Ladies in muslin--Officers shouting--Volunteers'
umbrella--Reims--Leaks--Wet--Madame Clicquot--Heavy
blow--Dinner talk--The Elephant--Cloud.
The canal brought me to Nancy, a fine old town, with an archbishop, a
field-marshal, a good hotel, large washhand basins, drums, bugles, ices,
and all the other luxuries of life. In the cathedral there was more
tawdry show about the Mass than I ever remarked before, even in Italy.
At least thirty celebrants acted in the performance, and the bowings and
turnings and grimaces of sedate old men clad in gorgeous, dirty
needlework, fumbling with trifles and muttering Latin, really passed all
bounds: they were an insult to the population, who are required to
attend this vicarious worship, and to accept such absurdities as the
true interpretation of "This do in remembrance of Me."
A large and attentive congregation, nearly all women, listened first to
an eloquent sermon from a young priest who glorified an old saint. It is
possible that the ancient worthy was a most respectable monk, but
probably he was, when he lived, a good deal like the monks one meets in
the monasteries, and now that I have lived pretty frequently with these
gentlemen I must say it makes one smile to think of canonizing such
people, as if any one of them had unapproachable excellence; but perhaps
this monk distinguished himself by proper daily ablutions, and so earned
the rare reputation of being reasonably clean.
In the afternoon the relics of the monk were borne through the streets
by a procession of some thousand women and a few men. These ladies, some
hundreds of whom were dressed in white muslin, and in two single ranks,
chanted as they slowly marched, and all the bystanders took off their
hats, but I really could not see what adoration was due to the
mouldering bones of a withered friar, so my excellent straw hat was kept
on my head.
But the French, who live in public, must have a public religion, a
gregarious worship, with demonstrative action and colours and sounds.
Deep devotion, silent in its depth, is for the north and not for this
radiant sun, though you will find that quiet worship again in lower
latitudes where the very heat precludes activity.
Some twenty years ago, one of the ablest men of the University of
Cambridge read a paper on the influence which the insular position and
the climate of Britain has upon our national character, and it appeared
to be proved clearly that this influence pervades every feature of our
life.
In a third-rate French town like Nancy, nearly all the pleasant
_agrements_ depend on the climate, and would be sadly curtailed by rain
or snow. So, again, when a Frenchman visits England and gets laughed at
for mistakes in our difficult language, and has to eat only two dishes
for dinner, and drinks bad coffee, and has no evening lounge in the open
air, and is then told to look at our domestic life, and finds he cannot
get an entrance there (for how very few French do enter there), his
miseries are directly caused by our climate, and no wonder his
impression of Albion is that we are all fog and cotton and smoke, and
everything _triste_.
From Nancy we sent the canoe by rail to meet me on the river Marne, and
while the slow luggage-train lumbered along I took the opportunity of
visiting the celebrated Camp of Châlons, the Aldershot of France. An
omnibus takes you from the railway station, and you soon enter a long
straggling street of very little houses, built badly, and looking as if
one and all could be pushed down by your hand. These are not the
military quarters, but the self-grown parasite sutlers' town, which
springs up near every camp. Here is "Place Solferino," and there "Rue
Malakhoff," where the sign of the inn is a Chinaman having his pigtail
lopped off by a Français. The camp is in the middle of a very large
plain, with plenty of dust and white earth, which "glared" on my eyes
intensely, this being the hottest day I have experienced during the
vacation. But there are trees for shade, and a good deal of grass on
these extensive downs where great armies can manoeuvre and march past
the Emperor as he sits enthroned under a bower on that hill-crest
overlooking all.
The permanent buildings for the troops consist of about 500 separate
houses, substantial, airy, and well lighted, all built of brick, and
slated, and kept in good repair; each of these is about seventy feet
long, twenty broad, and of one story high. A million and a-half pounds
sterling have already been expended on this camp. Behind the quarters
are the soldiers' gardens, a feature added lately to the camps in
England. There were only a few thousand soldiers at the place, so we
soon saw all that was interesting, and then adjourned to a Restaurant,
where I observed about twenty officers go in a body to breakfast. This
they did in a separate room, but their loud, coarse, and outrageously
violent conversation really amazed me. The din was monstrous and
without intermission. We had never before fallen in with so very bad a
specimen of French manners, and I cannot help thinking there may have
been special reasons for these men bellowing for half an hour as they
ate their breakfast.
