Part 33

The rest of our Sunday was by no means so successful, for the _fête du jour et du soir_ began soon after our 11 A.M. _déjeûner_, and lasted till about 10 P.M., when the lights in most of the paper-lanterns had burnt out, and people had gone home from the Casino and the promenade to their hotels or lodgings. I am old-fashioned enough to like a quiet Sunday; but here, when the place is _en fête_, that is out of the question,--at any rate, if you are a guest at one of the hotels which, as they almost all do, faces on the “Avenue Gueneau de Mussy.” That name will probably remind some of your readers of the able and popular doctor of the Orleans family, who accompanied their exile, lived in England during the Empire in Mortimer Street, Cavendish Square, and was popular in London society. After 1870 he returned to France, and, it seems, rediscovered these waters, or, at any rate, made them the fashionable resort of patients in need of arsenical treatment. In gratitude, his name has been given to this main avenue of La Bourboule, which runs the whole length of the town, parallel to the River Dordogne, which comes rushing down the valley from Mont Dore at a pace which I have never seen water attain except in the rapids below Niagara, in which that strongest and rashest of swimmers, Captain Webb, lost his life. The Avenue, though parallel with, is some fifty yards from the river, and the intervening space is planted with rows of trees, under which many donkeys and hacks stand for the convenience of visitors. The opposite bank of the Dordogne, which is crossed by two bridges, rises abruptly, and is crowned by the two rival casinos, with the most imposing hotel of the place between them, where (I am told) you pay 5 fr. a day extra for the convenience of the only lift in La Bourboule! The fête of last Sunday was given by the old Casino, and commenced directly after _déjeûner_ with a gathering in the rooms and in front of the Casino on the terrace, where the guests sat at small tables consuming black coffee, absinthe, and other drinks, and strolling now and then into the billiard-room, or the room in which the _jeu aux petits chevaux_, and some other game of chance which I did not recognise, were in full swing. There is an inner room where baccarat and roulette are going on, supposed to be only open to tickets bought from the^ authorities, but which a young Englishman, my neighbour at the _table d’hôte_, tells me he found no difficulty in entering without a ticket. The rest of the fête, consisting chiefly of donkey-races, climbing greasy poles, and fishing half-francs out of meal tubs with the mouth, came off in a small park and plateau on the hillside above the Casino.

I used to enjoy donkey-races as a boy, when at our country feasts each boy rode his neighbour’s donkey, and the last past the post was the winner, and should probably have gone up the hill to witness a French race, but that I found that here each boy rides his own donkey, and the first past the post wins. This takes all the fun out of the race, so I abstained. There were a few second-rate fireworks after dark, and the Casino and most of the hotels were prettily lighted, and the trees hung with yellow paper lanterns which looked like big oranges, but to the Englishman, more or less accustomed to the great Brock’s performances, the illumination business was very flat.

Comité des Fêtes. 17th July 1893.

An Englishman can scarcely avoid the danger of having his national vanity fed in this La Bourboule. A new hotel is being built on a fine site above the Dordogne, just beyond the new Casino, and I hear on the best authority that the proprietor means to have it furnished from top to bottom by Messrs. Maple. As this will involve paying a duty of from 30 to 50 per cent on the articles imported, it is not easy to see where the profit can come in, as the most prejudiced John Bull will scarcely deny that native French furniture is about as good, and not very much dearer than English. I can only account for it by the desire of all purveyors here--from the chief hotel-keepers to the dealers in the pretty Auvergne jewellery and the donkey-women--to get us as customers,--not, perhaps, so much from love or admiration for us, as because we have so much less power of remonstrance or resistance to their charges. Unless he sees some flagrant overcharge in his hotel bill, the Briton does not care to air his colloquial French in discussing items with the former, who only meet him with polite shrugs; and as for the others, they at once fall back upon an Auvergnese _patois_, at least as different from ordinary French as a Durham miner’s vernacular is from a West countryman’s. What satisfaction can come of remonstrating about 2 fr., even in faultless grammatical French, when it only brings on you a torrent of explanation of which you cannot understand one word in ten?

