The Automobilist Abroad

We slept that night beneath the frowning donjon walls of Beaugency's L'Ecu de Bretagne, for something less than six francs apiece for dinner, lodging, and morning coffee, and did not regret in the least the twenty-five kilometres we had put between us and Orleans.

At one time it was undecided whether we should come on to Beaugency, or put in at Meung, the attraction of the latter place being, for the sentimentalist, that it is the scene of the opening pages of Dumas's "Trois Mousquetaires," and, in an earlier day, the cradle of Jehan de Meung, the author of the "Roman de la Rose." No evidences of Dumas's "Franc Meunier" remained, and, as there was no inn with as romantic a name as that at Beaugency, we kept on another seven kilometres.

We had made it a rule, while on the trip, not to sleep in a large town when we could do otherwise, and that is why Orleans and Blois and Bordeaux are mere guide-posts in our itinerary.

From Beaugency to Blois is thirty odd kilometres only, along the flat, national highway, with glimpses of the broad, shining ribbon of the Loire here and there gleaming through the trees.

Blois is the gateway of the châteaux country; a score of them are within a day's compass by road or rail; but their delights are worthy of a volume, so they are only suggested here.

The châteaux of Blois, Chambord, Cheverny, Amboise, Chaumont, Chenonceaux, Loches, Azay le Rideau, Luynes, and Langeais, at any rate, must be included in even a hurried itinerary, and so we paid a hasty visit to them all in the order named, and renewed our acquaintance with their artistic charms and their historical memories of the days of François and the Renaissance. For the tourist the châteaux country of the Loire has no beginning and no end. It is a sort of circular track encompassing both banks of the Loire, and is, moreover, a thing apart from any other topographical division of France.

Its luxuriant life, its splendidly picturesque historical monuments, and the appealing interest of its sunny landscape, throughout the length and breadth of old Touraine, are unique pages from a volume of historical and romantic lore which is unequalled elsewhere in all the world.

The climate, too, combines most of the gentle influences of the southland, with a certain briskness and clearness of atmosphere usually found in the north.

By road the Loire valley forms a magnificent promenade; by rail, even, one can keep in close and constant touch with its whole length; while, if one has not the time or inclination to traverse its entire course, there is always the delightful "tour from town," by which one can leave the Quai d'Orsay by the Orleans line at a comfortable morning hour and, before lunch-time, be in the midst of the splendour and plenty of Touraine and its châteaux.

We made our headquarters at Blois, and again at Tours, for three days each, and we explored the châteaux country, and some other more humble outlying regions, to our hearts' content.

Blois is tourist-ridden; its hotels are partly of the tourist orders, and its shopkeepers will sell you "American form" shoes and "best English" hats. It is really too bad, for the overpowering splendours of the château, the quaint old Renaissance house-fronts, the streets of stairs, and the exceedingly picturesque and lively congregation of countryside peasants on a market-day would make it a delightful artists' sketching-ground were one not crowded out by "bounders" in bowler hats and others of the genus tripper.

The Hôtel d'Angleterre et de Chambord is good, well-conducted, and well-placed, but it is as unsympathetically disposed an hostelry as one is likely to find. Just why this is so is inexplicable, unless it be that it is a frankly tourist hotel.

At Tours we did much better. The praises of the Hôtel de l'Univers are many; they have been sung by most latter-day travellers from Henry James down; and the Automobile Club de France has bestowed its recommendation upon it – which it deserves. For all this one is not wholly at his ease here. We remembered that on one occasion, when we had descended before its hospitable doors, travel-worn and weary, we had been pained to find a sort of full-dress dinner going on where we expected to find an ordinary table d'hôte. For this reason alone we passed the hotel by, and hunted out the quaintly named Hotel du Croissant, in a dimly lighted little back street, indicated by a flaring crescent of electric lights over its porte-cochère.

We drove our automobile more or less noisily inside the little flagged courtyard, woke up two dozing cats, who were lying full-length before us, and disturbed a round dozen of sleek French commercial travellers at their evening meal.

They treated us remarkably well at Tours's Hôtel du Croissant. "Follow the commis-voyageur in France and dine well (and cheaply)" might readily be the motto of all travellers in France. The bountiful fare, the local colour, the hearty greeting, and equally hearty farewell of the patronne, and the geniality of the whole personnel gave us an exceedingly good impression of the contrast between the tourist hotel of Blois and the maison bourgeois of Tours, always to the advantage of the latter.

