Voyagers and Voyeurs - Travels in 19th Century France

By Nigel Woodhead

A treasure-chest from the golden age of travel. Annotated, humorous highlights from over 100 eye-witness accounts (diaries, journals, collected letters, reports, travel guides) written between 1750 & 1918. By some of the most famous English and American authors of the 18th and 19th centuries, plus a host of eccentric parsons, antiquarians and ladies of independent spirit. A huge read!

• Language: English
• Publisher: FishesEye
• Release date: Dec 30, 2009
• ISBN: 9781301867349

Book preview

Introduction

With the end of the Napoleonic Wars, and the invention of the steam locomotive and steam packboat, European travel, for travel’s sake, blossomed into a golden age of Innocents Abroad. The Anglo-Saxon world opened its eyes to its foreign neighbours, of whom the closest, and often the strangest, were the French.

This book brings together, in annotated form, highlights - sometimes shocking or outspoken, often humorous - selected from over 100 classic travel accounts (diaries, journals, collected letters, reports, travel guides) written between the French Revolution and the First World War.

In these extracts you will come to know several generations of early European travellers. In their diaries, their letters home, their guide books, they recorded a series of unique impressions of the curious customs, the strange sights, sounds and smells of France. Complaining about the waiters, the bureaucracy, the plumbing; admiring the cheeseboards, the cabarets and pretty girls…

Pre-revolutionary trail finders, Smollett, Sterne and Thicknesse; veterans of the Napoleonic Wars and the days of Empire; witnesses of the Commune of Paris and the Naughty Nineties; and those who shared France’s darkest hours during the Great War.

Plus a colourful and eccentric host of itinerant parsons, amateur antiquarians, zealous philanthropists, well-heeled aristocrats, formidable ladies, dandies, libertines, misfits and prudes.

The themes developed here show a remarkable, almost obsessional continuity of interest in certain domains, ones which contemporary writers still exploit. French morality and immorality; their cuisine; their culture.

If these eccentric, often bigoted originales were the self-styled ambassadors of the Anglo-Saxon world, little wonder that the French came to some cutting conclusions themselves as to what manner of barbarous civilisation lay beyond the western ocean, or even the Channel.

Editorial Notes

Dates given in the bibliography correspond to those of publication. Dates referenced to extracts may differ, where the author gives explicit dates for events described.

Spellings are as per the original texts, and are thus sometimes eccentric, archaic and/or inconsistent, though not without a certain charm. Nismes versus Nîmes, for instance. Cotre Rote… Champaign…

Debarking Mad

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Abroad Begins at Calais

It was an age of great expectations. But British expectations of the French were not so great. After centuries of bitter territorial disputes, in Europe and the new colonies, it was only natural that psychological barriers to free travel were every bit as formidable as a Channel crossing.

For many Britons, their first glimpse of the French was via the pages of Caesar’s Gallic Wars – rebellious tribespeople, with pagan customs, in dire need of civilisation. And the first impressions of a foreign country, for most travellers, especially those from England, began at Calais, Boulogne, Dieppe, or one of the other Channel ports. So near and yet so far from the familiar. No English or Irish theme pubs, no bilingual sign-posts or announcements. And those early impressions were hard to shake off – either one was fascinated, or horrified. There was little room for middle ground.

The closest port of entry, and longtime an English enclave, was the port of Calais, opposite the cliffs of Dover. A windy, bleak town for much of the year, yet it had its admirers. According to the famous legend, Mary Queen of Scots once said that when she died the name of Calais would be found engraved on her heart. There is a dissident school of thought that supposes she must have been misheard, and had really claimed a nostalgic longing for Chantilly, Chardonnary, Chablis – anywhere but Calais, surely.

Curiously, more than a few shared Mary’s predilection for the last foothold of English France. At the start of the Age of Romanticism, Calais became the perfect place of exile for bankrupted or disgraced Britons. Among the more notable economic refugees who came to Calais, indeed one of the trend-setters, was Lady Emma Hamilton, former lover of Lord Nelson. Ignoring Nelson’s maxim that you must hate a Frenchman as you hate the devil. She died in a humble house in Calais’ Rue Française in 1815, and received a pauper’s burial in the churchyard of St Pierre.

And as the 19th century progressed, witnessed the high water mark of a rising tide of English invaders. The grand Age of Tourism had arrived. For reasons of convenience if nothing more, English tourists were landing in Calais, in increasing numbers. The railway link from the coast to Paris, from 1848, must have been a great incentive to visit, much reducing the need to use the uncomfortable carriages and hotels on the road in between. And even the drab, flat coast of the Pas de Calais had its consolations, repackaged and sanctioned by the most eminent physicians of the day as a place to bathe in the somewhat dubiously beneficial bracing salt waters, whilst taking deep breaths of the stiff sea breeze.

Irish Tory MP, Richard Boyle Bernard described the burghers of Calais thus in 1815:

"The tide being out on our arrival before Calais, we could not get into the harbour, and with that impatience to leave a ship, which is natural to landsmen, we were glad to accept the offers of some boats which hastened around the packet, to offer their services in landing us; this, however, they did not exactly perform, being too large to get very near the shore, to which we were each of us carried by three Frenchmen, one to each leg, and a third behind. This service I had often had performed by one of my fellow-subjects, and it seemed to verify the old saying, that 'one Englishman is equal to three Frenchmen.'"

Each Monsieur however insisted on a shilling for his services, and the boatmen five shillings from every passenger. But I had travelled enough to know, that extortion on such occasions is so general, as not to be peculiarly the characteristic of the inhabitants of any country, and if ever there is pleasure in being cheated, it is surely on such an occasion as that of exchanging the misery of a ship for the comforts of the most indifferent inn.

