the most direct and quickest way
between important towns. To-day, in many respects, conditions are
changed. Certain centres of population and commercial activity have
progressed at the expense of less fortunate communities, and the
one-time direct highroads now deviate considerably, with the result
that there is often an unnecessary prolongation of distance and
expenditure of time.
Examples of this sort are to be found all over Britain, but a great
deal less frequently in France, where the communication is by a more
direct line between important centres, often leaving the small and
unimportant towns out of the itinerary altogether.
In England, centralization or nationalization of the road-building
authority should remedy all this. Cuts and deviations from existing
lines, for the general good, would then be made without local
jealousy or misapplied influence being brought to bear, and the
general details of width and surface be carried on throughout the
land, under one supreme power, and not, as often now is the case, by
various local district and urban councils and county surveyors.
"The Great North Road" and "The Famous Bath Road" vary greatly
throughout their length as to width and excellence; and yet popular
opinion in the south of England would seem to indicate that these
roads, to single them out from among others, are idyllic, both in
character of surface and skill of engineering, throughout their
length. This is manifestly not so. The "Bath Road," for example, in
parts, is as flat and well-formed a surface as one could hope to
find, even in France itself, but at times it degenerates into a mere
narrow, guttery alley, especially in its passage through some of the
Thames-side towns, where the surface is never of that excellence that
it should be; throughout its entire length of some hundred odd miles
to Bath there are ever-recurring evidence of bad road-making and
worse engineering.
One is bound to take into consideration that it is the automobile,
and the general increase in automobile traffic, that, in all
countries, is causing the wide-spread demand for improved roads.
To illustrate the growth of the use of the automobile on the public
highway, and taking France as an example, the following statistics
are given from the _Journal des Débats:_
In 1900 there were taxed in France 1,399 _voitures-automobiles_ of
more than two places, and 955 of one or two places. In 1903 the
figures had risen to 7,228 and 2,694 respectively. These figures may
seem astonishingly small at first glance, but their percentage of
growth is certainly abnormally large. These _voitures-automobiles_,
be it recalled, are all pleasure carriages, and displaced in the same
time (according to the same authority) 10,000 horse-drawn vehicles.
At the same period Paris alone claimed 1,845 _voitures-automobiles_
and 6,539 horse-drawn pleasure carriages.
Road reformers, wherever found, should agitate for two things: the
efficient maintenance of existing roads and the laying out of new and
improved thoroughfares where needed.
In England and America the roadways are under the care of so many
controlling bodies that they have suffered greatly. In England, for
example, there is one eighteen-mile strip of road which is under the
control of twelve different highway authorities, while the "Great
North Road" from London to Edinburgh, is, in England alone, subject
to seventy-two separate authorities. Local jealousies, rivalry and
factions, and the quarrels of various road authorities interfere
everywhere with good roads. The greatest good of the greatest number
is sacrificed to village squabbles and to the advice of the local
squire, who "detests motor-cars," as he does most other signs of
progress. The roads of the future must be under some general control.
At present, affairs in England are pretty bad; let America take heed
in her new provisions for road supervision and government.
There is at present an almost Chinese jumble in the distribution of
authority over roads in England and Wales. There are in London alone
twenty-nine highway authorities, and 1,855 throughout the rest of the
country.
In view of the fact that through motor traffic of all kinds will
increase every year, it has been suggested that new loop roads should
be constructed round towns on the chief roads, private enterprise
being enlisted by the expectation of improved land value. This
certainly would be a move in the right direction.
[Illustration: Milestone pictures]
Mile-stone reform is another thing which is occupying the serious
attention of the road user. In Continental Europe this matter is
pretty well arranged, though there is frequently a discrepancy of
two, three, or even five kilometres between the national mile-stones
_(bornes kilométriques)_ and the sign-boards of the various local
authorities and touring clubs.
France has the best system extant of sign-boards and mile-stones. One
finds the great national, departmental, and communal signs and stones
everywhere, and at every hundred metres along the road are the
intermediate little white-numbered stones, from which you may take
your bearings almost momentarily, with never a fear that you are off
your track.
In addition to this the sign-boards of the Touring Club de France,
the Automobile Club de France, and the Association Générale
Automobile satisfy any further demands that may be made by the
traveller by automobile who wants to read as he runs. No such legible
signs and warnings are known elsewhere.
There is uniformity in all the kilometre and department boundary
stones in France; but in England "mile-stones" of all shapes, sizes,
materials, and degrees of legibility are found.
There are some curious relics in the form of ancient mile-stones
still in use, which may please the antiquarian, but are of no value
to the automobilist. There is the "eightieth mile-stone on the
Holyhead Road" in England, which carries one back through two
centuries of road travel; and there is a heavy old veteran of perhaps
a thousand years, which at one time marked the "_Voie Aurelian,_" as
it crossed Southern Gaul. It is found in Provence, in the
Bouches-du-Rhône, near Salon, and is a sight not to be missed by
those curiously inclined.
The question of dust is one of the chief problems yet to be solved
for the benefit of automobilists and the general public alike. A good
deal of the "dust nuisance" is due to badly made and badly kept
roads, but we must frankly admit that the automobile itself is often
the cause. "La Ligue Contre la Poussière," in France, has made some
interesting experiments, with the below enumerated results, as
related to automobile traffic. Road-builders and manufacturers of
automobiles alike have something here to make a note of.
(1) Sharp corners and excessive road cambers lead to slip, and,
therefore, to dust.
(2) More dust is raised on a rough road than on an equally dusty
smooth road.
(3) Watering the road moderately diminishes the dust.
(4) The spreading on the road of crude oil, or of oil emulsions in
water, is an important palliative.
(5) Wood, asphalt, cobblestones, and square pavings are not dusty
save after use by horse traffic.
(6) Cars with smooth, boat-shaped under surfaces are less dusty than
others.
(7) Cars with large mud-guards and leather flaps near the road are
more dusty.
(8) Cars on high wheels well away from the ground are less dusty.
(9) Cars with large tool-boxes at the back reaching low down between
the back wheels are dusty.
(10) Large car bodies are often dustier than small ones.
(11) Blowing the exhaust near the ground increases the dust.
(12) Cars fitted with engines having an insufficient fly-wheel or a
non-uniform turning effort from any cause are more dusty.
(13) A car mounted on very easy springs having a large up-and-down
play will suck up the dust with each rise and fall of the body on
rough roads.
(14) Front wheels--or rolling wheels--raise less dust than back
wheels or driving wheels.
(15) Smooth pneumatic tires are dusty.
(16) Solid or pneumatic rubber tires are more dusty at higher speeds,
and with high-powered engines.
(17) Non-skid devices, such as small steel studs, etc., do not
increase the dust.
A writer on automobilism and roads cannot leave the latter subject
without a reference to some of the obstructions and inconveniences to
which the automobilist has to submit. If the automobilist proved
himself a "road obstruction" like any of the following he would soon
be banished and the industry would suffer.
A correspondent in the _Auto_, the chief Parisian daily devoted to
automobilism, gave the following list of obstructions encountered in
a journey of a thousand kilometres:
1. Drivers having left their horses entirely unattended - 75
2. Drivers who would not make way to allow one to pass - 86
3. Driver is asleep - 8
4. Drivers not holding the reins - 12
5. Drivers in carriages, or carts, without lights at night - 81
6. Drivers stopping their horses in the middle of the road or at
dangerous turnings - 2
7. Drivers allowing their horses to descend hills unattended while
they walked behind - 18
8. Dogs throwing themselves in front of one - 35
9. Flocks of sheep met without guardians near by - 8
10. Cattle straying unattended - 10
11. Geese, hens and children in the middle of the road - 30
Instead of seven sins, any of which might be deadly, there are
eleven. Legislation must sooner or later protect the automobilist
better than it does to-day.
Chapter IV
Hotels & Things
[Illustration: Hotels & Things]
In all the literature of travel, that which is devoted to hotels has
been conspicuously neglected. Certainly a most interesting work could
be compiled.
