By a Fair River and over Terrible Mountains
The milkman, followed by his goats, was piping through the town, and the clock over the geraniums in the court was just striking eight, as we disposed of our bill—not without numerous complaints, in which every one but some English tourists joined—and wheeled the tricycle out to the street.—Though the old motherly femme-de-chambre had come to see us ride, and stopped a friend to share this pleasure, and though there were many faces at the dining-room windows, the sight of the pavé, or French paving, kept us from mounting. We walked, J—— pushing the tricycle, to the Place, past the grey town-hall, into the Rue Royale. We had been told that where La Fleur’s hotel once stood a museum was being built. To sentimental travellers, perhaps, this destruction of old landmarks was as worthy of tears as a dead donkey.—But it is easier to weep in a private post-chaise than in the open streets.
We got through the town without trouble, but we could not ride even after we went round the city-gate which Hogarth did paint, and to which we gave but a passing glance. It was only beyond the long, commonplace, busy suburb of St. Pierre that the pavé ended and the good road began.
The morning was cool, the sky grey with heavy clouds, and the south wind we were soon to dread was blowing softly. It seemed a matter of course, since we were in France, that we should come out almost at once on a little river. It ran in a long line between reeds, towards a cluster of red-roofed cottages, and here and there fishermen sat, or stood, on the banks. When it forsook its straight course, the road and the street-car track from Calais went winding with it,—grassy plains, where cows and horses wandered, stretching seaward on the right. In front we looked to a low range of blue hills, that gradually took more definite shape and colour as we rode. They were very near when we came to Guignes, a silent, modest little village, for all its royal associations and memories of the “Field of the Cloth of Gold.” On its outskirts old yellow houses rose right on the river’s edge; and when we passed, a girl in blue skirt stood in one doorway, sending a bright reflection into the grey water, and in another an old man peacefully smoked his pipe, taking it from his mouth to beg we would carry packets for him to Paris. Behind one cottage, in the garden among the apple-trees, was a large canal boat, like a French Rudder Grange. Beyond, high steep-roofed houses faced upon the street, and the stream was lined with many barges.—But just here we turned from river and street-car track to walk to the other end of the town, over pavé and up a steep hill, where we were told by a blushing young man, in foreign English, that we had but to follow the diligence then behind us if we would reach Marquise.
Though we thought this a rare jest at the time, we carried his advice out almost to the letter.—We had come to the terrible mountains for which we had been prepared in Calais. It is at this point, according to Mr. Ruskin, that France really begins, the level stretch we first crossed being virtually but part of Flanders. ’Tis a bad beginning, from a cycler’s ideal. For many miles I walked—and even J—— at times—along the white road, barren of the poplars one always expects in France, over the rolling treeless moors, where we were watched out of sight by gleaners, their white caps and dull blue skirts and sacks in pale relief against a grey blue-streaked sky; and by ploughmen, whose horses, happier than they, ate their dinners as they worked.—Always to the north of the moorland was the grey sea-line, and farther still the white cliffs of England.
Sometimes I rode, for each tiny village nestled in a valley of its own, giving us a hill to coast as well as to climb. There were occasional windmills in the distance; and close to the road large farm-houses and barns, with high sloping red roofs and huge troughs in front, where we knew cattle would come in the twilight and horses would be watered in the morning. And when Calais, with smoking chimneys, was far behind and below, we came to black crosses by the wayside and better manners among the people. The peasants now wished us good day.
At this early stage there was nothing we looked for less than trouble with the tricycle. It had been carefully put in order by the manufacturers before we left London. But now already the luggage-carrier loosened, and swung around on the backbone of the machine. Do what we would, we could not keep it straight again. In Marquise we bought a leather strap, in hopes to right it, and there also ate our lunch.—From the window of the estaminet we could see that the men and boys who came up to examine the tricycle never once touched it, while a man with a cart of casks, though it was in his way, rather than disturb it, stopped a little farther down the street, and rolled the casks along the pavement. Inside the estaminet, the brisk, tidy woman who cooked and served our coffee and omelette, kept talking of the weather and France and the tricycle, and what a wise manner of travelling was ours. My faith! from the railway one sees nothing.
But, indeed, for hours afterwards we saw as little as if we had been in a railroad train. We were conscious only of the great hills to be climbed, and of our incessant trouble with the luggage-carrier. The new strap did not mend matters. Every few minutes the carrier with the bag took an ugly swing to one side.—We never began to enjoy a coast, we never got fairly started on an up-grade, that it did not force us to stop and push it straight. And then the lamp in its turn loosened, and every few kilometres had to be hammered into place.
