EN ROUTE TO PARIS
One of the things which dawned upon me in moving about England, and
particularly as I was leaving it, was the reason for the inestimable
charm of Dickens. I do not know that anywhere in London or England I
encountered any characters which spoke very forcefully of those he
described. It is probable that they were all somewhat exaggerated. But
of the charm of his setting there can be no doubt. He appeared at a
time when the old order was giving way, and the new--the new as we have
known it in the last sixty years--was manifesting itself very sharply.
Railroads were just coming in and coaches being dispensed with; the
modern hotel was not yet even thought of, but it was impending.
Dickens, born and raised in London, was among the first to perceive
the wonder of the change and to contrast it graphically with what had
been and still was. In such places as St. Alban’s, Marlowe, Canterbury,
Oxford, and others, I could see what the old life must have been like
when the stage-coach ruled and made the principal highways lively with
traffic. Here in Canterbury and elsewhere there were inns sacred to
the characters of Dickens; and you could see how charming that world
must have appeared to a man who felt that it was passing. He saw it
in its heyday, and he recorded it as it could not have been recorded
before and can never be again. He saw also the charm of simple English
life--the native love of cleanly pots and pans and ordered dooryards;
and that, fortunately, has not changed. I cannot think of any one doing
England as Dickens did it until there is something new to be done--the
old spirit manifested in a new way. From Shakespeare to Dickens the cry
is long; from Dickens to his successors it may be longer still.
I was a bit perturbed on leaving Canterbury to realize that on the
morrow at this same time I should catch my first glimpse of Paris. The
clerk at the station who kept my bags for me noted that I came from New
York and told me he had a brother in Wisconsin, and that he liked it
very much out there.
I said, “I suppose you will be coming to America yourself, one of these
days?”
“Oh, yes,” he said; “the big chances are out there. I’ll either go to
Canada or Wisconsin.”
“Well, there are plenty of states to choose from,” I said.
“A lot of people have gone from this place,” he replied.
It rained hard on the way to Dover; but when I reached there it had
ceased, and I even went so far as to leave my umbrella in the train.
When I early discovered my loss I reported it at once to the porter who
was carrying my belongings.
“Don’t let that worry you,” he replied, in the calmest and most
assuring of English tones. “They always look through the trains. You’ll
find it in the parcel-room.”
Sure enough, when I returned there it was behind the clerk’s desk; and
it was handed to me promptly. If I had not had everything which I had
lost, barring one stick, promptly returned to me since I had been in
England, I should not have thought so much of this; but it confirmed my
impression that I was among a people who are temperamentally honest.
My guide led me to the Lord Warden Hotel, where I arranged myself
comfortably in a good room for the night. It pleased me, on throwing
open my windows, to see that this hotel fronted a bay or arm of the sea
and that I was in the realm of great ships and sea traffic instead of
the noisy heart of a city. Because of a slight haze, not strong enough
to shut out the lights entirely, fog-horns and fog-bells were going;
and I could hear the smash of waves on the shore. I decided that after
dinner I would reconnoiter Dover. There was a review of warships in the
harbor at the time; and the principal streets were crowded with marines
in red jackets and white belts and the comic little tambourine caps
cocked jauntily over one ear. Such a swarm of red-jackets I never saw
in my life. They were walking up and down in pairs and trios, talking
briskly and flirting with the girls. I fancy that representatives of
the underworld of women who prey on this type of youth were here in
force.
Much to my astonishment, in this Snargate Street I found a
south-of-England replica of the “Fish, Chip, and Pea” institution of
the Manchester district. I concluded from this that it must be an
all-English institution, and wherever there was much drunkenness there
would be these restaurants. In such a port as Dover, where sailors
freely congregate, it would be apt to be common; and so it proved.
Farther up High Street, in its uttermost reaches in fact, I saw a sign
which read: “Thomas Davidge, Bone-setter and Tooth-surgeon”--whatever
that may be. Its only rival was another I had seen in Boulton which
ran: “Temperance Bar and Herbal Stores.”
The next morning I was up early and sought the famous castle on the
hill, but could not gain admission and could not see it for the fog.
I returned to the beach when the fog had lifted and I could see not
only the castle on the hill, but the wonderful harbor besides. It
was refreshing to see the towering cliff of chalk, the pearl-blue
water, the foaming surf along the interesting sea walk, and the
lines of summer--or perhaps they are winter--residences facing the
sea on this one best street. Dover, outside of this one street, was
not--to me--handsome, but here all was placid, comfortable, socially
interesting. I wondered what type of Englishman it was that came to
summer or winter at Dover--so conveniently located between London and
Paris.