The banks of the Loire immediately below Tours grow the only grape in France – perhaps in all the world – which is able to produce a satisfactory substitute for champagne.

Vineyard after vineyard line the banks for miles on either side and give great crops of the celebrated vin mosseaux, the most of which finds its way to Paris, to be sold by second-rate dealers as the "vrai vin de champagne." There's no reason why it shouldn't be sold on its own merits; it is quite good enough; but commerce bows down to American millionaires, English dukes, and the German emperor, and the king of wines of to-day must be labelled champagne.

From Tours to Niort is 170 kilometres, and we stopped not on the way except to admire some particularly entrancing view, to buy gasoline for the automobile, and for lunch at Poitiers.

The whole aspect of things was changing; there was a breath of the south already in the air; and there was an unspeakable tendency on the part of everybody to go to sleep after the midday meal.

We passed Chatellerault and its quaint old turreted and bastioned bridge at just the hour of noon, and were tempted to stop, for we had just heard of the latest thing in the way of a hotel which was brand-new, with steam heat, and hot and cold water, electric lights, baths, etc. Nothing was said about the bill of fare, though no doubt it was equally excellent. The combination didn't appeal, however; we were out after novelty and local colour, and so we rolled on and into Poitiers's Hôtel de l'Europe and lunched well in the most charmingly cool garden-environed dining-room that it were possible to conceive. We had made a wise choice, though on a hit-or-miss formula, and we were content.

Here at least the dim echo of the rustle and bustle of Paris, which drifts down the valley of the Loire from Orleans to the sea, was left behind; a whole new chromatic scale was being built up. No one hurried or rushed about, and one drank a "tilleuil" after déjeuner, instead of coffee, with the result that he got sleepy forthwith.

There are five magnificent churches at Poitiers, dating from Roman and mediæval times, but we saw not one of them as we passed through the town. Again we had decided we were out after local manners and customs, and, for the moment, churches were not in the category of our demands.

We had only faint glimmerings as to where Niort was, or what it stood for, but we were bound thither for the night. We left Poitiers in mid-afternoon, gaily enough, but within five kilometres we had stopped dead. The sparking of course; nothing else would diagnose the case! It took three hours of almost constant cranking of the unruly iron monster before the automobile could be made to start again.

Once started, the automobile ran but fitfully the seventy-five kilometres to Niort, the whole party, with fear and trembling, scarcely daring to turn sidewise to regard the landscape, or take an extra breath. There was no assistance to be had this side of Niort, and should the sparking arrangements go back on us again, and we were not able to start, there was no hope of being towed in at the back of a sturdy farm-horse; the distance was too great. Once we thought we had nearly lost it again, but before we had actually lost our momentum the thing recovered itself, and we ran fearingly down the broad avenue into Niort, and asked anxiously as to whether there might be a grand maison des automobiles in the town.

Indeed there was, and in the twinkling of an eye we had shunted our poor lame duck into the courtyard of a workshop which gave employment to something like seventy-five hands, all engaged in the manufacture of automobiles which were exported to the ends of the earth.

Here was help surely. Nothing could be too great or too small for an establishment like this to undertake, and so we left the machine with an easy heart and hunted out the excellent Hôtel de France – the best hotel of its class between Paris and Bordeaux. We dined sumptuously on all the good things of the north and the south, to say nothing of fresh sardines from La Rochelle, not far distant, and we gave not a thought to the automobile again that night, but strolled on the quay by the little river Sêvre-Niortaise, and watched the moon rise over the old château donjon, and heard the rooks caw, and saw them circle and swing around its battlement in a final night-call before they went to rest. It was all very idyllic and peaceful, although Niort is, as may be inferred, an important centre for many things.

We had planned to be on the road again by eight the next morning, but, on arrival at the garage, or more correctly stated, the usine, where we had left the automobile the night before, we found it the centre of a curious group who were speculating – and had been since six o'clock that morning – as to what might be the particular new variety of disease that had attacked its vital parts so seriously that it still refused to go.