Among the primitive peoples travellers were dependent upon the
hospitality of those among whom they came. After this arose a species
of hostelry, which catered for man and beast in a more or less crude
and uncomfortable manner; but which, nevertheless, was a great deal
better than depending upon the generosity and hospitality of
strangers, and vastly more comfortable than sleeping and eating in
the open.
In the middle ages there appeared in France the _cabaret_, the
_gargot_, the _taverne_, and then the _auberge_, many of which,
endowed with no more majestic name, exist even to-day.
ICI ON LOGE à PIED ET à CHEVAL
is a sign frequently seen along the roadways of France, and even in
the villages and small towns. It costs usually ten sous a night for
man, and five sous for his beast, though frequently there is a
fluctuating price.
The _aubergiste_ of other days, on the routes most frequented, was an
enterprising individual, if reports are to be believed. Frequently he
would stand at his door and cry out his prices to passers-by. "_Au
Cheval Blanc! On dine pour douze sous. Huit sous le cocher. Six
liards l'écurie._"
With the era of the diligences there came the Hôtels de la Poste,
with vast paved courtyards, great stables, and meals at all hours,
but the chambers still remained more or less primitive, and in truth
have until a very recent date.
There is absolutely no question but that automobilism has brought
about a great change in the hotel system of France. It may have had
some slight effect elsewhere, but in France its influence has been
enormous. The guide-books of a former generation did nothing but put
an asterisk against the names of those hotels which struck the fancy
of the compiler, and it was left to the great manufacturers of
"_pneumatiques_" for automobiles to carry the scheme to a
considerably more successful issue. Michelin, in preparing his
excellent route-book, bombarded the hotel-keeper throughout the
length and breadth of France with a series of questions, which he
need not answer if he did not choose, but which, if he neglected, was
most likely taken advantage of by his competitor.
Given a small _chef-lieu_, a market-town in France, with two
competing establishments, the one which was marked by the compiler of
this excellent road-book as having the latest sanitary arrangements,
with perhaps a dark room for photographers, stood a much better
chance of the patronage of the automobile traveller than he who had
merely a blank against the name of his house. The following selection
of this appalling array of questions, used in the preparation of the
Guide-Michelin, will explain this to the full:
Is your hotel open all the year?
What is the price per day which the automobilist _en tour_ may count
on spending with you? (This is purposely noncommittal so far as an
ironbound statement is concerned, being more particularly for
classification, and is anyway a much better system of classification
than by a detailed price-list of _déjeuner, dîner_, etc.)
What is the price of an average room, with service and lights? (Be
it noted that only in avowed tourist resorts, or in the case of
very new travellers, are the ridiculous items of "_service et
bougie_"--service and lights--ever charged in France.)
Is wine included in your regular charges? (And it generally is except
in the two above-mentioned instances.)
Have you a sign denoting adherence or alliance to the A. G. A.?
Have you a sign denoting adherence or alliance to the A. C. F.?
Have you a sign denoting adherence or alliance to the T. C F.?
Have you an arrangement with the Touring Club de France allowing
members a discount of ten per cent.? (Some four thousand country
hotels of France have.)
Have you a bath-room?
Have you modernized hygienic bedrooms?
Have you water-closets with modern plumbing? (Most important this.)
Have you a dark room for photographers?
Have you a covered garage for automobiles? (This must be free of
charge to travellers, for two days at least, or a mention of the
hotel does not appear.)
How many automobiles can you care for?
Have you a telephone and what is its number?
What is your telegraphic address?
What are the chief curiosities and sights in your town?
What interesting excursions in the neighbourhood?
This information is afterwards compiled and most clearly set forth,
with additional information as to population, railway facilities,
etc.
The annual of the Automobile Club de France marks with a little
silhouetted knife and fork those establishments which deserve mention
for their _cuisine_, and even marks good beds in a similar fashion.
Clearly the makers of old-time guide-books must wake up, or everybody
will take to automobiling, if only to have the right to demand one of
these excellent guides. To be sure the same information might to a
very considerable extent be included in the recognized guide-books;
indeed Joanne's excellent series has in one or two instances added
something of the sort in recent editions of their "Normandie" and
"Provence," but each volume deals only with some special locality,
whereas the Guide-Michelin deals with the whole of France, and the
house also issues another covering Belgium, Holland, and the Rhine
country.
The chief concern of the touring automobilist, after the pleasures of
the road, is the choice of a hotel. The days when the diligences of
Europe drew up before an old-time inn, with the sign of a pewter
plate, an _écu d'or_, a holly branch, or a prancing white horse, have
long since disappeared. The classic good cheer of other days, a fowl
and a bottle of Beaune, a baron of beef and porter, or a carp and
good Rhine wine have gone, too. The automobile traveller requires, if
not a stronger fare, at least a more varied menu, as he does a more
ample supply of water for washing.
These quaint old inns of other days, with fine mullioned windows,
galleried courtyards, and vine-trellised façades, still exist here
and there, but they have been much modernized, else they would not
exist at all. There is not much romance in the make-up of the modern
traveller, at least so far as his own comfort is concerned, and the
tired automobilist who has covered two hundred kilometres of road,
between lunch and dinner, requires something more heroic in the way
of a bath than can be had in a tiny porcelain basin, and a more
comfortable place to sit in than the average bar-parlour, such as he
finds in most country inns in England.
As Sterne said: "They do things better in France," and the
accommodation supplied the automobilist is there far ahead of what
one gets elsewhere.
The hotel demanded by the twentieth-century traveller need not
necessarily be a palace, but it must be something which caters to the
advancing needs of the time in a more efficient manner than the
country inn of the eighteenth century, when the only one who
travelled in comfort was he who thrust himself upon the hospitality
of friends.
We are living in a hygienic age, and to-day we are particular about
things that did not in the least concern our forefathers. In England
there is no public-spirited body which takes upon itself the task of
pointing out the virtuous path to the country Boniface. The
Automobile Club of Great Britain and Ireland has not succeeded very
well with its task as yet and has not anything like the influence of
its two sister organizations in France, or the very efficient Touring
Club Italiano.
Hygiene does not necessarily go so far as to demand a doctor's
certificate as to the health of the birds and animals which the
_chef_ presents so artistically in his celebrated _plats du jour_,
and one need not take the _journaux comiques_ too seriously, as once
did a gouty _milord_, who insisted that his duckling Rouennais
should, while alive, first be certificated as to the health of its
_bronches_ and _poumons_. All the same one likes to know that due
regard is given to the proprieties and necessities of his bedroom,
and to know that the kitchen is more or less a public apartment where
one can see what is going on, which one can almost invariably do in
France, in the country, at any rate. Therein lies one of the great
charms of the French hotel.
One of the latest moves of the Automobile Club de France is to call
attention to the mountainous districts of France, the Pyrenees, and
the Jura, and to exploit them as rivals to Switzerland. Further, a
competition among hotel-keepers has been started throughout France,
and a prize of ten thousand francs is offered yearly to that
hotel-keeper who has added most to the attractions of his house. The
club authorities furnish expert advice and recommendations as to
hotel reforms to any hotel-keeper who applies. In England the newly
established "Road Club" might promote the interests of British motor
tourists, and the large numbers of Americans and foreigners, by
undertaking a similar work.
To a great extent the tourist, by whatever means of travel, must find
his hotels out for himself. He cannot always follow a guide-book, and
if he does he may find that the endorsement of an old edition is no
longer merited.
By far the best hotel-guides for France, Belgium, and Holland, the
Rhine, Switzerland, and Italy are the excellent _annuaires_ of the
Automobile Clubs and Touring Clubs, and the before-mentioned
Guide-Michelin and "Guide-Routiere Continental," issued by the great
pneumatic tire companies.
Hotel-finding abroad, for the stranger, is a more or less difficult
process, or he makes it such. The crowded resorts do not give one a
tithe of the character or local colour to be had from a stay in some
little market-town inn of France or Germany. In the former, hotels
are simply bad imitations of Parisian establishments, while the best
are often off the beaten track in the small towns.