At ten-thirty this morning the last train from London making the boat
for Calais was to arrive and with it Barfleur and all his paraphernalia
bound for Paris.
It seems to me that I have sung the praises of Barfleur as a directing
manager quite sufficiently for one book; but I shall have to begin
anew. He arrived as usual very brisk, a porter carrying four or five
pieces of luggage, his fur coat over his arm, his monocle gleaming as
though it had been freshly polished, a cane and an umbrella in hand,
and inquiring crisply whether I had secured the particular position on
deck which he had requested me to secure and hold. If it were raining,
according to a slip of paper on which he had written instructions days
before I left London, I was to enter the cabin of the vessel which
crossed the channel; preëmpt a section of seat along the side wall by
putting all my luggage there; and bribe a porter to place two chairs
in a comfortable windless position on deck to which we could repair
in case it should clear up on the way over. All of this I faithfully
did. The chairs had the best possible position behind the deck-house
and one of my pieces of luggage was left there as a guarantee that
they belonged to me. It looked like rain when the train arrived, and
we went below for a sandwich and a cup of coffee; but before the boat
left it faired up somewhat and we sat on deck studying the harbor and
the interesting company which was to cross with us. Some twenty English
school-girls in charge of several severe-looking chaperones were
crossing to Paris, either for a holiday, or, as Barfleur suggested,
to renew their studies in a Paris school. A duller lot of maidens
it would be hard to conceive, and yet some of them were not at all
bad-looking. Conservatism and proper conduct were written all over
them. Their clothing was severely plain, and their manners were most
circumspect. None of that vivacity which characterizes the average
American girl would have been tolerated under the circumstances. There
was no undue giggling and little, if any, jesting. They interested me,
because I instantly imagined twenty American girls of the same age in
their place. They would have manifested twenty times the interest and
enthusiasm, only in England that would have been the height of bad
manners. As it was these English maidens sat in a quaint row all the
way over, and disappeared quite conservatively into the train at Calais.
This English steamer crossing the channel to France was a
disappointment to me in one way. I had heard for some time past that
the old uncomfortable channel boats had been dispensed with and new
commodious steamers put in their place. As a matter of fact, these
boats were not nearly so large as those that run from New York to Coney
Island, nor so commodious, though much cleaner and brighter. If it
had rained, as Barfleur anticipated, the cabin below would have been
intolerably overcrowded and stuffy. As it was, all the passengers were
on the upper deck, sitting in camp chairs and preparing stoically to
be sick. It was impossible to conceive that a distance so short, not
more than twenty-three or four miles, should be so disagreeable as
Barfleur said it was at times. The boat did not pitch to any extent
on this trip over. On my return, some three months later, I had
a different experience. But now the wind blew fiercely and it was
cold. The channel was as gray as a rabbit and offensively bleak. I
did not imagine the sea could be so dull-looking, and France, when
it appeared in the distance, was equally bleak in appearance. As we
drew near Calais it was no better--a shore-line beset with gas tanks
and iron foundries. But when we actually reached the dock and I saw
a line of sparkling French _facteurs_ looking down on the boat from
the platform above--presto! England was gone. Gone all the solemnity
and the politeness of the porters who had brought our luggage aboard,
gone the quiet civility of ship officers and train-men, gone the
solid doughlike quiescence of the whole English race. It seemed to
me on the instant as if the sky had changed and instead of the gray
misty pathos of English life--albeit sweet and romantic--had come the
lively slap-dash of another world. These men who looked down on us
with their snappy birdlike eyes were no more like the English than a
sparrow is like a great auk. They were black-haired, black-eyed, lean,
brown, active. They had on blue aprons and blue jumpers and a kind
of military cap. There was a touch of scarlet somewhere, either in
their caps or their jackets, I forget which; and somewhere near by I
saw a French soldier--his scarlet woolen trousers and lead-blue coat
contrasting poorly, so far as _éclat_ goes, with the splendid trimness
of the British. Nevertheless he did not look inefficient, but raw and
forceful, as one imagines the soldiers of Napoleon should be. The
vividness of the coloring made up for much, and I said at once that I
would not give France for fifty million Englands. I felt, although I
did not speak the language, as though I had returned to America.
It is curious how one feels about France, or at least how I feel
about it. For all of six weeks I had been rejoicing in the charms and
the virtues of the English. London is a great city--splendid--the
intellectual capital of the world. Manchester and the north represent
as forceful a manufacturing realm as the world holds, there is no
doubt of that. The quaintness and sweetness of English country life is
not to be surpassed for charm and beauty. But France has fifty times
the spirit and enthusiasm of England. After London and the English
country it seems strangely young and vital. France is often spoken of
as decadent--but I said to myself, “Good Lord, let us get some of this
decadence, and take it home with us. It is such a cheerful thing to
have around.” I would commend it to the English particularly.