It was twelve o'clock, high noon, before it was discovered – with the aid of the electrician from the electric light works – that two tiny ends of copper wire, inside the coil (which a Frenchman calls a bobine), had become unsoldered, and only when by chance they rattled into contact would the sparking arrangements work as they ought.

This was something new for all concerned. None of us will be likely to be caught that way again. The cost was most moderate. It was not the automobile owner who paid for the experience this time, a thing which absolutely could not have happened outside of France. Pretty much the whole establishment had had a hand in the job, and, if the service had been paid for according to the time spent, it might have cost anything the establishment might have chosen to charge.

Ten francs paid the bill, and we went on our way rejoicing, after having partaken of a lunch, as excellent as the dinner we had eaten the night before, at the Hôtel de France.

La Rochelle, the city of the Huguenots, and later of Richelieu, was reached just as the setting sun was slanting its red and gold over the picturesque old port and the Tour de Richelieu. If one really wants to know what it looked like, let him hunt up Petitjean's "Port de la Rochelle" in the Musée de Luxembourg at Paris. Words fail utterly to describe the beauty and magnifycence of this hitherto unoverworked artists' sketching-ground.

We threaded our way easily enough through the old sentinel gateway spanning the main street, lined with quaint old arcaded, Spanish-looking houses, and drew up abreast of the somewhat humble-looking Hôtel du Commerce, on the Place d'Armes, opposite the ugly little squat cathedral, once wedded to the haughty Richelieu himself.

The Hôtel du Commerce at La Rochelle is the equal of the Hôtel de France at Niort, and has the added attraction of a glass-covered courtyard, where you may take your coffee and watch the household cats amusing themselves with the goldfish in the pool of the fountain which plays coolingly in the centre.

La Rochelle and its Hôtel du Commerce are too good to be treated lightly or abruptly by any writer; but, for fear they may both become spoiled, no more shall be said here except to reiterate that they are both unapproachable in quaintness, comfort, and charm by anything yet found by the writer in four years of almost constant wanderings by road and rail up and down France.

Offshore four kilometres is the Ile de Ré, an isle thirty kilometres long, where the inhabitants wear the picturesque coiffe and costume which have not become contaminated with Paris fashions. The one thing to criticize is the backwardness of the lives of the good folk of the isle and their enormous pieds plats.

Northward from La Rochelle is a region, almost within sight of the Ile de Ré, where the women wear the most highly theatrical costumes to be seen anywhere in modern France, not even excepting the peasants of Brittany. The chief distinction of the costume is a sort of tiny twisted bandanna over the head, a tight-fitting or folded fichu, a short ballet sort of a skirt, black stockings, and a gaily bordered apron and dainty, high-heeled, tiny shoes – in strong contrast in size and form to the ungainly feet of the women of the Ile de Ré.

We left La Rochelle with real regret, passed the fortified town of Rochefort without a stop, and, in something over two hours, reeled off some sixty-eight kilometres of sandy, marshy roadway to Saintes.

Saintes is noted for many things: its antiquity, its religious history, its Roman remains, and the geniality of its toddling old dealer in sewing-machines (of American make, of course), who, as a "side" line, sells gasoline and oil at considerably under the prevailing rates elsewhere. Truly we were in the ideal touring-ground for automobilists.

To Cognac is sixty-seven kilometres. If we had ever known that Cognac was the name of a town we had forgotten it, for we had, for the moment, at any rate, thought it the name of the region where were gathered the grapes from which cognac was made.

Cognac is famous for the subtle spirit which is sold the world over under that name, and from the fact that it was the birthplace of the art-loving monarch, François Premier.

For these two reasons, and for the bountiful lunch of the Hôtel d'Orleans, and incidentally for the very bad cognac which we got at a café whose name is really and truly forgotten, Cognac is writ large in our note-books.

The house where was born François Premier is easily found, sitting by the river's bank. To-day it is the counting-house of one of the great brandy shippers whose name is current the world over. Its associations have changed considerably, and where once the new art instincts were born, in the person of the gallant François, is now the cradle of commercialism.

The question as to what constitutes good brandy has ever been a favourite one among possessors of a little knowledge. The same class has also been known to state that there is no good brandy nowadays, no vrai cognac. This is a mistake, but perhaps a natural one, as the cognac district in the Charente was almost wholly devastated in the phylloxera ravages of half a century ago.