The question of tipping is an ever present one for the European
traveller. It exists in Britain and Continental Europe to an
increasing and exasperating extent, and the advent of the automobile
has done nothing to lessen it.
There is no earthly, sensible logic which should induce a _garçon_ in
a hotel or restaurant to think that because one arrives in an
automobile he wishes to dine in a special room off of rare viands and
drink expensive wines, but this is his common conception of the
automobile tourist. One fights up or down through the scale of hotel
servants, and does his best to allay any false ideas they may have,
including those of the hostler, who has done nothing for you, and
expects his tip, too. It's an up-hill process, and the idea that
every automobilist is a millionaire is everywhere dying hard.
The traveller demands not so much elegance as comfort, and, above
all, fit accommodation for his automobile. Some sort of a light,
airy, and clean closed garage is his right to demand, and the hotel
that supplies this, as contrasted with the one that does not, gets
the business, even if other things be _not_ equal.
The requirements of an automobile _en tour_ are almost as numerous
and varied as those of its owner. Hence the hotel proprietor must, if
he values this clientele, provide something a great deal better than
a mere outhouse, an old untidy stable-yard, or a lean-to.
Small concern is it to mine host of the local inn, who is somewhat
off the beaten track of motorcars, as to what really constitutes a
garage. He usually does not even know what the word means. Any
roofed-over shed or shack, with doors or not, is what one generally
has to put up with to-day, for housing his resplendent brassy and
varnishy automobile.
Once the writer remembers being turned into an old stable (in
England), the floor of which was strewn with the broken bottles of a
defunct local mineral water industry, and again into another, used as
a carpenter's shop, the floor strewn with the paraphernalia and tools
of the trade.
If the English hotel-keeper (again they do things better on the
Continent) only would discriminate to the extent of believing that
there is nothing harmful or indecent about an automobile, and let it
live in the coach-house like a respectable dog-cart or the orthodox
brougham, all would be well, and we should save our tempers and a
vast lot of gray matter in attempting to show a conservative landlord
how far he is behind the times.
One other very important demand the automobilist makes of the hotel,
and that is the possibility of being supplied with his coffee at any
time after five in the morning. The automobile tourist, not of the
butterfly order, is almost invariably an early bird.
Without question the Continental hotel of all ranks is vastly
superior to similar establishments in Britain. The inferiority of the
British inns may be due to tardiness and slothfulness on the part of
the landlords, or long suffering and non-complaining on the part of
their guests. It is either one or the other, or both, of these
reasons, but the fact is the hotel-keeper, and his establishment as
well, are each far inferior to those of Continental Europe.
Perhaps the real reason of the conservatism of the British
hotel-keeper is yet to be fathomed, but it probably starts from the
fact that he does not travel to learn. The young Swiss serves his
apprenticeship, and learns French, as a waiter at Nice, just as he
learns Italian at San Remo. Ten years later you may find him as the
manager of a big hotel at home. He has learned his business by hard,
disagreeable work. How many English hotel-keepers have imitated him?
Another cause of backwardness in England is the "license" system,
with its artificial augmentation of the value of all premises where
alcoholic refreshment is provided. This tends to make the landlord
look upon it as his chief, if not his sole, source of profit. Even if
he serves meals at a fair price, he looks to the accompanying, or
casual, drinks to pay him best. This results in indifferent and
slovenly food-catering. The public bar, with its foul-mouthed
loafers,--there seems to be an idea that one can talk in an English
tavern as one would not in an English street,--is often within
ear-shot of the dining-room. This is one of the great defects of the
English hotel system, in all but the largest towns, and even there it
is not wholly absent.
This is how the facts strike a foreigner, the Frenchman, the
Dutchman, the Belgian, and the German, whose hotels and restaurants
are, first of all, for quiet, ordinary guests, and only secondarily
as places where liquid refreshment--alcoholic or otherwise--is served
with equal alacrity, but without invidious distinction.
The old-time inns of England, and their very names, have a peculiar
fascination for the stranger. Some of us who know them intimately,
and who how what discomfort and inefficient catering may lurk behind
such a picturesque nomenclature as the "Rose and Crown" or the
"Hawthorne Inn," have a certain disregard for the romance of it all.
If one is an automobilist he has all the more reason to take
cognizance of their deficiencies.
All the same the mere mention of the old-time posting-houses of the
"Bath Road," the "Great North Road" (particularly that portion
between London and Cambridge along which Dick Turpin took his famous
ride) have a glamour for us that even the automobile will not wholly
extinguish. According to story it was at one of the many inns along
the "Great North Road" that Turpin procured a bottle of wine, which
once having passed down the throat of his famous "Black Bess" enabled
the rascal to escape his pursuers. The automobilist will be fortunate
if he can find gasoline along here to-day as easily as he can that
peculiarly vile brand of beer known as "bitter."
Buntingford on the "North Road" has an inn, which, in a way, is
trying to cope with the new conditions. The landlord of the "George
and the Dragon" has come to a full realization that the motor-car has
well-nigh suppressed all other forms of road traffic for pleasure,
and, more or less incompletely, he is catering for the wants of
motorists, as did his predecessors for the traveller by
posting-carriage or stage-coach. This particular landlord, though he
looks like one of the old school, should be congratulated on a
perspicuity which few of his confreres in England possess.
There are two other inns which travellers on the "North Road" will
recognize as they fly past in their automobiles, or stop for tea or a
bite to eat, for, in spite of their devotion to the traffic in beer,
these "North Road" inns, within a radius of seventy-five or a hundred
miles of London, seem more willing to furnish solid or non-alcoholic
refreshment than most of their brethren elsewhere. The "Bell Inn" and
the "Red, White, and Blue" (and the George and the Dragon) of the
North Road in England deserve to linger in the memory of the
automobilist, almost to the exclusion of any other English inns of
their class.
With regard to hotel charges for all classes of travellers, as well
in England as on the Continent, there is an undoubted upward tendency
which the automobile has done absolutely nothing to allay. One good
is coming to pass, however, and that is uniformity of price for the
class of accommodation offered, and (in France and most other
Continental countries) the absolute abolition of the charge for
"lights and service," an abominable and outrageous practice which
still lingers in England--and for that matter Scotland and Ireland.
The discussion of the subject has been worn threadbare, and it is
useless to enter further into it here, save to remark that since the
automobile is bringing about so many reforms and improvements perhaps
the abolition of this species of swindling on the part of the British
hotel-keeper will disappear along with antiquated sanitary
arrangements and uncomfortable closed-in beds.
In France--thanks again to the indefatigable Touring Club de
France--they have eliminated this charge for service and lights
entirely, and one generally finds hanging behind the door the little
card advocated by the Touring Club, stating clearly the charge for
that particular room and the price of the various things offered in
the way of accommodation. This ought to be demanded, by law, of every
hotel-keeper. Not every hotel in France has fallen in line, but those
that have are reaping the benefit. The automobilist is a good
advertiser of what he finds _en route_ that pleases him, and scores
pitilessly--to other automobilists--everything in the nature of a
swindle that he meets with, and they are not few, for in many places
the automobilist is still considered fair game for robbery.
As to the fare offered in English inns, as compared with that of the
Continental hotel, the least said the better; the subject has been
gone over again and again, so it shall not be reiterated here, save
to quote Pierre Loti on what one eats for an English dinner.
"We were assembled round a horrible bill of fare, which would not be
good enough for one of our humblest cook-shops. But the English are
extraordinary folk. When I saw the reappearance, for the fourth time,
of the fatal dish of three compartments, for badly boiled potatoes,
for peas looking poisonously green, and for cauliflower drenched with
a glue-like substance, I declined, and sighed for Poledor, who
nourished my studious youth on a dainty repast at a shilling per
day."
The modern tourist, and especially the tourist by automobile, has
done more for the improved conduct of the wayside hotel, and even
those of the large towns, than whole generations of travellers of a
former day.
Once the hotel drew its income from the hiring-out of posting-horses,
and the sale of a little food and much wine. As the old saying goes:
"Four horses and four bottles of port went together in the account of
every gentleman." Travellers of those days, if comparatively few,
were presumably wealthy. To-day no one, save the vulgar few, ever
cares that the innkeeper, or the servants, should suspect him of
being wealthy.