The arrival for the first time in a foreign country, of a person who has never before quitted his own, is an epoch of considerable moment in his life. Most things are different from those he has been accustomed to, and the force of first impressions is then stronger than, perhaps, at almost any other period. We are, in general, not much disposed to like any custom, or mode of dress, which is greatly at variance with what we have been long used to, and the enormous height of the bonnets in France produces, in my opinion, an effect far from pleasing; the ladies, by their strange costume, out-top many of the military."

Hester Lynch Piozzi, an acquaintance of both Boswell and Dr Johnson, had this to say about the local coachmen in 1784:

Postillions with greasy night-caps, and vast jack-boots, driving your carriage harnessed with ropes, and adorned with sheep-skins, can never fail to strike an Englishman at his first going abroad.

In 1802, English political dissident Henry Redhead Yorke travelled to Paris to meet the American statesman Thomas Paine. After 14 hours on board the packet boat from Dover he disembarked at Calais:

We were then conducted to a little pig-stye beside the gates of the town, where we underwent a pleasant ceremony called La visite de la personne. Four of the passengers could only be admitted at a time. Two officers of the Customs passed their hands over the ladies' dresses, and contented themselves asking the gentlemen whether they had any contraband goods about them. After this we were allowed to enter the cabaret, a filthy hovel, full of fishermen drinking beer and gin. There we were regaled with coffee and bread, so disgustingly bad that we could not touch either, and for which each person was charged three English shillings.

Sedition was a subject close to Yorke’s heart – he had been tried for it himself. Calais had come under suspicion during the Reign of Terror, he recounts:

"The Committee of Public Safety accused the inhabitants of Anglomania, and ordered the ferocious Joseph Le Bon to visit this guiltless town and re-organise the constituted authorities. During those cruel days the visit of a constitutional deputy was really the visit of a public executioner, and in the dismal catalogue of men who were distinguished by unfeeling severity, Le Bon was foremost. He had just perpetrated the most horrible cruelties at Arras before proceeding to Calais. The following anecdote will delineate the fierceness and brutality of his character.

Two young ladies of Arras, neither of whom had attained the age of twenty, practising on the pianoforte the same morning that the news of the surrender of Valenciennes reached their city, Le Bon happened to pas their window and paused to listen. They were playing the tune, Ça Ira, a most revolutionary air, which one would have imagined was a proof of their civism.

Nevertheless, by Le Bon's orders, these beautiful girls were arrested, tried, and condemned the next day, and, notwithstanding their youth and innocence, were executed for playing on the piano on the day the news of a Republican defeat had arrived, a defeat at which they evidently rejoiced. "

Another commentator had this to say about Calais, anonymously, in 1815:

At Dover I heard only French; here I was stunned with English. The house was absolutely filled with young men of the class called travellers. Some few, perhaps, were here on business, but I could easily gather from the conversation, that by far the greater number came from England to see the world with the intention of taking a passing glance at Paris, but recollecting the inconvenient bustle which their countrymen were in who happened to be in France last year, and reading with holy faith the terrific predictions and authentic letters of the Morning Chronicle which arrives here daily; they were become so alarmed at what them French fellows" may do, that they wisely resolved not to put themselves into danger at all, but stay close to the shore, where they can get aboard at a minute's warning; have out their jollification, and shew the wondering (but not offended) waiters, that one Englishman can spend money faster than six Mounseers. It was no little consolation too, that they could abuse the French, ad libitum, without any risk of a retort courteous, as not a soul in the establishment of M. Messe Meurice understood a word of English, except the Commissionaire, a sort of running porter, who will trudge to all parts of the town for three half-pence.

I was much struck with the appearance of the kitchen in this inn. It is the grand thoroughfare from the bureau to what we should call the coffee-room. Mine hostess sits in state at her desk, with a silk gown padded round the hips, three or four handkerchiefs over her neck and shoulders, of which the corners hang down her back, one higher than the other, with mathematical and Quaker-like exactness; her hair powdered and turned up over a cushion on the forehead, with a high-crowned cap frilled under the chin, and two long streamers from the top behind; she has a profusion of lace round her head and apron, and altogether looks very motherly, clean, comfortable, and respectable. She rules the roast here with great decorum, and her dominion is tolerably extensive. I saw eight couple of fowls, four turkies, and several ducks all at the same fire, which was of enormous extent. Three men, four women, and several boys were occupied at the different stoves which surround the room; and there seemed to be as much cooking, as at one of the London Tavern dinners for ten times the number of eaters. I was informed that nothing is ever brought on the table cold in France, and that the English are thought to have preposterous tastes who can voluntarily dine on cold meat. The floor and walls of the kitchen were not very delicate, but the actual cooking apparatus is punctiliously clean. From the bustle and seeming importance of all who were engaged in preparing dinner, one may be aware that Gastrology is a very important science in this country."

In1854 John Murray’s Handbook for Travellers in France dismissed the environs of Calais as a very barren and unpicturesque district. But the weather was generally agreed to be benign. The Cunard Souvenir Guide, from the early 20th century describes Calais, as boasting an agreeable and exhilarating climate.

The neighbouring port of Boulogne lay on the most important route between London and Paris. Scottish novelist and dramatist Tobias Smollett took his wife to France for health reasons, following the death of his daughter, in 1763. He had this to say about the reception his ship received in Boulogne:

At three in the morning the master came down, and told us we were just off the harbour of Boulogne; but the wind blowing off shore, he could not possibly enter, and therefore advised us to go ashore in the boat. I went upon deck to view the coast, when he pointed to the place where he said Boulogne stood, declaring at the same time we were within a short mile of the harbour's mouth. The morning was cold and raw, and I knew myself extremely subject to catch cold; nevertheless we were all so impatient to be ashore, that I resolved to take his advice. The boat was already hoisted out, and we went on board of it, after I had paid the captain and gratified his crew. We had scarce parted from the ship, when we perceived a boat coming towards us from the shore; and the master gave us to understand, it was coming to carry us into the harbour. When I objected to the trouble of shifting from one boat to another in the open sea, which (by the bye) was a little rough; he said it was a privilege which the watermen of Boulogne had, to carry all passengers ashore, and that this privilege he durst not venture to infringe. This was no time nor place to remonstrate. The French boat came alongside half filled with later, and we were handed from the one to the other. We were then obliged to lie upon our oars, till the captain's boat went on board and returned from the ship with a packet of letters. We were afterwards rowed a long league, in a rough sea, against wind and tide, before we reached the harbour, where we landed, benumbed with cold, and the women excessively sick: from our landing-place we were obliged to walk very near a mile to the inn where we purposed to lodge, attended by six or seven men and women, bare-legged, carrying our baggage. This boat cost me a guinea, besides paying exorbitantly the people who carried our things; so that the inhabitants of Dover and of Boulogne seem to be of the same kidney, and indeed they understand one another perfectly well.

