cream-coloured walls of the house. In the common room of the little
inn, which was full of noisy reservists that memorable night when the
canoeists sought shelter there, I found two or three rough but
honest-looking fellows drinking, while a grey-haired woman, pleasant
and homely of appearance, sat at lunch with a young woman and a youth,
the latter wearing glasses and being in that curious condition of
downy beard which we never see in England. I stood on the sandy floor
by the little semi-circular bar, with its shining ranks of glasses,
waiting the attention of a young woman who was serving the customers
with something from an inner room, when the old lady, looking up at me
through her spectacles, asked what I wanted. "To speak with the
_patron_," I replied. "Well?" she said. "Have I the pleasure of
addressing Madame Bazin?" I asked, and on her answering with a slight
show of uneasiness, I proceeded to explain that I had come to see the
inn out of interest in a celebrated English author, who had once
stayed there and had written so charmingly about Madame and Monsieur
Bazin. In an instant the old lady and the younger folk were agitated
with pleasure, and, to my surprise, they knew all about the long-ago
visit of R. L. S. and his friend. "Perhaps he was your papa," Madame
suggested as the likeliest reason for my having come so far on a
matter so sentimental. And the good soul's eyes brimmed with tears
when she told me that her husband had been dead these three years.
Stevenson had sent them a copy of his book, and they had got the
passage touching the voyagers' stay at the inn translated by a young
friend at college, so that worthy old Bazin had not been suffered to
pass away without knowing how he and his good wife had ministered to
the heart of one of the best beloved writers of his generation. You
will remember Stevenson's beautiful reference to these worthy people.
But let me quote it, for it may be read many times with increase of
profit:
"Bazin was a tall man, running to fat; soft spoken, with a delicate,
gentle face. We asked him to share our wine; but he excused himself,
having pledged reservists all day long. This was a very different type
of the workman-innkeeper from the bawling, disputatious fellow at
Origny. He also loved Paris, where he had worked as a decorative
painter in his youth. He had delighted in the museums in his youth,
'One sees there little miracles of work,' he said; 'that is what makes
a good workman; it kindles a spark.' We asked him how he managed in La
Fère. 'I am married,' he said, 'I have my pretty children. But,
frankly, it is no life at all. From morning to night I pledge a pack
of good enough fellows who know nothing,' ... Madame Bazin came out
after a while; she was tired with her day's work, I suppose; and she
nestled up to her husband, and laid her head upon his breast. He had
his arm about her, and kept gently patting her on the shoulder. I
think Bazin was right, and he was really married. Of how few people
can the same be said!
"Little did the Bazins know how much they served us. We were charged
for candles, for food and drink, and for the beds we slept in. But
there was nothing in the bill for the husband's pleasant talk, nor for
the pretty spectacle of their married life. And there was yet another
item uncharged. For these people's politeness really set us up again
in our own esteem. We had a thirst for consideration; the sense of
insult was still hot in our spirits, and civil usage seemed to restore
us to our position in the world.
"How little we pay our way in life! Although we have our purses
continually in our hand, the better part of service goes still
unrewarded. But I like to fancy that a grateful spirit gives as good
as it gets. Perhaps the Bazins knew how much I liked them? Perhaps
they also were healed of some slights by the thanks that I gave them
in my manner?"
[Illustration: NOYON CATHEDRAL FROM THE EAST
"We had the superb east end before our eyes all morning from the
window of our bedroom."--R. L. S.]
Is that not a lovely monument to have? Many of us who have made a
greater clatter in the world than old Bazin will be less fortunate
than he in this respect. And you see that although he had little
affection for La Fère, he lived five-and-twenty quiet years there
after Stevenson came his way. Yet not, in one sense, quiet, as the
bugles are for ever braying, and even the street boys whistle barrack
calls instead of music-hall ditties. As Madame told me, the town
exists solely for the military, and we may be sure that it is none the
sweeter on that account. But her little inn struck me as a wholesome
and entirely innocent establishment. Those "pretty children" are men
and women now, and the young man with the nascent whiskers, whom I
took to be a clerk in the town, was a grandson of the old folk. Not a
feature of the _auberge_ has changed, except that the Maltese Cross,
having served its day, has been taken down. Stevenson--who has lighted
a little lamp of fame on this humble shrine--and Sir Walter Simpson
and old Bazin have all passed away, while children's children sit in
the old seats; truly the meanest works of man's hands are more
enduring than man himself. Madame Bazin, to my regret, made a quick
effort to throw aside her apron, and needlessly to tidy her bodice,
when I asked her to face the camera. She was caught in the act by the
instantaneous plate. Even here, you see, the apron signifies
servitude, and must not appear in pictures; yet it and the cap, which
latter I have seldom seen north of Paris, are the only redeeming
features of the country Frenchwoman's dress. The women of rural France
give one the impression of being in permanent mourning, and
consequently, when they do go into real mourning, they have to
emphasise the fact with ridiculous yards of flowing crape. Madame
Bazin had never heard of Stevenson's death, and I felt curiously
guilty of an ill deed in telling her about that grave in far Samoa.