The other incidents of that long afternoon I remember merely because of their association with hills. It was at the top of one, where I arrived breathless, we had our first view of the dome and monument of Boulogne; it was at the bottom of another that we came to the pavé of Wimille; it was half-way on a third, up which J—— worked slowly, standing up on the pedals and leaning far over to grasp the front handle bars, while I walked, that I was stopped by an Englishman and Englishwoman.——
“Oh,” said the man, as he watched J——, “you’re making a walking tour together, I suppose?”
“We’re riding!” cried I, aghast.
“Oh!” he exclaimed, “I see; you ride by turns.”
—I was so stupefied by his impudence or ignorance that at first I could say nothing. Then,——
“We ride together,” said I; “and we’ve come from England, and we’re going to Paris and Lyons, into Savoy, and over the Mont Cenis pass.”
—And with that I turned my back and left them, open-mouthed, in the middle of the road.
But their unconscious sarcasm had its sting. The thought that, if these hills went on, I might really have to walk half-way to Italy almost brought sentiment to an end.——
“Boulogne! and ’tis but half-past three. We’ll go on,” said J——.
—As we did not even enter the town, I cannot of my own knowledge say if there is anything in it worth seeing. But from the outside we learned that it has a picturesque old city-gate under the shadow of the dome; that the people are polite, and some of the men wear baggy blue breeches; and that close to the grim grey walls is an unpaved tree-lined boulevard which is very good riding. It led to a down-grade which a woman called a terrible mountain, though she thought it might be “good for you others.”
Only the highest ranges are mountains to an Italian, but to a Frenchman the merest hillock is une montagne terrible.—The hill outside of Boulogne was steep, but unrideable only on account of the pavé. And, oh! the pavé that afternoon! We went up pavé and down pavé, and over long level stretches of pavé, until, if any one were to ask me what there is between Boulogne and Pont-de-Brique, my only answer would be pavé! We had heard of it before ever we landed in France, but its vileness went beyond our expectation. The worst of it was, that for the rest of our journey we were never quite rid of it. To be sure it was only once in a long while we actually rode over it, but then we had always to be on the look-out. We came to it in every town and village; we found bits of it in lonely country districts; it lay in wait for us on hillsides. The French roads without the pavé are the marvels of symmetry, cleanliness, and order Mark Twain calls them. If they are not jack-planed and sand-papered, they are at least swept every day. With the pavé, they are the ruin of a good machine and a better temper. And yet, all things considered, France is the cycler’s promised land.
By the time we reached Pont-de-Brique the luggage-carrier hung on by one screw. Fortunately we found a carpenter in a café, and he and J——went to work.—In the meantime I saw, under the shade of a clump of trees, a green cart with windows and chimney, a horse grazing near by, and a man and woman sitting in front of a fire kindled on the grass. I walked towards the cart.——
“Kushto divvus, Pal te Pen” (“Good-day, brother and sister”), said I.
“What?” asked the woman, without looking up from the tin-pan she was mending.
“Kushto divvus,” said I, louder; adding, “Me shom une Romany chi” (“I’m a Gipsy”).
“Comment?” she repeated peevishly. “I do not understand you.”
—The man still tinkered at his pots.
I chaffed them in my best Romany, but they took no further heed. I tried French. I said I was a Gipsy come from over the seas, with news of their brothers in America.——
“But we’re not Gipsies,” said they; “we live in Boulogne, and we’re busy.”
—I declare I never was so snubbed in my life!
’Twas but six quarters of an hour on foot to Neuchâtel, the carpenter told us.—The road in the late afternoon was full of fine carriages and shabby carts; and in sight of Neuchâtel we passed men and women going home from work. We asked one man if there was an inn in the town.——
“Il-y-a-douze,” he answered, with great effort, and hurried on, so that we had not time to tell him we too could speak English.
We wondered so small a town should be so rich in inns. But douze, it seemed, was the English way of saying deux. A woman standing in the first doorway assured us there were but two—one opposite the church, and another, the Pas de Cœur—we understood her to say, around the corner.—At the foot of the hill we found the first, with Boarding-House in large black letters on its newly whitewashed walls. As there never was any sentiment in a Boarding-House except in Dr. Holmes’ books, or any cheapness in a foreign hotel with an English sign, we looked for the other inn. But when we had wheeled up the street and down the street, until its want of heart became ours, we gave up the search and returned to the Boarding-House.