It's a failing of the Anglo-Saxon race, however, to want to be taken
for bigger personages than they really are, and often enough they pay
for the privilege. This is only natural, seeing that even an
innkeeper is human. Charges suitable for a _milord_ or a millionaire
have been inflicted on Browns, Joneses, and Robinsons simply because
they demanded such treatment--for fear they would not be taken for
"gentlemen." Such people are not numerous among real traveling
automobilists; they are mostly found among that class who spend the
week-end at Brighton, or dine at Versailles or St. Germain or "make
the fête" at Trouville. They are known instinctively by all, and are
only tolerated by the hotel landlord for the money they spend.
The French cook's "_batterie de cuisine_" is a thing which is
fearfully and wonderfully displayed in all the splendour of polished
steel and copper; that is, it is frequently so displayed in the
rather limited acquaintance which the general public has with the
_cuisine_ of a great hotel or restaurant, whether it be in Paris,
London, or New York.
[Illustration: In French Hotels]
In provincial France it is quite another thing. The _chef-patron_ of
a small hotel in a small town may be possessed of an imposing battery
of pots and pans, but often, since he buys his _pâtisserie_ and
sweetmeats of the local pastry-cook, and since his guests may
frequently not number a dozen at a time, he has no immediate use for
all of his _casseroles_ and _marmites_ and _plats ronds_ and
_sauteuses_ at one time, and accordingly, instead of being
picturesquely hung about the wall in all their polished brilliancy,
they are frequently covered with a coating of dull wax or, more banal
yet, enveloped in an ancient newspaper with only their handles
protruding. It's a pity to spoil the romantically picturesque idea
which many have of the French _batterie de cuisine_, but the
before-mentioned fact is more often the case than not.
Occasionally, on the tourist-track, there is a "show hotel," like the
Hôtel du Grand Cerf at Louviers (its catering in this case is none
the worse for its being a "show-place," it may be mentioned) where
all the theatrical picturesqueness of the imagination may be seen.
There is the timbered sixteenth-century house-front, the heavily
beamed, low ceiling of the _cuisine_, the great open-fire chimney
with its _broche_, and all the brave showing of pots and pans,
brilliant with many scrubbings of _eau de cuivre_, to present quite
the ideal picture of its kind to be seen in France--without leaving
the highroads and searching out the "real thing" in the byways.
On the other hand, in the same bustling town, is the Mouton d'Argent,
equally as excellent in its catering (perhaps more so), where the
kitchen is about the most up-to-date thing imaginable, with a modern
range, mechanical egg-beaters, etc. This last is nothing very
wonderful to an American, but is remarkable in France, where the
average cook usually does the work quite as efficiently with a
two-tined fork, or something which greatly resembles a chop-stick.
In the _cuisine_ electric lights are everywhere, but the
up-to-dateness here stops abruptly; the _salle à manger_ is bare and
uninviting, and the rooms above equally so, and the electric light
has not penetrated beyond the ground floor. Instead one finds ranged
on the mantel, above the cook-stove in the kitchen, a regiment of
candlesticks, in strange contrast to the rest of the furnishings.
Electric bells, too, are wanting, and there is still found the row of
jangling _grelots_, their numbers half-obliterated, hanging above the
great doorway leading to the courtyard.
The European waiter is never possessed of that familiarity of speech
with those he serves, which the American negro waiter takes for
granted is his birthright. It's all very well to have a
cheerful-countenanced waiter bobbing about behind one's chair, indeed
it's infinitely more inspiring than such of the old brigade of
mutton-chopped English waiters as still linger in some of London's
City eating-houses, but the disposition of the coffee-coloured or
coal-black negro to talk to you when you do not want to be talked to
should be suppressed.
The genuine French, German, or Swiss waiter of hotel, restaurant, or
café is neither too cringingly servile, nor too familiar, though
always keen and agile, and possessed of a foresight and initiative
which anticipates your every want, or at any rate meets it promptly,
even if you ask for it in boarding-school French or German.
There is a keen supervision of food products in France, by
governmental inspection and control, and one is certain of what he is
getting when he buys his _filet_ at the butcher's, and if he
patronizes hotels and restaurants of an approved class he is equally
sure that he is eating beef in his _bouille_ and mutton in his
_ragoût_.
Horse-meat is sold largely, and perhaps certain substitutes for
rabbit, but you only buy horsemeat at a horse butcher's, so there is
no deception here. You buy horse-meat as horse-meat, and not as beef,
in the same way that you buy oleomargarine as oleomargarine, and not
as butter, and the French law deals hardly with the fraudulent seller
of either.
The law does not interfere with one's private likes and dislikes, and
if you choose to make your breakfast off of oysters and Crême
Chantilly--as more than one American has been known to do on the
Paris boulevards--there is no law to stop you, as there is in
Germany, if you want beer and fruit together. Doubtless this is a
good law; it sounds reasonable; but the individual should have sense
enough to be able to select a menu from non-antagonistic ingredients.
Foreigners, by which English and Americans mean people of Continental
Europe, know vastly more of the art of catering to the traveller than
do Anglo-Saxons. This is the first, last, and intermediate verse of
the litany of good cheer. We may catch up with our Latin and Teuton
brothers, or we may not. Time will tell, if we don't expire from the
over-eating of pie and muffins before that time arrives.
[Illustration: Road Map of France]
Chapter V
The Grand Tour
[Illustration: Grand Tour]
The advantages of touring by automobile are many: to see the country,
to travel agreeably, to be independent of railways, and to be an
opportunist--that is to say to be able to fly off at a tangent of
fifty or a hundred kilometres at a moment's notice, in order to take
in some fête or fair, or celebration or pilgrimage.
"_Le tourisme en automobile_" is growing all over the world, but
after all it is generally only in or near the great cities and towns
that one meets an automobile on the road. They hug the great towns
and their neighbouring resorts with astonishing persistency. Of the
one thousand automobiles at Nice in the season it is certain that
nine-tenths of the number that leave their garages during the day
will be found sooner or later on the famous "Corniche," going or
coming from Monte Carlo, instead of discovering new tracks for
themselves in the charming background of the foot-hills of the
Maritime Alps.
In England, too, the case is not so very different. There are a
thousand "week-enders" in automobiles on the way to Brighton,
Southsea, Bournemouth, Scarborough, or Blackpool to ten genuine
tourists, and this even though England and Wales and Scotland form a
snug little touring-grounds with roads nearly, if not always,
excellent, and with accommodations--of a sort--always close at hand.
In Germany there seems to be more genuine touring, in proportion to
the number of automobiles in use, than elsewhere. This may not prove
to be wholly the case, as the author judges only from his
observations made on well-worn roads.
Switzerland is either all touring, or not at all; it is difficult to
decide which. At any rate most of the strangers within its frontiers
are tourists, and most of the tourists are strangers, and many of
them take their automobiles with them in spite of the "feeling"
lately exhibited there against stranger automobilists.
Belgium and Holland, as touring-grounds for automobilists, do not
figure to any extent. This is principally from the fact that they are
usually, so far as foreign automobilists are concerned, included in
more comprehensive itineraries. They might be known more intimately,
to the profit of all who pass through them. They are distinctly
countries for leisurely travel, for their areas are so restricted
that the automobilist who covers two or three hundred kilometres in
the day will hardly remember that he has passed through them.
Northern Italy forms very nearly as good a touring-ground as France,
and the Italian engineers have so refined the automobile of native
make, and have so fostered automobilism, that accommodations are
everywhere good, and the tourist to-day will not lack for supplies of
_benzina_ and _olio_ as he did a few years ago.
The bulk of the automobile traffic between France and Italy enters
through the gateway of the Riviera, and, taken all in all, this is by
far the easiest, and perhaps the most picturesque, of routes.
Alternatives are through Gap and Cuneo, Briançon and Susa, Moutiers
and Aosta, or by the Swiss passes, the latter perhaps the most
romantic of routes in spite of their difficulties and other
objections.