On the way over Barfleur had been giving me additional instructions.
I was to stay on board when the boat arrived and signal a facteur
who would then come and get my luggage. I was to say to him, “_Sept
colis_,” whereupon he would gather up the bundles and lead the way to
the dock. I was to be sure and get his number, for all French facteurs
were scoundrels, and likely to rob you. I did exactly as I was told,
while Barfleur went forward to engage a section, first class, and to
see that we secured places in the dining-car for the first service.
Then he returned and found me on the dock, doing my best to keep track
of the various pieces of luggage, while the facteur did his best to
secure the attention of a customs inspector.
It was certainly interesting to see the difference between the arrival
of this boat at Calais and the similar boat which took us off the
_Mauretania_ at Fishguard. There, although the crowd which had arrived
was equally large, all was peaceful and rather still. The porters
went about their work in such a matter-of-fact manner. All was in
apple-pie order. There was no shouting to speak of. Here all was hubbub
and confusion, apparently, although it was little more than French
enthusiasm. You would have fancied that the French guards and facteurs
were doing their best to liberate their pent-up feelings. They bustled
restlessly to and fro; they grimaced; they reassured you frequently
by look and sign that all would be well, must be so. Inside of five
minutes,--during which time I examined the French news-stand and saw
how marvelously English conservatism had disappeared in this distance
of twenty miles,--the luggage had been passed on and we were ready to
enter the train. Barfleur had purchased a number of papers, _Figaro_,
_Gil Blas_, and others in order to indicate the difference between the
national lives of the two countries which I was now to contrast. I
never saw a man so eager to see what effect a new country would have
on another. He wanted me to see the difference between the English and
the French papers at once; and although I was thoroughly familiar with
it already, I carefully examined these latest productions of the French
presses. The same delicious nudities that have been flourishing in the
French papers for years were there, the same subtle Gallic penchant for
the absurd and the ridiculous. I marveled anew at the sprightliness of
these figures, which never cross the Atlantic into American papers.
We do not know how to draw them because we are not accustomed to them
in our lives. As a matter of fact the American papers and magazines
adhere rigorously to the English standard. We have varied some in
presentation, but have not broadened the least in treatment. As a
matter of fact I believe that the American weekly and monthly are even
more conservative than the British paper of the same standard. We think
we are different, but we are not. We have not even anything in common
with the Germans, from whom we are supposed to have drawn so much of
our national personality.
However,--the train started after a few moments and soon we were
speeding through that low flat country which lies between Calais and
Paris. It was a five-hour run direct, but we were going to stop off
at Amiens to see the great cathedral there. I was struck at once by
the difference between the English and the French landscape. Here the
trees were far fewer, and what there were of them were not tinged with
that rich green mold which is characteristic of every tree in England.
The towns, too, as they flashed past--for this was an express--were
radically different in their appearance. I noted the superabundance of
conical red roofs swimming in a silvery light, and hard white walls
that you could see for miles. No trees intervened to break the view,
and now and then a silvery thread of a river appeared.
It was on this trip that I gathered my first impressions of a French
railway as contrasted with those of England and America. The French
rails were laid to the standard gage, I noticed, and the cars were
after the American not the English style: large, clean, commodious,
with this improvement over the American car that they were of the
corridor and compartment style as contrasted with our one room,
open-space style. After my taste of the compartment car in England I
was fairly satisfied to part forever with the American plan of one long
open room in which every one can see every one else, interesting as
that spectacle may be to some. The idea of some privacy appealed to me
more. The American Pullman has always seemed a criminal arrangement to
me, anyhow, and at Manchester I had met a charming society woman who in
passing had told me that the first time she was compelled to undress in
an American sleeping car she cried. Her personal sense of privacy was
so outrageously invaded. Our large magnates having their own private
cars or being able to charter a whole train on occasion need not worry
about this small matter of delicacy in others (it would probably never
concern them personally anyhow) and so the mass and the unsuspecting
stranger is made to endure what he bitterly resents and what they
never feel. I trust time and a growing sense of chivalry in the men at
the top as well as a sense of privilege and necessity in the mass at
the bottom will alter all this. America is a changing country. In due
time, after all the hogs are fed or otherwise disposed of, a sense of
government of the people for the people will probably appear. It has
made only the barest beginning as yet. There are some things that the
rank and file are entitled to, however--even the rank and file--and
these they will eventually get.