XVII.
The Oise runs through a stretch of pastoral country south of La Fère,
known as "the Golden Valley," but a strath rather than a valley in
character. It was a grey day on which I journeyed, and little that was
golden did I see. But the quaint old town of Noyon, as grey and hoar
as any in France, is rich in the gold of history; "a haunt of ancient
peace." It stands on a gentle hill, about a mile away from the river,
and is one of the cleanest of the old French towns that I have
visited, reminding me somewhat of Lichfield; in atmosphere, I imagine,
rather than in any outward resemblance, since I would be at a loss to
point to the likeness if I were asked. R. L. S. had no more agreeable
resting-place on all his voyage than at Noyon. The travellers put up
at a very prosperous-looking hostelry, the Hôtel du Nord, which stands
withdrawn a little way from the east end of the grand old
cathedral--the glory of Noyon, and one of the gems of early French
Gothic, though perhaps the least known to English tourists.
Seldom in France do we find the cathedral so regally free of
surrounding buildings. No shabby structures lean unworthy heads
against its old grey walls, and where, on the north side, the canons'
library, with its crumbling timbers of the fifteenth century, nestles
under the wing of the church, the effect is entirely pleasing. At the
west front, too, where there is a spacious close, with well-cared-for
houses and picturesque gateways, one has a feeling of reverence which
the surroundings of French cathedrals so often fail to inspire. There
is a pleasant touch of humour in Stevenson's description of the
exterior of the beautiful apse:
"I have seldom looked on the east end of a church with more complete
sympathy. As it flanges out in three wide terraces, and settles down
broadly on the earth, it looks like the poop of some great old
battleship. Hollow-backed buttresses carry vases which figure for the
stern lanterns. There is a roll in the ground, and the towers just
appear above the pitch of the roof, as though the good ship were
bowing lazily over an Atlantic swell. At any moment it might be a
hundred feet away from you, climbing the next billow. At any moment a
window might open, and some old admiral thrust forth a cocked hat, and
proceed to take an observation. The old admirals sail the sea no
longer ... but this, that was a church before ever they were thought
upon, is still a church, and makes as brave an appearance by the Oise.
The cathedral and the river are probably the two oldest things for
miles around and certainly they have both a grand old age."
Inside the cathedral he found much to engage his mind, and the
somewhat perfunctory performances of certain priests jarred with the
noble serenity of the building. "I could never fathom how a man dares
to lift up his voice to preach in a cathedral. What is he to say that
will not be an anti-climax?" But, on the whole, he "was greatly
solemnised," and he goes on to say: "In the little pictorial map of
our whole Inland Voyage, which my fancy still preserves and sometimes
unrolls for the amusement of odd moments, Noyon Cathedral figures on a
most preposterous scale, and must be nearly as large as a department.
I can still see the faces of the priests as if they were at my
elbow, and hear '_Ave Maria, ora pro nobis_,' sounding through the
church. All Noyon is blotted out for me by these superior memories,
and I do not care to say more about the place. It was but a stack of
brown roofs at the best, where I believe people live very reputably in
a quiet way; but the shadow of the church falls upon it when the sun
is low, and the five bells are heard in all quarters telling that the
organ has begun. If ever I join the Church of Rome, I shall stipulate
to be Bishop of Noyon on the Oise."
[Illustration: NOYON CATHEDRAL: WEST FRONT
"The Sacristan took us to the top of one of the towers, and showed us
the five bells hanging in their loft."--R. L. S.]