[Illustration: On English Roads]
Automobiling in Spain is a thing of the future, and it will be a big
undertaking to make the highroads, to say nothing of the by-roads,
suitable for automobile traffic. The present monarchs' enthusiasm for
the sport may be expected, however, to do wonders. The most that the
average tourist into Spain by automobile will want to undertake is
perhaps the run to Madrid, which is easily accomplished, or to
Barcelona, which is still easier, or to just step over the border to
Feuntarabia or San Sebastian, if he does not think overrefined
Biarritz will answer his purpose.
More than one hardy traveller, before the age of automobiles, and
even before the age of steam, has made "the grand tour," and then
come home and written a book about it until there seems hardly any
need that a modern traveller should attempt to set down his
impressions of the craggy, castled Rhine, the splendid desolation of
Pompeii, or the romantic reminders still left in old Provence to tell
the story of the days of the troubadours and the "Courts of Love."
It is conceivable that one can see and enjoy all these classic
splendours from an automobile, but automobilists from overseas have
been known to rush across France in an attempt to break the record
between some Channel port and Monte Carlo, or dash down the Rhine and
into Switzerland for a few days, and so on to Rome, and ultimately
Naples, where ship is taken for home in the western world.
This is, at any rate, the itinerary of many a self-made millionaire
who thinks to enjoy himself between strenuous intervals of
international business affairs. It is a pity he does not go slower
and see more.
The real grand tour, or, as the French call it, the "_Circuit
Européen,_" may well begin at Paris, and descend through Poitou to
Biarritz, along the French slope of the Pyrenees, finally skirting
the Mediterranean coast by Marseilles and Monte Carlo, thence to
Genoa, in Italy, and north to Milan, finally reaching Vienna. This
city is generally considered the outpost of comfortable automobile
touring, and rightly so, for the difficulty of getting gasoline and
oil, along the route, and such small necessities as an automobile
requires, continually oppresses one, and dampens his enthusiasm for
the beauties of nature, the fascination of historic shrines, or the
worship of art, the three chief things for which the most of us
travel, unless we be mere vagabonds, and journey about for the sheer
love of being on the move. From Vienna to Prague, to Breslau, to
Berlin, Hanover, and Cologne, and finally to Paris via Reims finishes
the "_circuit,_" which for variety and excellence of the roads cannot
elsewhere be equalled.
This, or something very near to it, would be the very best possible
course for a series of reliability trials, and certainly nothing
quite so suitable or enjoyable for the participants could otherwise
be found. It is much better than a mere pegging away round and round
a two hundred and fifty kilometre circuit, as some trials and races
have been run. In all the distance is something like five thousand
kilometres, which easily divides itself into stages of two hundred
kilometres daily, and gives one an enjoyable twenty-five days or a
month of travel, which, in all its illuminating variety, is far and
away ahead of the benefits our forefathers derived from the box seat
of a diligence or a post-chaise.
On this trip one runs the whole gamut of the European climate, and
eats the food of Paris, of the Midi, of Italy, Austria, and Germany,
and wonders why it is that he likes the last one partaken of the
best. Given a faultlessly running automobile (and there are many
today which can do the work under these conditions) and no tire
troubles, and one could hardly improve upon the poetry of motion
which enables one to eat up the long silent stretches of roadway in
La Beauce or the Landes, to climb the gentle slopes skirting the
Pyrenees, or the ruder ones of Northern Italy, until finally he makes
that bee-line across half of Europe, from Berlin to Paris. One's
impressions of places when touring _en automobile_ are apt to be
hazy; like those of the energetic American who, when asked if he had
been to Rome, replied, "Why, yes; that's where I bought my panama
_(sic)_ hat!"
Such a "grand tour" as outlined by the "_Circuit Européen_" presents
a variety which it is impossible to equal. It is a tour which
embraces country widely differing in characteristics--one which takes
in both the long, broad, ribbon-like roads of Central France, flanked
by meadows, orchards, and farmsteads, and lofty mountains from the
peaks of which other peaks capped with glistening snow may be gazed
upon, sunlit valleys and sparkling lakes. It is a tour which no man
could possibly make without a good machine, and yet it is a tour
which, with a good machine, can be considered easy and comparatively
inexpensive.
One does not require a car with excessive horsepower for the trip,
though he does need a machine which has been carefully constructed
and adjusted, and above all he must guard carefully that his motor
does not overheat, for the hills are stiff for the most part.
When touring on an itinerary as varied as that here indicated one
should have anti-skidding tires on the rear wheels, take descents
with care, and, if you be the owner of a powerful machine, do not
make that an excuse for rushing up the tortuous, twisting, and
frightfully dangerous roads, banked by a cliff on one hand, and by a
precipice on the other, which abound in all mountainous regions.
In taking turnings on such roads also always keep to the right, even
if this necessitates slowing down at the bends. One never knows what
is descending, and in such parts slow-moving carts drawn by cattle
are numerous, and generally keep the middle of the road. Most of the
automobile accidents which take place on mountain roads are due to
this swishing round bends, heedless of what may be on the other side,
and in allowing one's machine to gather too much speed on the long
descents. This is gospel! There is both sport and pleasure to be had
from such an itinerary as this, but it is a serious affair, for one
has to have a lookout for many things that are unthought of in a two
hours' afternoon suburban promenade. The _chauffeur_, be he
professional or amateur, who brings his automobile back from the
_Circuit Européen_ under its own power is entitled to be called
expert.
As for the value to automobilism of this great trial one can hardly
overestimate it. There is no place here for the freak machine or
scorching _chauffeur_, such as one has found in many great events of
the past. A great touring contest over such a course would be bound
to have important results in many ways. The ordinary class of
_circuit_ is a very close approach to a racing-track, with gasoline
and tire stations established at many points of the course. On the
European Circuit such advantages would be out of the question,
everything would have to be taken as it exists naturally. In a sense,
such a competition would be a return to the contests organized in the
early days of the automobile, the Paris-Bordeaux and Paris-Berlin
races, when the driver had ever to be on the alert for unforeseen
difficulties unknown on the racing-circuit as understood in recent
years.
To follow the _Circuit Européen_ one traverses France, Italy,
Austria, Germany, and Belgium; and one may readily enough, if time
and inclination permit, get also a glimpse of Spain, Switzerland, and
Holland. Generally the automobile tourist has confined his trip to
France, as properly he might, but, if he would go further afield, the
European Circuit, as it has become classically known, is an itinerary
vouched for as to its practicability and interest by the allied
automobile and touring clubs of many lands.
France is still far in the lead in the accommodation which it offers
to the automobilist, but Germany has made great strides of late, and
the other frontier boundary states have naturally followed suit.
Roads improvement in Germany has gone on at a wonderful rate of late,
due, it is said, to the interest of the German emperor in the
automobile industry, both from a sportive and a very practical side.
From Paris to the Italian frontier one finds the roads uniformly
excellent; but, as one enters Italy, they deteriorate somewhat,
except along the frontiers, where, curiously enough, nations seem to
vie with each other in a careful maintenance of the highroads, which
is, of course, laudable. This is probably due to strategic military
reasons, but so long as it benefits the automobilist he will not cry
out for disarmament.
The Austrian roads are fair--near Vienna and Prague they are quite
good; but they are dangerous with deep ditches and gullies which the
French know as _canivaux_, the Austrians by some unpronounceable
name, and the Anglo-Saxon as "thank-you-marms." From Prague to
Breslau the roads are twisting and turning, and large stones jut here
and there above the actual road level. This is a real danger, a very
considerable annoyance. From Breslau to Potsdam one gets as dusty a
bit of road travelling as he will find in all Europe. One side of the
road only is stone-rolled, the other apparently being merely loose
sand, or some variety of dust which whirls up in clouds and even
penetrates one's tightly closed bags and boxes. Hanover, the home of
Continental tires, is surrounded in every direction with execrable
cobblestones, or whatever the German equivalent is--"pflaster," the
writer thinks. Probably the makers of the excellent tires for
automobiles have nothing to do with the existence of this awful
_pavé_, and perhaps if you accused them of it they would repair your
tires without charge! The writer does not know.