One feels that Smollett cared little for the town:

"On the other side of the harbour, opposite to the Lower Town, there is a house built, at a considerable expence, by a general officer, who lost his life in the late war. Never was situation more inconvenient, unpleasant, and unhealthy. It stands on the edge of an ugly morass formed by the stagnant water left by the tide in its retreat: the very walks of the garden are so moist, that, in the driest weather, no person can make a tour of it, without danger of the rheumatism. Besides, the house is altogether inaccessible, except at low water, and even then the carriage must cross the harbour, the wheels up to the axle-tree in mud: nay, the tide rushes in so fast, that unless you seize the time to a minute, you will be in danger of perishing. The apartments of this house are elegantly fitted up, but very small; and the garden, notwithstanding its unfavourable situation, affords a great quantity of good fruit…

The air of Boulogne is cold and moist, and, I believe, of consequence unhealthy. Last winter the frost, which continued six weeks in London, lasted here eight weeks without intermission; and the cold was so intense, that, in the garden of the Capuchins, it split the bark of several elms from top to bottom. On our arrival here we found all kinds of fruit more backward than in England. The frost, in its progress to Britain, is much weakened in crossing the sea. The atmosphere, impregnated with saline particles, resists the operation of freezing. Hence, in severe winters, all places near the sea-side are less cold than more inland districts. This is the reason why the winter is often more mild at Edinburgh than at London. A very great degree of cold is required to freeze salt water. Indeed it will not freeze at all, until it has deposited all its salt. It is now generally allowed among philosophers, that water is no more than ice thawed by heat, either solar, or subterranean, or both; and that this heat being expelled, it would return to its natural consistence. This being the case, nothing else is required for the freezing of water, than a certain degree of cold, which may be generated by the help of salt, or spirit of nitre, even under the line. I would propose, therefore, that an apparatus of this sort should be provided in every ship that goes to sea; and in case there should be a deficiency of fresh water on board, the seawater may be rendered potable, by being first converted into ice.

The air of Boulogne is not only loaded with a great evaporation from the sea, increased by strong gales of wind from the West and South-West, which blow almost continually during the greatest part of the year; but it is also subject to putrid vapours, arising from the low marshy ground in the neighbourhood of the harbour, which is every tide overflowed with seawater. This may be one cause of the scrofula and rickets, which are two prevailing disorders among the children in Boulogne. But I believe the former is more owing to the water used in the Lower Town, which is very hard and unwholsome. It curdles with soap, gives a red colour to the meat that is boiled in it, and, when drank by strangers, never fails to occasion pains in the stomach and bowels; nay, sometimes produces dysenteries. In all appearance it is impregnated with nitre, if not with something more mischievous: we know that mundic, or pyrites, very often contains a proportion of arsenic, mixed with sulphur, vitriol, and mercury. Perhaps it partakes of the acid of some coal mine; for there are coal works in this district."

Sea air, Smollett thought, was most unhealthy:

That the air of Boulogne encourages putrefaction, appears from the effect it has upon butcher's meat, which, though the season is remarkably cold, we can hardly keep four-and-twenty hours in the coolest part of the house.

Though if the living was not always easy, at least it was cheap, at least by British standards:

"Living here is pretty reasonable; and the markets are tolerably supplied. The beef is neither fat nor firm; but very good for soup, which is the only use the French make of it. The veal is not so white, nor so well fed, as the English veal; but it is more juicy, and better tasted. The mutton and pork are very good. We buy our poultry alive, and fatten them at home. Here are excellent turkies, and no want of game: the hares, in particular, are very large, juicy, and high-flavoured. The best part of the fish caught on this coast is sent post to Paris, in chasse-marines, by a company of contractors, like those of Hastings in Sussex. Nevertheless, we have excellent soles, skaite, flounders and whitings, and sometimes mackarel. The oysters are very large, coarse, and rank. There is very little fish caught on the French coast, because the shallows run a great way from the shore; and the fish live chiefly in deep water: for this reason the fishermen go a great way out to sea, sometimes even as far as the coast of England. Notwithstanding all the haste the contractors can make, their fish in the summer is very often spoiled before it arrives at Paris; and this is not to be wondered at, considering the length of the way, which is near one hundred and fifty miles. At best it must be in such a mortified condition, that no other people, except the negroes on the coast of Guinea, would feed upon it.