This pretty fancy of his need lose none of its prettiness when we know
that Noyon has not had a bishop since the Revolution, when the
cathedral became a dependency of the Bishop of Beauvais, though it had
been a bishopric so long ago as the year 531. But I am sorry R. L. S.
was evidently not aware that when at Noyon he was in the town where
John Calvin was born in 1709, his father being procurator-fiscal and
secretary of the diocese; for surely here was an opening for some real
Stevensonian _obiter scripta_? The beautiful old Town House, of Gothic
and Renaissance architecture, dates back to the end of the fifteenth
century, but all the ancient buildings of Noyon fall long centuries
short of its history in age, as King Pippin was crowned here in 752,
and his infant son Carloman was at the same time created King of
Noyon, while in 771 the town saw the coronation of Pippin's eldest
son, the mighty Charlemagne, no less.
XVIII.
The last wet day of the voyagers was that on which they set out from
Noyon. "These gentlemen travel for pleasure?" asked the landlady of
the little inn at Pimprez. "It was too much. The scales fell from our
eyes. Another wet day, it was determined, and we put the boats into
the train." Happily, "the weather took the hint," and they paddled and
sailed the rest of the voyage under clear skies. At Compiègne they
"put up at a big, bustling hotel, where nobody observed our presence."
My impression of the famous town scarcely justified this, as in the
day that I lingered there I seemed to meet everybody a dozen times
over, and the company at a little café chantant in the evening was
like a gathering of old friends, so many of the faces were familiar.
Yet the town is populous, having some 17,000 inhabitants (about 2,000
of whom are English residents), and I was prepared for busier streets
than I found.
There can be few towns in France more agreeable to live in. It is
pleasantly situated on the river Oise, here wide and lively with
barge-traffic, and spanned by an elegant bridge. The older town lies
south of the river in a sort of amphitheatre; its streets are narrow
and tortuous, but with bright shops and cafés in the neighbourhood of
the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville, while the fashionable suburbs extend,
in splendid quiet avenues, eastward and south from the centre of the
town, by the historic palace built in Louis XV.'s reign and the Petit
Parc, which is really very large. While a great many of the English
residents have chosen the town for the same reason that my hostess at
Moy put on one electric light--_pour l'economie, vous savez_--together
with its healthy and beautiful surroundings in the great forest of
Compiègne, many more are there for the employment afforded by the
important felt hat factory of Messrs. Moore, Johnson & Co., whose
commodious works stand near the station on the north of the river.
Despite its shops, its business prosperity, its red-legged soldiers,
its visitors, Compiègne is dull enough of an evening, and the brightly
lighted but almost empty cafés leave one wondering how the business
pays.
"My great delight in Compiègne," says inland voyager, "was the
town-hall. I doted upon the town-hall. It is a monument of Gothic
insecurity, all turreted and gargoyled, and slashed and bedizened with
half a score of architectural fancies. Some of the niches are gilt
and painted, and in a great square panel in the centre, in black
relief on a gilt ground, Louis XII. rides upon a pacing horse, with
hand on hip and head thrown back. There is royal arrogance in every
line of him; the stirruped foot projects insolently from the frame;
the eye is hard and proud; the very horse seems to be treading with
gratification over prostrate serfs, and to have the breath of the
trumpet in his nostrils. So rides for ever, on the front of the
town-hall, the good king Louis XII., the father of his people.
"Over the king's head, in the tall centre turret, appears the dial of
a clock; and high above that, three little mechanical figures, each
one with a hammer in his hand, whose business it is to chime out the
hours and halves and quarters for the burgesses of Compiègne. The
centre figure has a gilt breast-plate; the two others wear gilt
trunk-hose; and they all three have elegant, flapping hats like
cavaliers. As the quarter approaches, they turn their heads and look
knowingly one to the other; and then, _kling_ go the three hammers on
the three little bells below. The hour follows, deep and sonorous,
from the interior of the tower; and the gilded gentlemen rest from
their labours with contentment.
"I had a great deal of healthy pleasure from their manoeuvres, and
took care to miss as few performances as possible; and I found that
even the 'Cigarette,' while he pretended to despise my enthusiasm, was
more or less a devotee himself. There is something highly absurd in
the exposition of such toys to the outrages of winter on a housetop.
They would be more in keeping in a glass case before a Nürnberg clock.
Above all, at night, when the children are abed, and even grown people
are snoring under quilts, does it not seem impertinent to leave these
ginger-bread figures winking and tinkling to the stars and the rolling
moon? The gargoyles may, fitly enough, twist their ape-like heads;
fitly enough may the potentate bestride his charger, like a centurion
in an old German print of the _Via Dolorosa_; but the toys should be
put away in a box among some cotton, until the sun rises, and the
children are abroad again to be amused."