But the desire to make us feel at home has another--I may almost say a pathetic--side. Thus the _Comité des fêtes_ spares no effort to meet our supposed necessities, and has not only provided tennis-grounds and other conveniences for _le sport_, but for the last ten days has been preparing for a grand _chasse au renard_, as a special compliment, I am told, to the English visitors. The grand feature of the hunt is a _recherché_ luncheon in an attractive spot in the forest, at the end of the run, at which the Mayor presides, and to which the other civic dignitaries go in full costume, accompanied by a chief huntsman and two _chasseurs_ with _tridents_--of all strange equipments for a fox-hunt! For this luncheon the charge is 5 fr.; but, so far as I can learn, you may join the chase without partaking. The question naturally occurs: “How if Renard will not run that way, or consent to die within easy distance of the luncheon?” and the answer of the Mayor would, I suppose, be Dogberry’s: “Let him go, and thank God you are rid of a knave.” But, in any case, the _Comité des fêtes_ are prepared for such a mishap, for they have had four foxes ready for some days, _in a large oven_--of all places in the world! and one of these will surely be induced to take the proper course, which is carefully marked out. As two of them have come from Switzerland, and there cannot be much to occupy or amuse Swiss foxes in an oven, except quarrelling with their French cousins, I should doubt as to the condition of the lot on the day of the hunt, even if all survive to that date. This, I am sorry to say, cannot be fixed as yet, for it seems that no English visitor has been found who will take a ticket; so I fear my “course” may be over before the _chasse_ comes off. In that case I shall always bear a grudge against your lively contemporary, the _Daily Graphic_, who, it seems, printed an illustrated account of the _chasse_ of last summer, to which the present abstinence of the British sportsman to-day is generally attributed. Can we wonder at the want of understanding between the two peoples when one comes across such strange pieces of farce as this, meant, I believe, for a genuine compliment and advance towards good-fellowship?

I wish I could speak hopefully upon more serious things than the _chasse au renard_; but in more than one direction things seem to me to be drifting, or going back, under the Republic. E.g. a friend of mine, who prefers smoking the cigars he is used to, ordered a box from his tobacconist in Manchester, who entrusted them to the Continental Parcels Delivery Company on 15th June. Next day, though notice had been given of payment of all charges on delivery, they were stopped at the Gare du Nord, at Paris, where the station-master refused to forward them until he got an undertaking in writing from my friend to pay all charges. This was sent at once, but produced no effect for three days, when another letter arrived--not now from the station-master, but from a person signing himself “Contributions Agent”--saying that undertaking No. 1 was not in proper form. Thereupon, undertaking No. 2 is sent; but still nothing happens, and my friend had almost given up hope of getting his cigars when he bethought him of advising with a deputy, who was luckily staying here in the same hotel. That gentleman seemed not at all surprised, but offered to write to his secretary in Paris to go to the Gare du Nord and look after the box. The offer was, of course, thankfully accepted, with the result that the cigars were sent on at once, with the following bill: “Droit d’entrée, 38 fr. 77 c.; timbre d’acquit à caution, 7 c.; toile d’emballage--consignation, 40 fr. 27 c.: total, 79 fr. 11 c.”--which about doubled the original cost. This instance of the slovenliness (if not worse) of a railway company and the Customs has been quite eclipsed, however, by the Post Office. Another friend posted a letter here to his sister in England, but unluckily in the forenoon, when the next departure was for Bordeaux. To that town, accordingly, his letter went, and thence to America, whence in due course--i.e. at the end of three weeks--it reached its destination in England. Again, a lady here received several dividends more than a week ago, which she forwarded to her husband in England in a registered letter. This has never reached him; and the Post-Office officials here are making inquiries (very leisurely ones) as to what has become of it. Then the clergyman of the church here, having a payment to make in his parish in England, sent the money, and got the official receipt several posts before he received a reminder from the same official (dated a week earlier than the receipt) that the payment was due; and lastly, _pour comble_, as they say here, a county J.P. has never received at all the formal summons from his High Sheriff, sent some weeks since, to serve on the grand jury at the coming Assizes! Whatever the consequences may be of utterly ignoring such summons, he has thus incurred them, which, for all I know, may be equal to the penalties of præmunire. But seriously, I fear the incubus of the Republican superstition, as you have defined it, is spreading fast and far in this splendid land. The centralisation fostered by the Second Empire, and favoured by the Republic for the last twenty years, seems to have demoralised the national nerve-centre at Paris under the shadow of the Eiffel Tower--which,

Like a tall bully, lifts its head and lies,

--and to be spreading its baleful influence through the Departments. At any rate, that is the only explanation I can suggest for the marked deterioration and present flabbiness of all Government departments with which the foreign visitor comes in contact. I am glad to be able, however, to record, before closing this, that the registered letter containing dividend warrants mentioned above has reached its destination in England.

Dogs and Flowers, La Bourboule, 24th July.