The wine commonly drank at Boulogne comes from Auxerre, is very small and meagre, and may be had from five to eight sols a bottle; that is, from two-pence halfpenny to fourpence. The French inhabitants drink no good wine; nor is there any to be had, unless you have recourse to the British wine-merchants here established, who deal in Bourdeaux wines, brought hither by sea for the London market. I have very good claret from a friend, at the rate of fifteen-pence sterling a bottle; and excellent small beer as reasonable as in England. I don't believe there is a drop of generous Burgundy in the place; and the aubergistes impose upon us shamefully, when they charge it at two livres a bottle. There is a small white wine, called preniac, which is very agreeable and very cheap. All the brandy which I have seen in Boulogne is new, fiery, and still-burnt. This is the trash which the smugglers import into England: they have it for about ten-pence a gallon. Butcher's meat is sold for five sols, or two-pence halfpenny a pound, and the pound here consists of eighteen ounces. I have a young turkey for thirty sols; a hare for four-and-twenty; a couple of chickens for twenty sols, and a couple of good soles for the same price. Before we left England, we were told that there was no fruit in Boulogne; but we have found ourselves agreeably disappointed in this particular. The place is well supplied with strawberries, cherries, gooseberries, corinths, peaches, apricots, and excellent pears. I have eaten more fruit this season, than I have done for several years. There are many well-cultivated gardens in the skirts of the town; particularly one belonging to our friend Mrs. B--, where we often drink tea in a charming summer-house built on a rising ground, which commands a delightful prospect of the sea. We have many obligations to this good lady, who is a kind neighbour, an obliging friend, and a most agreeable companion: she speaks English prettily, and is greatly attached to the people and the customs of our nation. They use wood for their common fewel, though, if I were to live at Boulogne, I would mix it with coal, which this country affords. Both the wood and the coal are reasonable enough. I am certain that a man may keep house in Boulogne for about one half of what it will cost him in London; and this is said to be one of the dearest places in France…

Among the lower class of people at Boulogne, those who take the lead, are the sea-faring men, who live in one quarter, divided into classes, and registered for the service of the king. They are hardy and raw-boned, exercise the trade of fishermen and boatmen, and propagate like rabbits. They have put themselves under the protection of a miraculous image of the Virgin Mary, which is kept in one of their churches, and every year carried in procession. According to the legend, this image was carried off, with other pillage, by the English, when they took Boulogne, in the reign of Henry VIII. The lady, rather than reside in England, where she found a great many heretics, trusted herself alone in an open boat, and crossed the sea to the road of Boulogne, where she was seen waiting for a pilot. Accordingly a boat put off to her assistance, and brought her safe into the harbour: since which time she has continued to patronize the watermen of Boulogne. At present she is very black and very ugly, besides being cruelly mutilated in different parts of her body, which I suppose have been amputated, and converted into tobacco-stoppers; but once a year she is dressed in very rich attire, and carried in procession, with a silver boat, provided at the expence of the sailors. That vanity which characterises the French extends even to the canaille. The lowest creature among them is sure to have her ear-rings and golden cross hanging about her neck. Indeed this last is an implement of superstition as well as of dress, without which no female appears. The common people here, as in all countries where they live poorly and dirtily, are hard-featured, and of very brown, or rather tawny complexions. As they seldom eat meat, their juices are destitute of that animal oil which gives a plumpness and smoothness to the skin, and defends those fine capillaries from the injuries of the weather, which would otherwise coalesce, or be shrunk up, so as to impede the circulation on the external surface of the body. As for the dirt, it undoubtedly blocks up the pores of the skin, and disorders the perspiration; consequently must contribute to the scurvy, itch, and other cutaneous distempers."

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At Boulogne, many travellers during the Napoleonic Wars, including the American Lt-Colonel, Ninian Pinkney, sought out the Hotel d’Angleterre and its English patron Parker – an establishment favoured by no less than Bonaparte and his inner circle. Here at least the sheets were freshly laundered, and the food recognisable. Elsewhere it was not so, Pinkney found:

I speak from woeful experience, when I advise every traveller to consider a pair of sheets and a counterpane as necessary a part of his luggage as a change of shirts. He will travel but few miles from Calais, before he will understand the necessity of this admonition.

William Thackeray had met his wife in Paris in 1836, and lived there briefly before returning to England. He recorded his mixed reactions to Boulogne – and its English visitors - on the way back to Paris in 1840:

It is a strange, mongrel, merry place, this town of Boulogne; the little French fishermen's children are beautiful, and the little French soldiers, four feet high, red-breeched, with huge pompons on their caps, and brown faces, and clear sharp eyes, look, for all their littleness, far more military and more intelligent than the heavy louts one has seen swaggering about the garrison towns in England. Yonder go a crowd of bare-legged fishermen; there is the town idiot, mocking a woman who is screaming Fleuve du Tage, at an inn-window, to a harp, and there are the little gamins mocking HIM. Lo! these seven young ladies, with red hair and green veils, they are from neighboring Albion, and going to bathe. Here comes three Englishmen, habitués evidently of the place,--dandy specimens of our countrymen: one wears a marine dress, another has a shooting dress, a third has a blouse and a pair of guiltless spurs--all have as much hair on the face as nature or art can supply, and all wear their hats very much on one side. Believe me, there is on the face of this world no scamp like an English one, no blackguard like one of these half-gentlemen, so mean, so low, so vulgar,--so ludicrously ignorant and conceited, so desperately heartless and depraved.

Dieppe was another popular destination, served by regular packboats from Newhaven. In 1818, the Reverend Thomas Frognall Dibdin was commissioned by Earl Spencer to travel to Europe in search of rare books. Dibdin was overwhelmed by the exotic women of the Dieppe, and by the town’s sanitary arrangements:

"The population seemed countless, and chiefly females; whose high caps and enormous ear-rings, with the rest of their paraphernalia, half persuaded me that instead of being some few twenty-five leagues only from our own white cliffs, I had in fact dropt upon the Antipodes! … The town is certainly picturesque, notwithstanding the houses are very little more than a century old, and the streets are formal and comparatively wide. Indeed it should seem that the houses were built expressly for Noblemen and Gentlemen, although they are inhabited by tradesmen, mechanics, and artizans, in apparently very indifferent circumstances. I scarcely saw six private houses which could be called elegant, and not a gentleman's carriage has been yet noticed in the streets. But if the Dieppois are not rich, they seem happy, and are in a constant state of occupation. A woman sells her wares in an open shop, or in an insulated booth, and sits without her bonnet (as indeed do all the tradesmen's wives), and works or sings as humour sways her. A man sells gingerbread in an open shed, and in the intervals of his customer's coming, reads some popular history or romance. Most of the upper windows are wholly destitute of glass; but are smothered with clothes, rags, and wall flowers.