The "mess system" has been tried in the French army several times, but
it seems to fail always, as the French Clubs do, on the whole. It is not
wise, however, for a traveller to generalize too rapidly upon the
character of any portion of a great people if he has not lived long
among them. A hasty glance may discern that a stranger has a long nose,
but you must have better acquaintance with him before you can truly
describe the character of your friend. In a little book just published
in France about the English Bar two facts are noted, that Barristers put
the name of their "Inn" on their visiting cards, and that the Temple
Volunteers are drilled admirably by a Serjeant-at-Law, who wields "an
umbrella with a varnished cover, which glances in the sun like a sword"!
Another interesting town in this department of France is Rheims (spelt
Reims, and pronounced very nearly Rens). Having still an hour or two
free, I went there, and enjoyed the visit to the very splendid
cathedral. It is one of the finest in Europe, very old, very large,
very rich, and celebrated as the place of coronation for the French
sovereigns. Besides all this it is kept in good order, and is remarkably
clean. The outside is covered with stone figures, most of them rude in
art, but giving at a distance an appearance of prodigal richness of
material. A little periodical called _France Illustrated_ is published
at fourpence each number, with a map of the Department, several woodcuts
of notable places or events, and a brief history of the principal towns,
concluding with a _résumé_ of the statistics of the Department. A
publication of this kind would, I think, be very useful in England; and
for travellers especially, who could purchase at the County town the
particular number or part then required.
In one of the adjoining Departments, according to this publication, it
appears that there are about a hundred suicides in the year among a
population of half a million. Surely this is an alarming proportion; and
what should we say if Manchester had to report 100 men and women in one
year who put themselves to death?
But we are subsiding, you see, into the ordinary tales of a traveller,
because I am waiting now for the train and the Rob Roy, and certainly
this my only experience of widowerhood made me long again for the
well-known yellow oaken side of the boat and her pink-brown cedar
varnished top.
Well, next morning here is the canoe at Epernay, arrived all safe at a
cost of 2_s._ 6_d._ All safe we thought at first, but we soon found it
had been sadly bruised, and would surely leak. I turned it upside down
on the railway platform in the hot sun, and bought two candles and
occupied three good hours in making repairs and greasing all the seams.
But after all this trouble, when we put the boat into the Marne, the
water oozed in all round.
It is humiliating to sit in a leaky boat--it is like a lame horse or a
crooked gun; of all the needful qualities of a boat the first is to keep
out the water. So I stopped at the first village, and got a man to mix
white lead and other things, and we carefully worked this into all the
seams, leaving it to harden while I had my breakfast in the little
auberge close by the shore, where they are making the long rafts to go
down to Paris, and where hot farmers come to sip their two-penny bottle
of wine.
The raft man was wonderfully proud of his performance with the canoe,
and he called out to each of his friends as they walked past, to give
them its long history in short words. When I paid him at last, he said
he hoped I would never forget that the canoe had been thoroughly mended
in the middle of France, at the village of ----, but I really do not
remember the name.
However, there were not wanting tests of his workmanship, for the Rob
Roy had to be pulled over many dykes and barriers on the Marne. Some of
these were of a peculiar construction, and were evidently novel in
design.
A "barrage" reached across the stream, and there were three steps or
falls on it, with a plateau between each. The water ran over these
steps, and was sometimes only a few inches in depth on the crest of each
fall, where it had to descend some eight or ten inches at most.
This, of course, would have been easy enough for the canoe to pass, but
then a line of iron posts was ranged along each plateau, and chains were
tied from the top of one post to the bottom of another, diagonally, and
it will be understood that this was a very puzzling arrangement to steer
through in a fast current.
In cases of this sort I usually got ashore to reconnoitre, and having
calculated the angle at which we must enter the passage obliquely (down
a fall, and across its stream), I managed to get successfully through
several of these strange barriers. We came at length to one which, on
examination, I had to acknowledge was "impassable," for the chains were
slack, and there was only an inch or two of "law" on either side of the
difficult course through them.
[Illustration: "The Chain Barrier."]
However, a man happened to see my movements and the canoe, and soon he
called some dozen of his fellow navvies from their work to look at the
navigator.