From Hanover to Minden the roads improve, and when one actually
strikes the trail of Napoleon he finds the roads better and better.
Napoleon nearly broke up Europe, or saved it--the critics do not
agree, but he was the greatest road-builder since the Romans.
Finally, crossing the Rhine at Cologne and passing through Belgium,
one enters France by the valley of the Meuse.
One of the most remarkable tours was that undertaken in 1904 by
Georges Cormier, in a tiny six horse-power De Dion Populaire. He left
the Automobile Club de France in mid-October for Sens, his first
stop, 101 kilometres from Paris. His route thenceforth was by Dijon,
Les Rousses, and the Col de la Faucille, whence he reached Geneva,
after crossing the Swiss frontier, in a torrential rain.
From Geneva he reentered France by the Pont de la Caille, then to
Aiguebelle and St. Jeanne de Maurienne, where the women wear the most
theatrical picturesque costumes to be seen in France.
After passing Modane and Lanslebourg he followed the ascent of Mont
Cenis for ten kilometres before he reached the summit of the pass.
Within three kilometres he struck the snow-line, and the falling snow
continued to the summit. Here he found two _douaniers_ and two
_gendarmes_, who appeared glad enough to have the monotony of their
lonely vigil relieved by the advent of an automobile, quite unlooked
for at this season of the year.
The descent to Susa and the great plain of the Po was long and
dangerous. It is sixty-two kilometres from Modane to Susa, either
up-hill or down-hill, with the descent by far the longest. It is one
of the most enjoyable routes between France and Italy. Once on the
Italian side the whole climatic aspect of things changes. The towns
are highly interesting whenever met with, and the panoramas superb,
but there is a marked absence of that active life of the fields, of
cattle and human labourers that one remarks in France.
From Turin the route of this energetic little car passed Plaisance,
crossed the Appenines between Bologna and Florence, and so to Venice,
or rather to Mestre, where the car was put in a garage while the
conductor paid his respects to the Queen of the Adriatic.
From Mestre the route lay by Udine, Pontebba, Pontafel, Villac
Judenburg, and Murzzuschlag, through Styria to Vienna, with the
roadways continually falling off in excellence. Here are M. Cormier's
own words: "_Mais, par exemple, comme routes, Dieu que c'est mauvais!
Malgré cela, j'y retournerai; le pays vaut la peine que l'on affronte
les cailloux, les ornières, les dos d'âne at les dérapages sur le sol
mouillé, comme je l'ai trop trouvé, hélas!_"
Of the road from Vienna, through Moravia and Bohemia, the tourist
wrote also feelingly. "May I never see those miserable countries
again," he said. Things must have improved in the last two or three
years, but the cause of the little De Dion's troubles was the
frequent recurrence of culverts or _canivaux_ across the road. Five
hundred in one day nearly did for the little De Dion, or would have
done so had not it been carefully driven.
From Prague the German frontier was crossed at Zinnwalo, a tiny
hamlet well hidden on a mountain-top, beyond which is a descent of
fifty kilometres to Dresden. From Dresden to Berlin the way lay over
delightful forest roads, little given to traffic, and most enjoyable
at any season of the year, unless there be snow upon the ground.
From Berlin the route was by Magdebourg, Hanover, Munster, and Wesel,
and Holland was entered at Beek, a little village ten kilometres from
Nymegen. At Nymegen the Waal was crossed by a steam ferry-boat, and
at Arnhem the Rhine was passed by a bridge of boats, a surviving
relic in Continental Europe still frequently to be found, as at Wesel
and Dusseldorf in Germany, and even in Italy, near Ferrara on the Po.
Utrecht came next, then Amsterdam--"a little tour of Holland," as the
De Dion's conductor put it. In the suburbs of the large Dutch towns,
notably Utrecht, one makes his way through miles and miles of garden
walls, half-hiding coquettish villas. The surface of the roads here
is formed of a peculiar variety of paving that makes them beloved of
automobilists, it being of small brick placed edgewise, and very
agreeable to ride and drive upon.
From Utrecht the route was more or less direct to Antwerp. At the
Belgian frontier acquaintance was made with that horrible
granite-block road-bed, for which Belgium is notorious. After
Antwerp, Brussels, then forty-five kilometres of road even worse--if
possible--than that which had gone before. (The Belgian _chauffeurs_
call that portion of the route between Brussels and Gemblout a
disgrace to Belgium.) The French frontier was gained, through Namur,
at Rocroi, and Paris reached, via Meaux, thirty-nine days after the
capital had previously been quitted.
[Illustration: How Not To Travel]
This was probably the most remarkable "grand tour" which had been
made up to that time, and it was done with a little six horse-power
car, which suffered no accidents save those that one is likely to
meet with in an afternoon's promenade. The automobile itself weighed,
with its baggage and accessories, practically six hundred kilos, and
with its two passengers 760 kilos. The distance covered was 4,496
kilometres.
Part II
Touring In France
[Illustration: Touring France]
Chapter I
Down Through Touraine: Paris To Bordeaux
As old residents of Paris we, like other automobilists, had come to
dread the twenty-five or thirty kilometres which lead from town out
through Choisy-le-Roi and Villeneuve St. Georges, at which point the
road begins to improve, and the execrable suburban Paris pavement,
second to nothing for real vileness, except that of Belgium, is
practically left behind, all but occasional bits through the towns.
At any rate, since our automobile horse was eating his head off in
the garage at St. Germain, we decided on one bright May morning to
conduct him forthwith by as comfortable a road as might be found from
St. Germain around to Choisy-le-Roi.
Getting across Paris is one of the dreaded things of life. For the
traveller by train who, fleeing from the fogs of London, as he
periodically does in droves from November to February of each year,
desires to make the south-bound connection at the Gare de Lyon, it is
something of a problem. He may board the "_Ceinture_" with a distrust
the whole while that his train may not make it in time, or he may go
by cab, provided he will run the risk of some of his numerous
impedimenta being left behind, for--speak it lightly--the Englishman
is still found who travels with his bath-tub, though, if he is at all
progressive, it may be a collapsible india-rubber affair which you
blow up like the tires of an automobile.
For the automobilist there is the same dread and fear. To avoid this
one has simply to make his way carefully from St. Germain, via Port
Marly, or Marly-Bailly, to St. Cyr (where is the great military
school), to Versailles, thence to Choisy-le-Roi via the _Route
Nationale_ which passes to the south of Sceaux. The route is not,
perhaps, the shortest, and it takes something of the skill of the old
pathfinders to worry it out, but it absolutely avoids the pavements
between St. Germain and Versailles and equally avoids the drive
through Paris with its attendant responsibilities.
The automobilist, once clear of Paris, has only to think of the open
road. There will be little to bother him now, save care in
negotiating the oft-times narrow, awkward turnings of an occasional
small town where, if it is market-day, untold disaster may await him
if he does not look sharp.
On the occasion of our flight south, nothing on the whole journey
happened to give us any concern, save at Pithiviers, where a
market-wagon with a staid old farm-horse--who did not mean any
harm--charged us and lifted off the right mud-guard, necessitating an
hour's work or more at the blacksmith's to straighten it out again.
[Illustration: Wayside Inn in France]
At any rate, we had covered a trifle over a hundred kilometres from
Paris, and that was something. We lunched well at the Hôtel de la
Poste, and sent off to city-bound friends in the capital samples of
the lark patties for which the town is famous.
Nearly every town in France has its specialty; Pithiviers its _pâté
des allouettes;_ Montélimar its _nougat_; Axat its _mousserons_;
Perigueux its _truffes_, and Tours its _rillettes_. When one buys
them away from the land of their birth he often buys dross, hence it
is a real kindness to send back eatable souvenirs of one's round,
much more kind than would be the tawdry jugs and plates emblazoned in
lurid colours, or white wood napkin-rings and card-cases, usually
gathered in as souvenirs.