The fragrance emitted from these flowers affords no unpleasing antidote to odors of a very different description; and here we begin to have a too convincing proof of the general character of the country in regard to the want of cleanliness. A little good sense, or rather a better-regulated police, would speedily get rid of such nuisances. The want of public sewers is another great and grievous cause of smells of every description. At Dieppe there are fountains in abundance; and if some of the limpid streams, which issue from them, were directed to cleansing the streets, (which are excellently well paved) the effect would be both more salubrious and pleasant--especially to the sensitive organs of Englishmen…

I descended the hill, bidding a long adieu to this venerable relic of the hardihood of other times, and quickened my pace towards Dieppe. In gaining upon the town, I began to discern groups of rustics, as well as of bourgeoises, assembling and mingling in the dance. The women never think of wearing bonnets, and you have little idea how picturesquely the red and blue (the colours of Raffaelle's Madonnas) glanced backwards and forwards amidst the fruit trees, to the sound of the spirit-stirring violin. The high, stiff, starched cauchoise, with its broad flappers, gave the finishing stroke to the novelty and singularity of the scene; and to their credit be it spoken, the women were much more tidily dressed than the men. The couples are frequently female, for want of a sufficient number of swains; but, whether correctly or incorrectly paired, they dance with earnestness, if not with grace. It was a picture à la Teniers, without its occasional grossness. This then, said I to myself, is what I have so often heard of the sabbath-gambols of the French--and long may they enjoy them! They are surely better than the brutal orgies of the pot-house, or the fanatical ravings of the tabernacle."

Not all students travelled to France to study art. Augustus Kinsley Gardner came, in 1848; to study medicine. He was shocked by his first glimpses of poverty, on landing in Normandy:

"I had no sooner set my foot upon the soil of France, than the servitude of the women arrested my attention; and this, too, in Havre, the birth-place of Madame de la Fayatte. In this land of politesse and chivalry, one cannot but notice with wonder the numerous evidences of barbarism in the common walks of life. Women are employed to sweep the streets, transport the heaviest burdens, and in numerous other similar occupations. Often have I seen them, when age and disease had crippled their powers, carrying two pails of water, whose weight would terrify an American damsel of twenty years, upon shoulders already bowed down by the pressure of time, rudely jostled by the crowd, with scanty clothing, and no covering for the head, but a thin cap, which did not restrain their silver looks from playing around their wrinkled foreheads. Would to God, this were a single instance! 'T is but a poor picture drawn from the scenes of every-day life.

At Caen, but a short distance from Rouen, there is a market, whither young girls resort, and stand hour after hour with their glowing hair, rich and glossy, deriving additional lustre from the contrast with their naked shoulders. This is the resort of the merchant barbers, some of whom come even from England. The merchants pass along among them, examine the color, texture, evenness, and other qualities of the beautiful fleece, haggle for a sous, and finally buy. The hair then, after being cut as closely as possible to the head, is weighed and- paid for, and the girl goes home to prepare for another shearing, or perhaps to purchase a husband with her money. An American girl prefers to let her hair turn to silver on her own head, or if it must be out off, to enjoy the crop herself."

Turner Dawson made his money as a banker but his real interests were botany and history. On an antiquarian tour of Normandy in 1818, he remarked on the exotic creole that the beggars spoke in Dieppe (later this would be known as franglais…):

"The entrance of the harbor at Dieppe, is not only striking, but interesting. It is not thus at Calais, where half the individuals you meet in the streets are of your own country; where English fashions and manufactures are commonly adopted; and where you hear your native tongue, not only in the hotels, but even the very beggars follow you with, ‘I say, give me un sou, s'il vous please.’"

Indeed, Dawson seems to have been frequently distracted from the local ruins, spending his days instead studying the charms of the local womenfolk:

To a painter Dieppe must be a source of great delight: the situation, the buildings, the people offer an endless variety; but nothing is more remarkable than the costume of the females of the middle and lower classes, most of whom wear high pyramidal caps, with long lappets entirely concealing their hair, red, blue, or black corsets, large wooden shoes, black stockings, and full scarlet petticoats of the coarsest woollen, pockets of some different die attached to the outside, and not uncommonly the appendage of a key or corkscrew: occasionally too the color of their costume is still farther diversified by a chequered handkerchief and white apron. The young are generally pretty; the old, tanned and ugly; and the transition from youth to age seems instantaneous: labor and poverty have destroyed every intermediate gradation; but, whether young or old, they have all the same good-humored look, and appear generally industrious, though almost incessantly talking. Even on Sundays or feast-days, bonnets are seldom to be seen, but round their necks are suspended large silver or gilt ornaments, usually crosses, while long gold ear-rings drop from either side of their head, and their shoes frequently glitter with paste buckles of an enormous size.

Another visitor to Dieppe was Warminster clothing magnate, Henry Wansey, who came to Normandy to study its antiquities, in 1814. He too was struck by the costumes, and customs:

As we are on French ground, and in the midst of new scenes and foreign manners, we meet with many peculiarities. The dress of the women diverted me not a little; their immense caps of linen or white lawn, with large wings of the same shading their faces, and reaching to their shoulders, put me very much in mind of the frills of the golden pheasants at Longleat. At the same time that their heads looked so large and so high, their petticoats were so short as barely to cover their knees. They wear no hats or bonnets, even if it rain; and we saw them in this attire driving wheelbarrows, carts, and loaded asses, which appeared to me very novel and grotesque. We observed many of the poissardes equally smart about the head, sitting by the side their baskets of fish, which article is very cheap here. A skate of 10 or 12 lbs was sold for less than twopence.