[Illustration: COMPIÈGNE TOWN HALL
"My great delight in Compiègne was the Town Hall."--R. L. S.]
XIX.
There is but little interest in the remaining stages of Stevenson's
journey; not because the towns through which the canoeists now passed
are less worthy of note than any already described, but for the ample
reason that R. L. S. had, in some measure, lost his earlier delight in
the voyage. He pretends that on the broading bosom of the Oise the
canoes were now so far away from the life along the riverside, that
they had slipped out of touch with rural folk and rural ways. But this
is not strictly true, when we know that the river, as far as Pontoise,
is seldom greatly wider than the canals on which the _Arethusa_ and
the _Cigarette_ had set out with high hopes of adventure a fortnight
before. The towns are quaint and sleepy. The voyagers were nearing the
end, the river ran smooth, the sky was bright, and a packet of letters
at Compiègne had set them dreaming of home. Here was the secret; the
spell was broken; their appetite for adventure had been slaked; every
mile of easy-flowing water was taking them not away to unknown things,
but homeward to familiar ones.
Pont Sainte Maxence, the end of their first stage below Compiègne, is
a featureless little town, the Oise making a brave show through the
centre of it, and I do not suspect its church of any stirring history.
R. L. S. found its interior "positively arctic to the eye." It was
here he noticed the withered old woman making her orisons before all
the shrines; "like a prudent capitalist with a somewhat cynical view
of the commercial prospect, she desired to place her supplications in
a great variety of heavenly securities." I passed through Creil and
Précy in the afternoon, following close to the river, which now
skirts a country of gentle hills on the east, but westward fringes a
vast level plain, with nothing but groves of poplar to break the line
of the distant horizon.
XX.
In the gloaming I arrived at Pontoise, where I was told a fête was in
progress; but the only signs of hilarity were two booths for the sale
of pastries and sweet stuffs on the square in front of the station,
and one small boy investing two sous in a greasy-looking puff. The
rues of Pontoise have high-sounding names, but they are dull beyond
words, though only eighteen miles away the "great sinful streets" of
Paris are gleaming with their myriad lights.
Pontoise in the daylight might have been different; but seen in the
dusk, I decided upon the eight o'clock train to Paris, and so ended my
pilgrimage. Nor did I feel any lowering enthusiasm at the end, for
Stevenson has nothing to tell us of the place beyond saying, "And so a
letter at Pontoise decided us, and we drew up our keels for the last
time out of that river of Oise that had faithfully piloted them,
through rain and sunshine, for so long." He has not a word for the
twelfth-century church of St. Maclou, his "brither Scot," or the tomb
of St. Gautier at Nôtre Dame de Pontoise.
[Illustration: THE OISE AT PONTOISE
[Illustration: GENERAL VIEW OF LE PUY]
"At Pontoise we drew up our keels for the last time out of that river
of Oise that had faithfully piloted them through rain and sunshine so
long."--R. L. S.]
"You may paddle all day long," he concludes; "but it is when you come
back at nightfall, and look in at the familiar room, that you find
Love or Death awaiting you beside the stove; and the most beautiful
adventures are not those we go to seek." Yet he was ever an adventurer
in search of beauty, and who shall say his quest was vain?
"The Most Picturesque Town in Europe"
"After repeated visits to Le Puy, and a deal of high living
for myself and my advisers, a sleeping sack was designed,
constructed, and triumphantly brought home."--R. L.
STEVENSON.
I.
There will, of course, be differences of opinion as to which is the
town most worthy of this description; but there is surely no better
judge than Mr. Joseph Pennell, who has seen every place of any
historic or natural attraction on the Continent, and whose taste for
the picturesque none will call in question. He is the author of the
phrase that heads this chapter, as applied to the little-known town of
Le Puy, "chief place" of the Department of Haute Loire in the south of
France. It is one of the few towns that have more than justified the
mental pictures I had formed of them before seeing the real thing. But
Le Puy is not only the most conceivably picturesque of towns; it is
deeply interesting in its character and history, no less than in its
appearance.
With the exception of Mr. Pennell, and among a circle of people who
have travelled much in France, I have met none who have ever visited
Le Puy. A young English governess to whom I spoke at a little
Protestant temple in the town had been staying there for close upon a
year, and had not met a single English visitor; so it would appear one
has an opportunity here to write of a place that is still untrampled
by the tourist hordes that devastate fair Normandy.