I was charmed with the very medieval air of Amiens, when we reached
there, a bare, gray, cobble-stony city which, however, appeared to be
solid and prosperous. Here, as in the rest of France, I found that the
conical-roofed tower, the high-peaked roof, the solid gray or white
wall, and the thick red tile, fluted or flat, combined to produce
what may be looked upon as the national touch. The houses here varied
considerably from the English standard in being in many cases very
narrow and quite high for their width--four and five stories. They
are crowded together, too, in a seemingly defensive way, and seem to
lack light and air. The solid white or gray shutters, the thick fluted
rain-pipe, and the severe, simple thickness of the walls produced an
atmosphere which I came to look upon after a time as supremely Gallic,
lingering on from a time when France was a very different country from
what it is to-day.
Amiens was all of this. It would have seemed hard and cold and bare and
dry except for these little quirks of roofs, and the lightness of the
spirit of the people. We wandered through high-walled, cobble-paved
streets until suddenly we came on the cathedral, soaring upward out of
a welter of the dreary and commonplace. I had thought Canterbury was
wonderful--but now I knew that I had never seen anything in my life
before so imposing as Amiens. Pure Gothic, like Canterbury, it was so
much larger; a perfect maze of pinnacles, towers, arches, buttresses
and flying buttresses; it soared into the sky--carven saint above
carven saint, and gargoyles leering from every cranny. I could scarcely
believe that the faith of man had ever reared so lovely a thing. What a
power religion must have been in those days! Or what a grip this form
of art must have taken on the imagination of some! To what perfection
the art of architecture had attained! The loving care that has been
exercised in designing, shaping and placing these stones is enough
to stagger the brain. I did not wonder when I saw it that Ruskin and
Morris had attained to a sort of frenzy over the Gothic. It is a thing
for sighs and tears. Both Barfleur and I walked around it in reverent
silence, and I knew that he was rejoicing to know that I was feeling
what I ought to feel.
We went inside after a time because it was threatening dusk and we
had to make our train for Paris. I shall never forget the vast space
within those wondrous doors--the world of purple and gold and blue in
the windows, the blaze of a hundred and more candles upon the great
altar, the shrines with their votive offerings of flaming tapers, the
fat waddling mothers in bunchy skirts, the heavy priests with shovel
hats and pig-like faces, the order of attendant sisters in blue collars
and flaring linen headgear, the worshipful figures scattered here
and there upon the hard stone floor on their knees. The vast space
was full of a delicious incense; faint shadows were already pooling
themselves in the arches above to blend into a great darkness. Up rose
the columns, giant redwoods of stone, supporting the far-off roof; the
glory of pointed windows, the richness of foliated decorations, the
worshipfulness of graven saints set in shrines whose details seemed
the tendrils of spring. Whatever the flower, the fruit, the leaf, the
branch, could contribute in the way of artistic suggestion had here
been seized upon. Only the highest order of inspiration could have
conceived or planned or executed this delicious dream in stone.
A guide, for a franc or two, took us high up into the organ-loft
and out upon a narrow balustrade leading about the roof. Below, all
France was spread out; the city of Amiens, its contour, was defined
accurately. You could see some little stream, the Somme, coming into
the city and leaving it. Wonderful figures of saints and devils were on
every hand. We were shown a high tower in which a treaty between France
and Spain had been signed. I looked down into the great well of the
nave inside and saw the candles glowing like gold and the people moving
like small bugs across the floor. It was a splendid confirmation of the
majesty of man, the power of his ideals, the richness and extent of his
imagination, the sheer ability of his hands. I would not give up my
fleeting impression of Amiens for anything that I know.
* * * * *
As we came away from the cathedral in the dusk we walked along some
branch or canal of the Somme, and I saw for the first time the
peculiar kind of boat or punt used on French streams--a long affair,
stub-pointed at either end. It was black and had somewhat the effect
of a gondola. A Frenchman in baggy corduroy trousers and soft wool
cap pulled over one ear was poling it along. It contained hay piled
in a rude mass. It was warm here, in spite of the fact that it was
the middle of January, and there was a feeling of spring in the air.
Barfleur informed me that the worst of winter in Paris appeared between
January fifteenth and the middle of March, that the spring did not
really show itself until the first of April or a little later.
“You will be coming back by then,” he said, “and you will see it in all
its glory. We will go to Fontainebleau and ride.” That sounded very
promising to me.
I could not believe that these dull cobble-stone streets through which
we were passing were part of a city of over ninety thousand, and that
there was much manufacturing here. There were so few people in sight.
It had a gray, shut-up appearance--none of the flow and spirit of the
towns of the American Middle West. It occurred to me at once that,
though I might like to travel here, I should never like to live here.
Then we reached the railway station again.