Those at home who couldn’t or wouldn’t brave foreign climes made do with illustrated accounts, sometimes hand-coloured; such as John Carr’s Stranger in France, written in 1802. On arriving at Le Havre, Carr remarked:

It was not the intention of our packet captain to go within the pier, for the purpose of saving the port-anchorage dues, which amount to eight pounds sterling, but a government boat came off, and ordered - the vessel to hawl close up to the quay, an order which was given in rather a peremptory manner. Upon our turning the pier, we saw as we warped up to the quay, an immense motley crowd, Flocking down to view us. A panic, ran throughout our pour fellow passengers. From the noise and confusion on shore, they expected that some recent revolution had occurred, and that they were upon the point of experiencing all the calamities, which they had before fled from; they looked pale and agitated upon each other, like a timid and terrified flock of sheep, when suddenly approached by their natural enemy the wolf. It turned out, however, that more curiosity, excited by the display of english colours, had assembled this formidable rabble, and that the order which we received from the government boat, was given for the purpose of compelling the captain to incur, and. consequently to pay, the anchorage dues. In a moment we were beset by a parcel of men and boys, half naked, and in wooden shoes, -who hallowing and sacre dieuing each other most unmercifully, began, without further ceremony, to seize upon. every trunk within their reach, which they threw into their boats lying alongside.

By a well-timed rap upon the knuckles of one of these marine- functionaries, we prevented our luggage from sharing the same fate. It turned out, that there was a competition for carrying our trunks on shore, for the sake of an immoderate premium, which they expected to receive, and which occasioned our being assailed in this violent manner. Our fellow-passengers were obliged to go on shore with these vociferous watermen, who had the impudence and inhumanity to charge them two livres each, for conveying them to the landing steps, a short distance of about fifty yards. Upon their landing, we were much pleased to observe that the people offered them neither violence nor insult. They were received with a sullen silence, and a lane was made for them to pass into the town.

After we had performed our necessary ablutions, and had enjoyed the luxury of fresh linen, we sat down to some excellent coffee, accompanied with boiled milk, long, delicious rolls, and tolerably good butter, but found no knives upon the table; which, by the by, every traveller in France is presumed to carry with him: having mislaid my own, I requested the maid to bring me one. The person of this damsel, would certainly have suffered by a comparison with those fragrant flowers, to which young poets resemble their beloved mistresses; as soon as I had preferred my prayer, she very deliberately drew from her pocket a large clasp knife, which, after she had wiped on her apron, she presented to me, with a voila monsieur. I received this dainty present, with every mark of due obligation, accompanied, at the same time, with a resolution not to use it, particularly as my companions (for we had two other English gentlemen with us) had directed her to bring, some others to them. This delicate instrument was as savoury as its mistress, amongst the various fragrances which it emitted, garlic seemed to have the mastery."

The American visitor, E.K. Washington, had a better impression of Le Havre in 1860:

You reclaim your passports in person at the mayor's office. You find every thing French, and foreign, and fine. You are addressed in accents foreign to your English ears. You attempt to answer in French. The Frenchman is too polite to laugh, but he bestows on you a look of compassion, and appears to feel inward grief in finding his vernacular thus cruelly murdered. You look up the streets; you see moustaches moving along, behind which are men. You see the inevitable gendarmes everywhere-the national guards of a government which makes itself felt. You feel the presence of a strong imperial government over you. The gendarmes are numerous, and constantly promenading the city-in every crowd, and even within the sacred precincts of the churches. They are a courteous, fine-looking body of men; and Louis Napoleon has shown much wisdom in popularizing this service-rendering, it respectable, and identifying it with the government, and making it the interest of this disciplined corps to be on the side of the government-among a people so accessible to periodical excitements, called revolutions, and coups d'etat, as the French are. You reflect with some impatience on the inefficiency of the police department in your own country. Well; you reach your hotel. There your notions of eating undergo an inversion. You are expected to take coffee, or tea, with bread and butter, at or about seven o'clock, your breakfast at eleven, and your dinner at six o'clock in the evening. The waiters wear white gloves; and instead of eating with American vehemence and excitement, you behold everybody eating with sublime ease and a calm assurance that he will get enough, and a conviction that he has a stomach and liver whose rights he will respect.

And in 1905 the veteran travel writer Gordon Home told his readers just how much local hotels had improved:

The hotels of Normandy are not what they were twenty years ago. Improvements in sanitation have brought about most welcome changes, so that one can enter the courtyard of most hotels without being met by the aggressive odours that formerly jostled one another for space.

Hotels, Good and Not So

One of the most recurrent gripes of the Anglo-Saxon traveller was the poor standard of hotel that was often encountered in France, especially in the provinces.

Tobias Smollett, never one to pull his punches, complained bitterly on the subject of accommodation in Boulogne, in 1763:

"When we arrived at the inn, all the beds were occupied; so that we were obliged to sit in a cold kitchen above two hours, until some of the lodgers should get up. This was such a bad specimen of French accommodation, that my wife could not help regretting even the inns of Rochester, Sittingbourn, and Canterbury: bad as they are, they certainly have the advantage, when compared with the execrable auberges of this country, where one finds nothing but dirt and imposition. One would imagine the French were still at war with the English, for they pillage them without mercy…

I have one thing very extraordinary to observe of the French auberges, which seems to be a remarkable deviation from the general character of the nation. The landlords, hostesses, and servants of the inns upon the road, have not the least dash of complaisance in their behaviour to strangers. Instead of coming to the door, to receive you as in England, they take no manner of notice of you; but leave you to find or enquire your way into the kitchen, and there you must ask several times for a chamber, before they seem willing to conduct you up stairs. In general, you are served with the appearance of the most mortifying indifference, at the very time they are laying schemes for fleecing you of your money. It is a very odd contrast between France and England; in the former all the people are complaisant but the publicans; in the latter there is hardly any complaisance but among the publicans. When I said all the people in France, I ought also to except those vermin who examine the baggage of travellers in different parts of the kingdom. Although our portmanteaus were sealed with lead, and we were provided with a passe-avant from the douane, our coach was searched at the gate of Paris by which we entered; and the women were obliged to get out, and stand in the open street, till this operation was performed."