During the greater part of our stay, the theatre here was devoted to comic and other operatic performances, which I did not care for, and so scarcely glanced at the play-bills, posted up daily in our hotel; and was not even tempted by the announcement of “une seule représentation extraordinaire” of Le Songe d’une Nuit d’Eté, as I did not like to have my idea of A Midsummer Night’s Dream disordered by a French metrical version. When too late, I sorely regretted it, as, had I even read the caste, I should have gone, and been able to give you a trustworthy report,--for the three principal characters were William Shakespeare--by M. Dereims, of the opera (who would sing his great song of _La Reine de Saba_)--Falstaff, and Queen Elizabeth! Next morning I catechised a young Englishman, whose report was, as near as I can recollect, as follows: “Well, there wasn’t much of our _Midsummer Night’s Dream_ in it, no Oberon and Titania, or Bottom, or all that fairy business. Queen Elizabeth and one of her ladies went out at night disguised, to a sort of Casino or Cremorne Gardens” [what would Secretary Cecil have said to such an escapade?], “and coming away they met Shakespeare and Falstaff, and had a good time; and Falstaff sang a song which brought the house down. Then, as the Queen falls in love with Shakespeare, they get some girl to marry him right away.” One more lost opportunity, and to think that I shall probably never get another chance!--

There is a flower that shines so bright,

They call it marigold-a:

And he that wold not when he might,

He shall not’ when he wold-a.

As you are fond of dog-lore, here is a sample from Auvergne. Just opposite our hotel lives the young Scotch (not Irish, as I think I called him last week) doctor. His wife owns a clever pug, whose friendship any self-respecting dog would be anxious, I should say, to cultivate. One of the rather scratch-pack gathered for the coming fox-chase, who wandered as they pleased about the town, seems to have shared my view, for every morning, between _café_ and _déjeûner_, he came and paid a visit of about five minutes to Mrs. Gilchrist’s pug, in the doctor’s vestibule, always open to man and dog. At the end of his call, he trotted off down the avenue to whatever other business he might have in hand. Now, his visits could not have been amatory, as both are of the masculine sex, nor could they have been gastronomic, for he invariably refused the food which Mrs. Gilchrist offered him. What other conclusion is possible than that he came to talk over the gossip afloat in the dog-world of La Bourboule?

Lastly, as to the excursions. These are numerous, and very interesting in all ways, for you drive through great, sad pine-forests (in which I was astonished to see many of the trees gray with the weeping moss which makes the Louisiana and Texas forests so melancholy) and breezy heaths all aglow with wild flowers, getting every now and then indescribably glorious glimpses of the rich plain which stretches away from this backbone of Central France to the Alps. The flora is quite beyond me, but I recognised many varieties of heart’s-ease, fox-gloves, gentians, amongst them an exquisite blue variety, and the air was often scented with meadow-sweet or wild-thyme. Then almost every mountain-top is crowned by a peculiarly shaped block of dark rock, which looks as if some huge saurian, disgusted with a changing world, had crawled up there to die and get petrified. They must, however, have been even bigger than the _Atlanlosaurus immanis_, the biggest of the family yet found, I believe. I well remember the delight of Dr. Agnew, of New York, when the American geologists came upon its thigh bone, two feet longer than that of any European monster. It had become agate, and I have a scarf-pin made of a polished fragment, and presented to me by the triumphant doctor. I cannot tell you what these rocks really are, as I made no ascent, preferring nowadays, like dear Lowell, “to make my ascents by telescope.”

But the human interest of the excursions, as usual, far exceeds the botanical or geological. The chief of these is the “Tour d’Auvergne,” the seat of the Count who enlisted to repel invasion, but never would take a commission from Republic or Napoleon, and died in battle, the “premier grenadier de la France.” There is nothing left of his tower except the foundations, and a dungeon on the high rock, on which a native woman sells photographs and relics, quite as genuine, I should say, as most such. Opposite, across a deep valley, rises another rock crowned by a chapel, which is approached by a steep path, up which once a year goes a procession, past the seven stations, at each of which there is a crucifix, and on the lowest a figure the size of life. Christianity, they say, has died down very low in Auvergne. I should doubt it, as I saw no sign of defacement, either here or on any of the roadside crosses, which are everywhere. I fear we could hardly say as much if we had them--as I wish we had--on every English high-road. On the walls of the village which clusters round the side of the keep, a placard (of which I enclose a copy) interested me much. The three Municipal Councillors there give their reasons for resigning their seats on the Council. On the whole, I think they were wrong, and should have stayed and “toughed it out.” I should like to know how it strikes you. You will see that the poster bears a stamp. Might not our Chancellor of the Exchequer raise a tidy sum that way? What a lump Pears, Hudson, Epps, or Van Houten and Co. would have to pay, and earn the thanks of a grateful country too! But I must not try your patience or space further, so will only note the Roman remains at Mont Dore, another health-resort of the Dordogne Valley, four miles above La Bourboule, which are worth going all the way to see, as I would advise any of your readers to do who are looking out for an interesting countryside, with as fine air as any in the world, in which to spend their coming holidays.

Dutch Boys, The Hague, 1st May 1894.