The captain was therefore incited by these spectators to try the
passage, and I mentally resolved at any rate to be cool and placid,
however much discomfiture was to be endured. The boat was steered to the
very best of my power, but the bow of the canoe swerved an inch in the
swift oblique descent, and instantly it got locked in the chains, while
I quietly got out (whistling an air in slow time), and then, in the
water with all my clothes on, I steadily lifted the boat through the
iron network and got into her, dripping wet, but trying to behave as if
it were only the usual thing. The navvies cheered a long and loud bravo!
but I felt somewhat ashamed of having yielded to the desire for ignorant
applause, and when finally round the next corner I got out and changed
my wet things, a wiser and a sadder man, but dry.
This part of the river is in the heart of the champagne country, and all
the softly swelling hills about are thickly covered by vineyards. The
vine for champagne is exceedingly small, and grows round one stick, and
the hillside looks just like a carding-brush, from the millions of these
little sharp-pointed rods upright in the ground and close together,
without any fence whatever between the innumerable lots. The grape for
champagne is always red, and never white, so they said, though "white
grapes are grown for eating." During the last two months few people have
consumed more grapes in this manner than the chief mate of the Rob Roy
canoe.
On one of these hills we noticed the house of Madame Clicquot, whose
name has graced many a cork of champagne bottles and of bottles not
champagne.
The vineyards of Ai, near Epernay, are the most celebrated for their
wine. After the bottles are filled, they are placed neck downwards, and
the sediment collects near the cork. Each bottle is then uncorked in
this position, and the confined gas forces out a little of the wine with
the sediment, while a skilful man dexterously replaces the cork when
this sediment has been expelled. One would think that only a very
skilful man can perform such a feat. When the bottles are stored in
"caves," or vast cellars, the least change of temperature causes them to
burst by hundreds. Sometimes one-fourth of the bottles explode in this
manner, and it is said that the renowned Madame Clicquot lost 400,000 in
the hot autumn of 1843, before sufficient ice could be fetched from
Paris to cool her spacious cellars. Every year about fifty million
bottles of genuine champagne are made in France, and no one can say how
many more millions of bottles of "French champagne" are imbibed every
year by a confiding world.
The Marne is a large and deep river, and its waters are kept up by
barriers every few miles. It is rather troublesome to pass these by
taking the boat out and letting it down on the other side, and in
crossing one of them I gave a serious blow to the stern of the canoe
against an iron bar. This blow started four planks from the sternpost,
and revealed to me also that the whole frame had suffered from the
journey at night on an open truck. However, as my own ship's carpenter
was on board, and had nails and screws, we soon managed to make all
tight again, and by moonlight came to Dormans, where I got two men to
carry the boat as usual to an hotel, and had the invariable run of
visitors from that time until everybody went to bed.
It is curious to remark the different names by which the canoe has been
called, and among these the following:--"_Batteau_," "_schiff_,"
"_bôt_," "_barca_," "_canôt_," "_caique_" (the soldiers who have been in
the Crimea call it thus), "_chaloupe_" "_navire_," "_schipp_" (Low
German), "_yacht_" ("jacht"--Danish, "jaht," from "jagen," to ride
quickly--properly a boat drawn by horses). Several people have spoken of
it as "_batteau à vapeur_," for in the centre of France they have never
seen a steamboat, but the usual name with the common people is "_petit
batteau_" and among the educated people "_nacelle_" or "_perissoir_;"
this last as we call a dangerous boat a "coffin" or "sudden death."
An early start next morning found me slipping along with a tolerable
current and under sail before a fine fresh breeze, but with the same
unalterable blue sky. I had several interesting conversations with
farmers and others riding to market along the road which here skirts the
river. What most surprises the Frenchman is that a traveller can
possibly be happy alone! Not one hour have I had of _ennui_, and,
however selfish it may seem, it is true that for this sort of journey I
prefer to travel entirely _seul_.
Pleasant trees and pretty gardens are here on every side in plenty, but
where are the houses of the gentlemen of France, and where are the
French gentlemen themselves? This is a difference between France and
England which cannot fail to "knock" the observant traveller (as Artemus
Ward would say)--the notable absence of country seats during hours and
hours of passage along the best routes; whereas in England the prospect
from almost every hill of woodland would have a great house at the end
of its vista, and the environs of every town would stretch into outworks
of villas smiling in the sun. The French have ways and fashions which
are not ours, but their nation is large enough to entitle them to a
standard of their own, just as the Americans, with so great a people
agreed on the matter, may surely claim liberty to speak with a twang,
and to write of a "plow."