Ninian Pinkney though that there were compensations for the uncomfortable surroundings, in 1809:

In point of eating and drinking the French inns infinitely exceed the English: their provisions are of a better kind, and are much cheaper: we scarcely slept any where, where we could not procure fowls of all kinds, eggs and wine. It is too true, indeed, that their mode of cooking is not very well suited to an English palate; but a very little trouble will remedy this inconvenience: The French cooks are infinitely obliging in this respect-they will take your instructions, and thank you for the honor done them. The dinner, moreover, when served up, will consist of an infinite variety, and that without materially swelling the bill. Add to this the dessert, of which an English innkeeper, except in the most expensive hotels, has not a single idea. In France, on the other band, in the poorest inns, in the most ordinary hedge ale-house, you will have a dessert of every fruit in season, and always tastily and even elegantly served. The wine, likewise, is infinitely better than what is met with on the roads in England. In the article of beds, with a very few exceptions, the French inns exceed the English: if a traveller carry his sheets with him, he is always secure of an excellent hair mattress, or if he prefer it, a clean feather-bed. On the other side, the French inns are certainly inferior to the English in their apartments. The bed-room is too often the dining-room. The walls are merely whitewashed, or covered with some execrable pictures. There are no such things as curtains, or at least they are never considered as necessary. There is neither soap, water, nor towel to cleanse yourself when you rise in the morning. A Frenchman has no idea of washing himself before he breakfasts. The furniture, also, is always in the worst possible condition. We were often puzzled to contrive a tolerable table: the one in mot common use is composed of planks laid across two stools or benches. The chairs are usually of oak, with perpendicular backs. There are no bells; and the attendants are more frequently male than female, though this practice is gradually going out of vogue. There is a great change moreover, of late years, in the civility of the landlords--they will now acknowledge their obligations to you, and not, as formerly, to treat you as intruders.

Though as a partial compensaton, French tariffs were only a quarter of their English equivalents, Pinkney records. Then again, other travellers thought the French habit of over-charging was nothing short of a national disgrace. Among the latter school of though, the learned and Reverend Thomas Frognall Dibdin, in 1818:

"At Meaux we dined, and have reason to remember the extravagant charges of the woman who kept the inn. The heat of the day was now becoming rather intense. While our veal-cutlet was preparing, we visited the church; which had frequently, and most picturesquely, peeped out upon us during our route. It is a large, cathedral-like looking church, without transepts. Only one tower (in the west front), is built--with the evident intention of raising another in the same aspect. They were repairing the west front, which is somewhat elaborately ornamented; but so intensely hot was the sun--on our coming out to examine it--that we were obliged to retreat into the interior, which seemed to contain the atmosphere of a different climate. A tall, well-dressed, elderly priest, in company with a middle-aged lady, were ascending the front steps to attend divine service. Hot as it was, the priest saluted us, and stood a half minute without his black cap--with the piercing rays of the sun upon a bald head. The bell tolled softly, and there was a quiet calm about the whole which almost invited, us to postpone our attack upon the dinner we had ordered.

Ten francs for a miserable cutlet--and a yet more wretchedly-prepared fricandeau--with half boiled artichokes, and a bottle of undrinkable vin ordinaire--was a charge sufficiently monstrous to have excited the well known warmth of expostulation of an English traveller--but it was really too hot to talk aloud! The landlady pocketed my money, and I pocketed the affront which so shameful a charge may be considered as having put upon me."

Another traveller who felt cheated was the American academic, Reverend John P. Durbin, passing through Normandy in 1842

My passport gave as my profession Rentier, which, done into English, may mean A man who lives on his money. When my hotel-bill was presented to me on the night of 21st of May I was inclined to interpret it one on whose money others live. However, as we had been well kept, we paid our score cheerfully.

Private bathrooms, with water closets, were few and far between. As novelist R.L. Stevenson discovered, one was not even guaranteed a private room:

The sleeping-room was furnished with two beds. I had one; and I will own I was a little abashed to find a young man and his wife and child in the act of mounting into the other. This was my first experience of the sort; and if I am always to feel equally silly and extraneous, I pray God it be my last as well. I kept my eyes to myself, and know nothing of the woman except that she had beautiful arms, and seemed no whit embarrassed by my appearance. As a matter of fact, the situation was more trying to me than to the pair. A pair keep each other in countenance; it is the single gentleman who has to blush. But I could not help attributing my sentiments to the husband, and sought to conciliate his tolerance with a cup of brandy from my flask.

Choosing a good, clean, quiet, honest inn was a perennial problem. And even if one was recommended, it was not always easy to find it, even with the help of a local guide, as an American Presbyterian from St Louis, Mrs Anne Bullard, discovered in 1850:

At Lyons we met with a little incident, which, as it shows how travelers are often imposed upon, I will relate. Contrary to our usual custom, we had neglected to select our hotel from those names in our guide book before we stopped, and consequently we found ourselves at a loss to know where to go. A runner who could talk English imperfectly, seeing us undetermined where to put up, recommended a place, but not finding its appearance such as we liked, he promised to take us to the Hotel de Europe. Arriving at a hotel of inferior appearance, he said this was the one, and commenced taking our baggage. Confident that he was deceiving us, we told him so, and then pointed to the sign over the door, on which Hotel d'Orient blazed in large letters. He assured us, however, it was the Hotel de Europe, and to convince us called the landlord. When the landlord appeared, he gave him a wink, and inquired if this was not the Hotel de Europe. The landlord replied promptly, with a smile, that it certainly was; of course we had nothing more to say, and took our rooms. We found out, notwithstanding, that we were deceived by the runner, who wished his fee from the landlord, and by the landlord who would not scruple to use any means to fill his house. It was the Hotel d'Orient. These runners obtain a compensation from the inn-keepers for every traveler they bring, and the landlords themselves stand in fear of the runner's displeasure, lest they give a bad name to their hotels and lose custom in consequence. The only safe way is to turn a deaf ear to all agents and runners, and depend entirely upon the traveler's Guide Book, with which every one should be supplied.