There are many and excellent reasons why few English or American
tourists make their way to this quaint and beautiful town of the
French highlands. It lies 352 miles by rail from Paris, and can only
be reached by a fatiguing journey in trains that seem to be playing at
railways, and have no serious intention of arriving anywhere. A good
idea of the roundabout railway service will be gathered from the fact
that the actual distance of the town from Paris is nearly 100 miles
less than the length of the railway journey. It can be reached by
leaving the Mediterranean line at Lyons and continuing for the best
part of a day on tiresome local trains; or via Orleans and Clermont
Ferrand, which would surely require the best part of two days. It was
by the latter route, and in easy stages, that I first arrived there
in the early evening of a grey June day four years ago.
Between Clermont Ferrand and Le Puy the railway traverses some of the
most beautiful scenery in Europe, but nothing that one sees on the way
prepares one for the sensation of the first glimpse of this wonderful
mountain-town. The train has been steadily puffing its slow way by
green valleys and pine-clad hills, across gorges as deep as the
deepest in Switzerland, and past little red-roofed hamlets for hours,
when suddenly, as it seems, a great peak thrusts itself heavenward,
carrying on its back a mass of tiny buildings, and on the top of all
an immense statue of the Virgin. Then another seems to spring up from
the valley, holding a church upon its head, and the whole country now,
as far as eye can reach, is studded with great conical hills thrown up
in some far-off and awful boiling of earth. Curiously, the train seems
turning tail on this wonderful scene, and one by one the different
objects that had suddenly attracted our attention are lost to view,
while we pursue a circuitous route, which in a quarter of an hour
brings them all into view again, and presently we have arrived at the
station of Le Puy, by the side of the little river Dolezon, between
which and the broader Borne extends the hill whereon the town is
built.
II.
The modern part of the town lies close to the railway in the level of
the valley, and as there is a population of more than 20,000 people,
the life of the streets is brisk enough to suggest a town of five
times that size in England. Along the Avenue de la Gare, the Boulevard
St. Jean, and the Rue St. Haon we go, wary of the electric trams, to
our hotel opposite the spacious Place du Breuil, where spouts a
handsome fountain to the memory of a local metal-worker who furnished
the town with its beautiful Musée Crozatier, and where the elegant
architecture of the Municipal Theatre, the Palais de Justice and the
Préfecture supply a touch of modern dignity that contrasts not
unpleasantly with the ancient and natural grandeur of the town.
[Illustration: LE PUY: CATHEDRAL AND ROCHER DE CORNEILLE FROM PLACE DU
BREUIL]
I have stayed in many a strange hotel, but that of the "Ambassadeurs,"
whither we repaired, is perhaps the most uncommon in my experience. It
was reached from the main street through a long, dark tunnel, opening
at the end into a badly-lighted court, whence a flight of stairs gave
entrance to the hotel building, which inside was like an old and
partially-furnished barracks, with wide stone stairs and gloomy
passages eminently adapted for garrotting. But the bedroom was
commodious, and its windows gave on another market-place, where had
been the original frontage of the hotel. For all its cheerless
appearance, the "Ambassadeurs" was by no means uncomfortable, and,
needless to say, the cooking was excellent.
There are some towns that ask of you only to wander their streets, and
others that challenge you to closer acquaintance with their sights.
Paris or Brussels, for example, pours its bright life through
boulevard and park, and you are charmed to walk about with no urgent
call to any place in particular; but who can linger in Princes Street
of Edinburgh with the grey old castle inviting him to climb up to it,
or the Calton Hill boldly advertising itself with its mock Roman
remains? Le Puy has both the charm of the quaintest kinds of street
life and the challenge of its rare and curious monuments.
One has a restless feeling, a sense of things that "must be done,"
when one catches a glimpse of the stately old cathedral standing high
on the hill, and the massive Rock of Corneille with the great figure
of Notre Dame de France on top, or the church of St. Michel pricking
up so confidently on its isolated rock. The natural curiosity of man
is such that he cannot be content until he has clambered to these and
other high places in and around Le Puy. One makes first for the
cathedral, and a bewildering labyrinth of ancient and evil-smelling
lanes has to be wandered through before the building is reached. These
little streets are all paved with cobbles of black lava, and many of
the houses are built in part of the same material. Their dirtiness is
unqualified, and yet the people seem to live long amid their squalor,
for at every other door we note women of old years busy with their
needles and pillows making the lace, which is one of the chief
industries of the town.
III.