I am convinced that it is a mistake to say we Britons are a silent
people compared with the French or Americans. At some hundred sittings
of the table d'hôte in both these countries I have found more of dull,
dead silence than in England at our inns. An Englishman accustomed only
to the pleasant chat of a domestic dinner feels ill at ease when dining
with strangers, and so he notices their silence all the more; but the
French table d'hôte (not in the big barrack hotels, for English
tourists, we have before remarked upon) has as little general
conversation, and an American one has far less than in England.
Here in France come six or seven middle-class men to dine. They put the
napkin kept for each from yesterday, and recognized by the knots they
tied on it, up to their chins like the pinafore of a baby, and wipe
plate, fork, and spoons with the other end, and eat bits and scraps of
many dishes, and scrape their plates almost clean, and then depart, and
not one word has been uttered.
Then, again, there is the vaunted French climate. Bright sun, no doubt,
but forget not that it is so very bright as to compel all rooms to be
darkened from ten to four each day. At noon the town is like a cemetery;
no one thinks of walking, riding, or looking out of his window in the
heat. From seven to nine in the morning, and from an hour before sunset
to any time you please at night, the open air is delicious. But I
venture to say that in a week of common summer weather we see more of
the sun in England than in France, for we seldom have so much of it at
once as to compel us to close our eyes against its fierce rays. In fact,
the sensation of life in the South, after eleven o'clock in the morning,
is that of _waiting for the cool hours_, and so day after day is a
continual reaching forward to something about to come; whereas, an
English day of sunshine is an enjoyable present from beginning to end.
Once more, let it be remembered that twilight lasts only for half an
hour in the sunny South; that delicious season of musing and long
shadows is a characteristic of the northern latitudes which very few
Southerners have ever experienced at all.
The run down the Marne for about 200 miles was a pleasant part of the
voyage, but seldom so exciting in adventure as the paddling on unknown
waters. Long days of work could therefore be now well endured, for
constant exercise had trained the body, and a sort of instinct was
enough, when thus educated by experience, to direct the mind. Therefore
the Rob Roy's paddle was in my hands for ten hours at a time without
weariness, and sometimes even for twelve hours at a stretch.
After a comfortable night at Chateau Thierry in the Elephant Hotel,
which is close to the water, I took my canoe down from the hayloft to
which it had been hoisted, and once more launched her on the river. The
current gradually increased, and the vineyards gave place to forest
trees. See, there are the rafts, some of casks, lashed together with
osiers, some of planks, others of hewn logs, and others of great rough
trees. There is a straw hut on them for the captain's cabin, and the
crew will have a stiff fortnight's work to drag, push, and steer this
congeries of wood on its way to the Seine. The labour spent merely in
adjusting and securing the parts is enormous, but labour of that kind
costs little here.
Further on there is a large flock of sheep conducted to the river to
drink, in the orthodox pastoral manner of picture-books. But (let us
confess it) they were also driven by the sagacious shepherd's dogs, who
seem to know perfectly that the woolly multitude has come precisely to
drink, and, therefore, the dogs cleverly press forward each particular
sheep, until it has got a place by the cool brink of the water.
In the next quiet bay a village maid drives her cow to the river, and
chats across the water with another, also leading in a cow to wade knee
deep, and to dip its broad nose, and lift it gently again from the cool
stream. On the road alongside is a funny little waggon, and a whole
family are within. This concern is actually drawn along by a goat. Its
little kid skips about, for the time of toil has not yet come to the
youngling, and it may gambol now.
But here is the bridge of Nogent, so I leave my boat in charge of an old
man, and give positive pleasure to the cook at the auberge by ordering a
breakfast. Saints' portraits adorn the walls, and a "sampler" worked by
some little girl, with only twenty-five letters in the alphabet, for the
"w" is as yet ignored in classic grammars, though it has now to be
constantly used in the common books and newspapers. Why, they even adopt
our sporting terms, and you see in a paper that such a race was only "un
Walkover," and that another was likely to be "un dead heat."
Suddenly in my quiet paddling here the sky was shaded, and on looking up
amazed I found a cloud; at last, after six weeks of brilliant blue and
scorching glare, one fold of the fleecy curtain has been drawn over the
sun.