Much may be said both for and against breaking one’s good resolutions, but no one, I should think, will deny the merit of making them. Well, sir, before starting for my Whitsuntide jaunt this year, I resolved firmly that nothing should induce me to send you any more letters over this signature. Have I not been trying your patience, and the long-suffering of your readers any time these thirty years, with my crude first impressions of cities and their inhabitants, from Constantinople to the Upper Missouri? “Surely,” I said to myself, “sat prata biberunt.” What can young England in the last decade of the century--who enjoy, or at any rate read, _Dodo, and The Fabian Essays, and The Heavenly Twins_--care or want to know about the notions of an old fogey, whose faiths--or fads, as they would call them--on social and political problems were formed, if not stereotyped, in the first half? What, then, has shaken this wise resolve? You might guess for a week and never come within miles of the answer. It was the sight of a group of Dutch boys playing leap-frog in front of this hotel, and the contrast which came unbidden into my head between the chances of Dutch and English boys in this matter, and the different use they make of them.

In front of this hotel lies the large open space, now planted with trees, and about the size of Grosvenor Square, which is called “Tournooiveld,” and was in the Middle Ages the tilt-yard of the doughty young Dutch candidates for knighthood. The portion of this square immediately in front of the hotel, about 40 yards deep and 150 broad, is marked off from the rest by a semicircular row of granite posts, rather over three feet in height, and three to four yards apart, two of them being close to lampposts, but the line otherwise unbroken. No chain connects these posts, and they have no spike on the top of them. As I stood at the door the morning after my arrival, admiring the fine linden-trees in full foliage, enter four Dutch boys from the left, who, without a word, broke at once into single file, and did “follow my leader” over all the posts till they got to the end on the extreme right, and disappeared quietly down a side street. Well, you will say, wouldn’t four English boys have done just the same % and I answer, Yes, certainly, so far as playing leap-frog over the posts goes; but they would have to come out here to find such a row of posts in the middle of a city. At any rate, in the city with which I am best acquainted in England, the few posts there fit for leap-frog are connected with chains and have spikes on their tops. Moreover, do I not pass daily up a flight of steps, fenced on either side by a broad iron banister, which was obviously intended by Providence for passing boys to get a delicious slide down 1 But, sir, no English boy on his way to school or on an errand has ever slid down those banisters, for the British Bumble has had prohibitory knobs placed on them at short intervals for no possible reason except to prevent boys sliding down. The faith that all material things should be made to serve the greatest good of the greatest number is surely as widely held in England as in Holland, and yet, here are the tops of these Dutch posts _culotté_, if I may say so, worn smooth and polished by the many generations of boys who have enjoyed leap-frog over them, while the British posts and banisters have given pleasure to no human being but Bumble from the day they were put up.

But it was not of the Dutch posts but the Dutch boys that I intended to write, for they certainly struck me as differing in two particulars from our boys, thus. Two of the posts, as I have said, are so close to the lamp-posts that you can’t vault over them without coming full butt against the lamp-post on the other side. When the leader came to the first of them he did not pass it, as I expected, but just vaulted on to the top, and sat there while he passed his leg between the-post and the lamp-post, and then jumped down and went on to the next. Every one of the rest followed his example gravely and without a word; whereas, had they been English boys, there would have been a bolt past the leader as soon as he was seated, and a race with much shouting for the lead over the remaining pillars. I have been studying the Dutch boy ever since, and am convinced that he is the most silent and most “thorough” of any of his species I have ever come across; and the boy is father to the man in both qualities. On Whit-Monday this city was crowded, all the citizens and country-folk from the suburbs being in the streets and gardens; the galleries and museums, oddly enough, being closed for the day. Walking about amongst them the silence was really rather provoking. At last I took to counting the couples we met who were obviously just married, or courting, and ought at any rate to have had something to say to each other. Out of eleven couples in one street, only one were talking, though all looked quite happy and content. It is the same everywhere. As we neared the landing-place at the Hook of Holland, our steamer’s bows were too far out, and a rope had to be thrown from the shore. There were at least twenty licensed porters waiting for us, in clean white jackets,--one of these, without a word, just coiled a rope and flung it. It was missed twice by the sailor in our bows, and fell into the water, out of which the thrower drew it, and just coiled and threw it again without a word of objurgation or remonstrance, and the third time successfully. Not one of the white-jacketed men who stood round had uttered a syllable of advice or comment; but what a Babel would have arisen in like case at the pier-heads of Calais or Dieppe, or for that matter at Dover or Liverpool. No wonder that William the Silent is the typical hero of Dutchmen; there are two statues of him in the best sites in this city, and half a dozen portraits in the best places in the galleries. Hosea Biglow’s--

Talk, if you keep it, pays its keep,

But gabble’s the short road to ruin.

’Tis gratis (gals half price), but cheap

At no price when it hinders doing,--