On one of her early trips, novelist Matilda Betham-Edwards felt the need to complain, thus:

"I never understood, till I travelled with French friends, why hotels in France should be so bad, but the reason is to be sought in that amiability, laisser faire, call it by what name we will, that characteristic which distinguishes our neighbours on the other side of La Manche. We English, who perpetually travel, growl and grumble at discomfort till, by force of persistent fault-finding, we bring about reformation in hotels and travelling conveniences generally--whereas the French, partly from a dislike of making themselves disagreeable, partly from the feeling that they are not likely to go over the same ground again, leave things as they find them, to the great disadvantage of those who follow. The French, indeed, travel so little for mere pleasure that, whenever they do so, they think it useless to make a fuss about what seems to them a part and parcel of the journey. Thus it happens that, wherever you go off the beaten tracks in France, you find the hotels as bad as they can well be, and your French fellow-traveller takes the dirt, noise, and discomfort generally much as a matter of course. I am sorry that I can say little for the hotels we found throughout our four days' drive in the most romantic scenery of the

Doubs, for the people are so amiable, obliging, and more titan moderate in their charges, that one feels inclined to forgive anything. Truth must be told, however, and so, for once, I will only add that the tourist must here be prepared for the worst in the matter of accommodation, whilst too much praise cannot be accorded to the general desire to please, and absolute incapacity of these good people to impose on the stranger."

And as for the Hotel Gamier at Le Puy:

More fortunate than a friend whose pocket was lately picked of twenty-five pounds at the railway-station here, I waited whilst the terribly slow business of ticket-taking and registration was got over, thankful enough that I had breakfasted overnight--that is to say, had made tea at three o'clock in the morning. Not a cup of milk, not a crust of bread, would that inhospitable inn offer its over-charged guests before setting out. As I have nothing but praise to bestow upon the hostelries of the Lozère and the Cantal, I must give vent to a well-deserved malediction here."

She found in 1911 that there had been no real improvement:

I do not suppose that matters are very greatly changed in hotels here since my visit so many years ago. In certain respects travellers fare well. They may feast like Lucullus on fresh trout and on the dainty aniseed cakes which are a local speciality. But hygienic arrangements were almost prehistoric, and although politeness itself, mine host and hostess showed strange nonchalance towards their guests. Thus, when ringing and ringing again for our tea and bread and butter between seven and eight o'clock, the chamber--not maid, but man--informed us that Madame had gone to mass, and everything was locked up till her return.

On the other hand, monastic hospitality could be quite convivial, she reported, a surprising admission for someone who rarely misses the chance to criticise the Catholic Church:

"It was Friday, so in company of priests, nuns, monks and divers pious pilgrims, with a sprinkling of fashionable ladies from Strasburg, and tourists generally, we sat down to a very fair menu for a fast-day, to wit: rice-soup, turnips and potatoes, eggs, perch, macaroni-cheese, custard pudding, gruyère cheese, and fair vin ordinaire. Two shillings was charged per head, and I must say people got their money's worth, for appetites seem keen in these parts. The mother-superior, a kindly old woman, evidently belonging to the working class, bustled about and shook hands with each of her guests. After dinner we were shown the bedrooms, which are very clean; for board and lodging you pay six francs a day, out of which, judging from the hunger of the company, the profit arising would be small except to clerical hotel-keepers. We must bear in mind that nuns work without pay, and that all the fish, game, dairy and garden produce the bishop gets for nothing. However, all tourists must be glad of such a hostelry, and the nuns are very obliging. One sister made us some afternoon tea very nicely (we always carry tea and teapot on these excursions), and everybody made us welcome."

Of course some French inns were reliable, recommendable, and their patrons even knew how to make tea – especially if they were English. The Reverend Thomas Frognall Dibdin stayed at one such inn in Falaise.

I had received instructions to put up at the Grand Turc--as the only hotel worthy an Englishman's notice. At the door of the Grand Turk, therefore, we were safely deposited: after having got rid of our incumbrances of two postilions, and two hundred weight of refined sugar. Our reception was gracious in the extreme. The inn appeared tout-à-fait à la mode Anglaise"--and no marvel ... for Madame the hostess was an Englishwoman. Her husband's name was David.

Bespeaking a late cup of tea, I strolled through the principal streets,--delighted with the remarkably clear current of the water, which ran on each side from the numerous overcharged fountains. Day-light had wholly declined; when, sitting down to my souchong, I saw, with astonishment--a pair of sugar-tongs and a salt-spoon--the first of the kind I had beheld since I left England! Madame David enjoyed my surprise; adding, in a very droll phraseology, that she had ‘not forgotten good English customs.’ Our beds and bed rooms were perfectly comfortable, and even elegant."

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Then there were pensions, or guest-houses. Embittered American tourist Irvin Cobb gives the following warning against the false economy of lodging in one:

In Paris or Rome you may get a five-course dinner with wine for forty cents; so you may in certain quarters of New York; but in either place the man who can afford to pay more for his dinner will find it to his ultimate well-being to do so. Simply because a boarding house in France or Italy is known as a pension doesn't keep it from being a boarding house --and a pretty average bad one, as I have been informed by misguided Americans who tried living at a pension, and afterwards put in a good deal of their spare time regretting it.

And novelist Henry James had this to say of a hotel in Tours, in 1900:

"The inns at Tours are in another quarter, and one of them, which is midway between the town and the station, is very good. It is worth mentioning for the fact that every one belonging to it is extraordinarily polite, - so unnaturally polite as at first to excite your suspicion that the hotel has some hidden vice, so that the waiters and chambermaids are trying to pacify you in advance. There was one waiter in especial who was the most accomplished social being I have ever encountered; from morning till night he kept up an inarticulate murmur of urbanity, like the hum of a spinning-top. I may add that I discovered no dark secrets at the Hotel de l'Univers; for it is not a secret to any