The immediate effect of this cooler sky was very invigorating, though,
after weeks of hot glare (reflected upwards again into the face from
the water), it seemed the most natural thing to be always in a blaze of
light, for much of the inconvenience of it was avoided by a plan which
will be found explained in the Appendix, with some other hints to
"Boating Men."
The day went pleasantly now, and with only the events of ordinary times,
which need not be recounted. The stream was steady, the banks were
peopled, and many a blue-bloused countryman stopped to look at the canoe
as she glided past, with the captain's socks and canvas shoes on the
deck behind him, for this was his drying-place for wet clothes.
Now and then a pleasure-boat was seen, and there were several canoes at
some of the towns, but all of them flat-bottomed and open, and
desperately unsafe--well named "perissoirs." Some of these were made of
metal. The use of this is well-known to be a great mistake for any boat
under ten tons; in all such cases it is much heavier than wood of the
same strength, considering the strains which a boat must expect to
undergo.
"La Ferté sous Jouarre" is the long name of the next stopping-place.
There are several towns called by the name La Ferté (La Fortifié), which
in some measure corresponds with the termination "caster" or "cester" of
English names. Millstones are the great specialty of this La Ferté. A
good millstone costs 50_l._, and there is a large exportation of them.
The material has the very convenient property of not requiring to be
chipped into holes, as these exist in this stone naturally.
At La Ferté I put the boat into a hayloft; how often it has occupied
this elevated lodgings amongst its various adventures; and at dinner
with me there is an intelligent and hungry bourgeois from Paris, with
his vulgar and hearty wife, and opposite to them the gossip of the town,
who kept rattling on the stupid, endless fiddle-faddle of everybody's
doings, sayings, failings, and earnings. Some amusement, however,
resulted from the collision of two gossips at our table of four guests,
for while the one always harped upon family tales of La Ferté, its local
statistics, and the minute sayings of its people, the other kept
struggling to turn our thoughts to shoes and slippers, for he was a
commercial traveller with a cartful of boots to sell. But, after all,
how much of our conversation in better life is only of the same kind,
though about larger, or at any rate different things; what might sound
trifles to our British Cabinet would be the loftiest politics of
Honolulu.
When we started at eight o'clock next day I felt an unaccountable
languor; my arms were tired, and my energy seemed, for the first time,
deficient. This was the result of a week's hard exercise, and of a
sudden change of wind to the south. Give me our English climate for real
hard work to prosper in.
One generally associates the north wind with cool and bracing air, and
certainly in the Mediterranean it is the change of wind to the south,
the hated _sirocce_, that enervates the traveller at once. But this
north wind on the Marne came over a vast plain of arid land heated by
two months of scorching sun, whereas the breezes of last week, though
from the east, had been tempered in passing over the mountains of the
Vosges.
Forty-two miles lay before me to be accomplished before arriving
to-night at my resting-place for Sunday, and it was not a pleasant
prospect to contemplate with stiff muscles in the shoulders. However,
after twelve miles I found that about twenty miles in turnings of the
river could be cut off by putting the boat on a cart, and thus a league
of walking and 3_s._ 4_d._ of payment solved the difficulty. The old man
with his cart was interesting to talk to, and we spoke about those deep
subjects which are of common interest to all.
At a turn in the road we came upon a cart overturned and with a little
crowd round it, while the earth was covered with a great pool of what
seemed to be blood, but was only wine. The cart had struck a tree, and
the wine-cask on it instantly burst, which so frightened the horse that
he overset the cart.
The Rob Roy was soon in the water again, and the scenery had now become
much more enjoyable.
I found an old soldier at a ferry who fetched me a bottle of wine, and
then he and his wife sat in their leaky, flat, green-painted boat, and
became very great friends with the Englishman. He had been at the taking
of Constantine in Algeria, a place which really does look quite
impossible to be taken by storm. But the appearance of a fortress is
deceptive except to the learned in such matters. Who would think that
Comorn, in Hungary, is stronger than Constantine? When you get near
Comorn there is nothing to see, and it is precisely because of this that
it was able to resist so long.
The breeze soon freshened till I hoisted my sails and was fairly wafted
on to Meaux, so that, after all, the day, begun with forebodings, became
as easy and as pleasant as the rest.