It is forty-two kilometres to Orleans, one of the most historic and,
at the same time, one of the most uninteresting cities in France, a
place wholly without local dignity and distinction. Its hotels,
cafés, and shops are only second-rate for a place of its rank, and
the manners and customs of its people but weak imitations of those of
Paris. You can get anything you may need in the automobile line most
capably attended to, and you can be housed and fed comfortably enough
in either of the two leading hotels, but there is nothing inspiring
or even satisfying about it, as we knew from a half-dozen previous
occasions.
We slept that night beneath the frowning donjon walls of Beaugency's
L'Ecu de Bretagne, for something less than six francs apiece for
dinner, lodging, and morning coffee, and did not regret in the least
the twenty-five kilometres we had put between us and Orleans.
At one time it was undecided whether we should come on to Beaugency,
or put in at Meung, the attraction of the latter place being, for the
sentimentalist, that it is the scene of the opening pages of Dumas's
"Trois Mousquetaires," and, in an earlier day, the cradle of Jehan de
Meung, the author of the "Roman de la Rose." No evidences of Dumas's
"Franc Meunier" remained, and, as there was no inn with as romantic a
name as that at Beaugency, we kept on another seven kilometres.
We had made it a rule, while on the trip, not to sleep in a large
town when we could do otherwise, and that is why Orleans and Blois
and Bordeaux are mere guide-posts in our itinerary.
From Beaugency to Blois is thirty odd kilometres only, along the
flat, national highway, with glimpses of the broad, shining ribbon of
the Loire here and there gleaming through the trees.
Blois is the gateway of the châteaux country; a score of them are
within a day's compass by road or rail; but their delights are worthy
of a volume, so they are only suggested here.
The châteaux of Blois, Chambord, Cheverny, Amboise, Chaumont,
Chenonceaux, Loches, Azay le Rideau, Luynes, and Langeais, at any
rate, must be included in even a hurried itinerary, and so we paid a
hasty visit to them all in the order named, and renewed our
acquaintance with their artistic charms and their historical memories
of the days of François and the Renaissance. For the tourist the
châteaux country of the Loire has no beginning and no end. It is a
sort of circular track encompassing both banks of the Loire, and is,
moreover, a thing apart from any other topographical division of
France.
Its luxuriant life, its splendidly picturesque historical monuments,
and the appealing interest of its sunny landscape, throughout the
length and breadth of old Touraine, are unique pages from a volume of
historical and romantic lore which is unequalled elsewhere in all the
world.
The climate, too, combines most of the gentle influences of the
southland, with a certain briskness and clearness of atmosphere
usually found in the north.
By road the Loire valley forms a magnificent promenade; by rail,
even, one can keep in close and constant touch with its whole length;
while, if one has not the time or inclination to traverse its entire
course, there is always the delightful "tour from town," by which one
can leave the Quai d'Orsay by the Orleans line at a comfortable
morning hour and, before lunch-time, be in the midst of the splendour
and plenty of Touraine and its châteaux.
We made our headquarters at Blois, and again at Tours, for three days
each, and we explored the châteaux country, and some other more
humble outlying regions, to our hearts' content.
Blois is tourist-ridden; its hotels are partly of the tourist orders,
and its shopkeepers will sell you "American form" shoes and "best
English" hats. It is really too bad, for the overpowering splendours
of the château, the quaint old Renaissance house-fronts, the streets
of stairs, and the exceedingly picturesque and lively congregation of
countryside peasants on a market-day would make it a delightful
artists' sketching-ground were one not crowded out by "bounders" in
bowler hats and others of the genus tripper.
The Hôtel d'Angleterre et de Chambord is good, well-conducted, and
well-placed, but it is as unsympathetically disposed an hostelry as
one is likely to find. Just why this is so is inexplicable, unless it
be that it is a frankly tourist hotel.
At Tours we did much better. The praises of the Hôtel de l'Univers
are many; they have been sung by most latter-day travellers from
Henry James down; and the Automobile Club de France has bestowed its
recommendation upon it--which it deserves. For all this one is not
wholly at his ease here. We remembered that on one occasion, when we
had descended before its hospitable doors, travel-worn and weary, we
had been pained to find a sort of full-dress dinner going on where we
expected to find an ordinary _table d'hôte_. For this reason alone we
passed the hotel by, and hunted out the quaintly named Hotel du
Croissant, in a dimly lighted little back street, indicated by a
flaring crescent of electric lights over its _porte-cochère_.
[Illustration: In Touraine]
We drove our automobile more or less noisily inside the little
flagged courtyard, woke up two dozing cats, who were lying
full-length before us, and disturbed a round dozen of sleek French
commercial travellers at their evening meal.
They treated us remarkably well at Tours's Hôtel du Croissant.
"Follow the _commis-voyageur_ in France and dine well (and cheaply)"
might readily be the motto of all travellers in France. The bountiful
fare, the local colour, the hearty greeting, and equally hearty
farewell of the _patronne_, and the geniality of the whole personnel
gave us an exceedingly good impression of the contrast between the
tourist hotel of Blois and the _maison bourgeois_ of Tours, always to
the advantage of the latter.
The banks of the Loire immediately below Tours grow the only grape in
France--perhaps in all the world--which is able to produce a
satisfactory substitute for champagne.
Vineyard after vineyard line the banks for miles on either side and
give great crops of the celebrated _vin mosseaux_, the most of which
finds its way to Paris, to be sold by second-rate dealers as the
"vrai vin de champagne." There's no reason why it shouldn't be sold
on its own merits; it is quite good enough; but commerce bows down to
American millionaires, English dukes, and the German emperor, and the
king of wines of to-day must be labelled champagne.
From Tours to Niort is 170 kilometres, and we stopped not on the way
except to admire some particularly entrancing view, to buy gasoline
for the automobile, and for lunch at Poitiers.
The whole aspect of things was changing; there was a breath of the
south already in the air; and there was an unspeakable tendency on
the part of everybody to go to sleep after the midday meal.
We passed Chatellerault and its quaint old turreted and bastioned
bridge at just the hour of noon, and were tempted to stop, for we had
just heard of the latest thing in the way of a hotel which was
brand-new, with steam heat, and hot and cold water, electric lights,
baths, etc. Nothing was said about the bill of fare, though no doubt
it was equally excellent. The combination didn't appeal, however; we
were out after novelty and local colour, and so we rolled on and into
Poitiers's Hôtel de l'Europe and lunched well in the most charmingly
cool garden-environed dining-room that it were possible to conceive.
We had made a wise choice, though on a hit-or-miss formula, and we
were content.
Here at least the dim echo of the rustle and bustle of Paris, which
drifts down the valley of the Loire from Orleans to the sea, was left
behind; a whole new chromatic scale was being built up. No one
hurried or rushed about, and one drank a "_tilleuil_" after _déjeuner_,
instead of coffee, with the result that he got sleepy forthwith.
There are five magnificent churches at Poitiers, dating from Roman
and mediæval times, but we saw not one of them as we passed through
the town. Again we had decided we were out after local manners and
customs, and, for the moment, churches were not in the category of
our demands.
We had only faint glimmerings as to where Niort was, or what it stood
for, but we were bound thither for the night. We left Poitiers in
mid-afternoon, gaily enough, but within five kilometres we had
stopped dead. The sparking of course; nothing else would diagnose the
case! It took three hours of almost constant cranking of the unruly
iron monster before the automobile could be made to start again.
Once started, the automobile ran but fitfully the seventy-five
kilometres to Niort, the whole party, with fear and trembling,
scarcely daring to turn sidewise to regard the landscape, or take an
extra breath. There was no assistance to be had this side of Niort,
and should the sparking arrangements go back on us again, and we were
not able to start, there was no hope of being towed in at the back of
a sturdy farm-horse; the distance was too great. Once we thought we
had nearly lost it again, but before we had actually lost our
momentum the thing recovered itself, and we ran fearingly down the
broad avenue into Niort, and asked anxiously as to whether there
might be a _grand maison des automobiles_ in the town.
Indeed there was, and in the twinkling of an eye we had shunted our
poor lame duck into the courtyard of a workshop which gave employment
to something like seventy-five hands, all engaged in the manufacture
of automobiles which were exported to the ends of the earth.
Here was help surely. Nothing could be too great or too small for an
establishment like this to undertake, and so we left the machine with
an easy heart and hunted out the excellent Hôtel de France--the best
hotel of its class between Paris and Bordeaux. We dined sumptuously
on all the good things of the north and the south, to say nothing of
fresh sardines from La Rochelle, not far distant, and we gave not a
thought to the automobile again that night, but strolled on the quay
by the little river Sêvre-Niortaise, and watched the moon rise over
the old château donjon, and heard the rooks caw, and saw them circle
and swing around its battlement in a final night-call before they
went to rest. It was all very idyllic and peaceful, although Niort
is, as may be inferred, an important centre for many things.
We had planned to be on the road again by eight the next morning,
but, on arrival at the garage, or more correctly stated, the _usine_,
where we had left the automobile the night before, we found it the
centre of a curious group who were speculating--and had been since
six o'clock that morning--as to what might be the particular new
variety of disease that had attacked its vital parts so seriously
that it still refused to go.
It was twelve o'clock, high noon, before it was discovered--with the
aid of the electrician from the electric light works--that two tiny
ends of copper wire, inside the coil (which a Frenchman calls a
_bobine_), had become unsoldered, and only when by chance they
rattled into contact would the sparking arrangements work as they
ought.
This was something new for all concerned. None of us will be likely
to be caught that way again. The cost was most moderate. It was not
the automobile owner who paid for the experience this time, a thing
which absolutely could not have happened outside of France. Pretty
much the whole establishment had had a hand in the job, and, if the
service had been paid for according to the time spent, it might have
cost anything the establishment might have chosen to charge.
Ten francs paid the bill, and we went on our way rejoicing, after
having partaken of a lunch, as excellent as the dinner we had eaten
the night before, at the Hôtel de France.
La Rochelle, the city of the Huguenots, and later of Richelieu, was
reached just as the setting sun was slanting its red and gold over
the picturesque old port and the Tour de Richelieu. If one really
wants to know what it looked like, let him hunt up Petitjean's "Port
de la Rochelle" in the Musée de Luxembourg at Paris. Words fail
utterly to describe the beauty and magnifycence of this hitherto
unoverworked artists' sketching-ground.
[Illustration: La Rochelle]
We threaded our way easily enough through the old sentinel gateway
spanning the main street, lined with quaint old arcaded,
Spanish-looking houses, and drew up abreast of the somewhat
humble-looking Hôtel du Commerce, on the Place d'Armes, opposite the
ugly little squat cathedral, once wedded to the haughty Richelieu
himself.
The Hôtel du Commerce at La Rochelle is the equal of the Hôtel de
France at Niort, and has the added attraction of a glass-covered
courtyard, where you may take your coffee and watch the household
cats amusing themselves with the goldfish in the pool of the fountain
which plays coolingly in the centre.
La Rochelle and its Hôtel du Commerce are too good to be treated
lightly or abruptly by any writer; but, for fear they may both become
spoiled, no more shall be said here except to reiterate that they are
both unapproachable in quaintness, comfort, and charm by anything yet
found by the writer in four years of almost constant wanderings by
road and rail up and down France.
Offshore four kilometres is the Ile de Ré, an isle thirty kilometres
long, where the inhabitants wear the picturesque _coiffe_ and costume
which have not become contaminated with Paris fashions. The one thing
to criticize is the backwardness of the lives of the good folk of the
isle and their enormous _pieds plats_.
Northward from La Rochelle is a region, almost within sight of the
Ile de Ré, where the women wear the most highly theatrical costumes
to be seen anywhere in modern France, not even excepting the peasants
of Brittany. The chief distinction of the costume is a sort of tiny
twisted bandanna over the head, a tight-fitting or folded fichu, a
short ballet sort of a skirt, black stockings, and a gaily bordered
apron and dainty, high-heeled, tiny shoes--in strong contrast in size
and form to the ungainly feet of the women of the Ile de Ré.
We left La Rochelle with real regret, passed the fortified town of
Rochefort without a stop, and, in something over two hours, reeled
off some sixty-eight kilometres of sandy, marshy roadway to Saintes.
Saintes is noted for many things: its antiquity, its religious
history, its Roman remains, and the geniality of its toddling old
dealer in sewing-machines (of American make, of course), who, as a
"side" line, sells gasoline and oil at considerably under the
prevailing rates elsewhere. Truly we were in the ideal touring-ground
for automobilists.
To Cognac is sixty-seven kilometres. If we had ever known that Cognac
was the name of a town we had forgotten it, for we had, for the
moment, at any rate, thought it the name of the region where were
gathered the grapes from which cognac was made.
Cognac is famous for the subtle spirit which is sold the world over
under that name, and from the fact that it was the birthplace of the
art-loving monarch, François Premier.
For these two reasons, and for the bountiful lunch of the Hôtel
d'Orleans, and incidentally for the very bad cognac which we got at a
café whose name is really and truly forgotten, Cognac is writ large
in our note-books.
The house where was born François Premier is easily found, sitting by
the river's bank. To-day it is the counting-house of one of the great
brandy shippers whose name is current the world over. Its
associations have changed considerably, and where once the new art
instincts were born, in the person of the gallant François, is now
the cradle of commercialism.
The question as to what constitutes good brandy has ever been a
favourite one among possessors of a little knowledge. The same class
has also been known to state that there is no good brandy nowadays,
no _vrai cognac_. This is a mistake, but perhaps a natural one, as
the cognac district in the Charente was almost wholly devastated in
the phylloxera ravages of half a century ago.
Things have changed, however, and there is as good cognac to-day as
there ever was, though there is undoubtedly much more poor stuff
being sold.
Down through the heart of the cognac region we sped, through Blaye to
Bordeaux and all the busy traffic of its port.
Bordeaux is attractive to the automobilist in that one enters, from
any direction, by wide, broad avenues. It is one of the great
provincial capitals of France, a great gateway through which much of
the intercourse with the outside world goes on.
It is not so cosmopolitan as Marseilles, nor so historically or
architecturally interesting as Rouen, but it is the very ideal of an
opulent and well-conducted city, where one does not need to await the
arrival of the daily papers from Paris in order to know what has
happened during the last round of the clock.
Hotels? The town is full of them! You may put up your automobile in
the garage of the Hôtel du Chapon-Fin, along with forty others, and
you yourself will be well cared for, according to city standards, for
twelve or fifteen francs a day,--which is not dear. On the other
hand, Bordeaux possesses second-class hotels where, all found, you
may sleep and eat for the modest sum of seven francs a day. One of
these is the Hôtel Français, a somewhat extensive establishment in a
tiny back street. It is the cheapest _city_ hotel the writer has
found in France. There was no garage at the Hotel Français, and we
were forced to house our machine a block or two away, where, for the
moderate sum of two francs, you might leave it twenty-four hours, and
get it back washed and rubbed down, while for another fifty centimes
they would clean the brass work,--a nasty job well worth the price.
Yes! Bordeaux is pleasant for the automobilist!
[Illustration: Bourdeaux, the Gateway to the Landes]
Two things the stranger, who does not want to go too far back into
antiquity, will remark upon at Bordeaux, the exceeding ampleness,
up-to-date-ness, and cleanliness of the great open space in front of
the Opera, and the imposing and beautifully laid out Place des
Quinconces, with its sentinel pillars and its waterside traffic of
railway and shipping, blending into a whole which inspired one of the
world's greatest pictures of the feverish life of modern activity,
the painting by Eugene Boudin, known as the "Port de Bordeaux," in
the Luxembourg.
You may find a good low-priced hotel at Bordeaux, but you pay
inflated prices for your refreshments in the cafés; a _café-glacê_
cost fifteen sous and a _glace à café_ twenty-five on the terrace of
the magnificent establishment opposite the Opera.
[Illustration: Map of Pyrenees]