Things have changed, however, and there is as good cognac to-day as there ever was, though there is undoubtedly much more poor stuff being sold.

Down through the heart of the cognac region we sped, through Blaye to Bordeaux and all the busy traffic of its port.

Bordeaux is attractive to the automobilist in that one enters, from any direction, by wide, broad avenues. It is one of the great provincial capitals of France, a great gateway through which much of the intercourse with the outside world goes on.

It is not so cosmopolitan as Marseilles, nor so historically or architecturally interesting as Rouen, but it is the very ideal of an opulent and well-conducted city, where one does not need to await the arrival of the daily papers from Paris in order to know what has happened during the last round of the clock.

Hotels? The town is full of them! You may put up your automobile in the garage of the Hôtel du Chapon-Fin, along with forty others, and you yourself will be well cared for, according to city standards, for twelve or fifteen francs a day, – which is not dear. On the other hand, Bordeaux possesses second-class hotels where, all found, you may sleep and eat for the modest sum of seven francs a day. One of these is the Hôtel Français, a somewhat extensive establishment in a tiny back street. It is the cheapest city hotel the writer has found in France. There was no garage at the Hotel Français, and we were forced to house our machine a block or two away, where, for the moderate sum of two francs, you might leave it twenty-four hours, and get it back washed and rubbed down, while for another fifty centimes they would clean the brass work, – a nasty job well worth the price. Yes! Bordeaux is pleasant for the automobilist!

Two things the stranger, who does not want to go too far back into antiquity, will remark upon at Bordeaux, the exceeding ampleness, up-to-date-ness, and cleanliness of the great open space in front of the Opera, and the imposing and beautifully laid out Place des Quinconces, with its sentinel pillars and its waterside traffic of railway and shipping, blending into a whole which inspired one of the world's greatest pictures of the feverish life of modern activity, the painting by Eugene Boudin, known as the "Port de Bordeaux," in the Luxembourg.

You may find a good low-priced hotel at Bordeaux, but you pay inflated prices for your refreshments in the cafés; a café-glacê cost fifteen sous and a glace à café twenty-five on the terrace of the magnificent establishment opposite the Opera.

Chapter II

A Little Tour In The Pyrenees

We had been touring France en automobile for many months – for business purposes, one might say, and hence had followed no schedule or itinerary, but had lingered by the way and made notes, and the artist made sketches, and in general we acquired a knowledge of France and things French that otherwise might not have been our lot.

The mere name of the Pyrenees had long had a magic sound for us. We had seen them at a distance, from Carcassonne and Toulouse and Pau, when we had made the conventional tour years ago, and had admired them greatly, to the disparagement of the Swiss Alps. This may be just, or unjust, but it is recorded here as a fact.

To climb mountains in an automobile appealed to us as a sport not yet banal or overdone, and since Switzerland – so hospitable to most classes of tourists – was treating automobilists badly just at the time, we thought we would begin by making the itinerary of the "Coupe des Pyrénées;" then, if we liked it, we could try the French Alps in Dauphiné and Savoie, delightful and little-known French provinces which have all the advantages of Switzerland and few of its disadvantages, inasmuch as the inhabitants of the valley hamlets and mountain towns have not become so commerçant as their Swiss brothers.

In August, 1905, was organized, by La Vie en Grand Air and La Dépêche de Toulouse, a great contest for touring automobiles, for an award to be known as the "Coupe des Pyrénées."

As a work of art the "Coupe des Pyrénées" is far and away ahead of most "cups" of the sort. It was the work of the sculptor, Ducuing, and the illustration herewith will show some of its charm. The "coupe" itself has disappeared from mortal view, it having been stolen from an automobile exposition in London.

The trials was intended to develop that type of vehicle best suited to touring, and in every way the event was a great success. The itinerary covered the lovely mountain roads from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, and was the immediate inspiration for the author of this book to follow along the same trail. It is one of the most delightful excursions to be made in all France, which is saying that it is one of the most delightful in all the world.

We took our departure from Toulouse, as did the participants in this famous trial of the year before. Toulouse, the gay capital of the gay province of old Languedoc, has abounding attractions for the tourist of all tastes, though it is seldom visited by those who, with the first swallows of spring-time, wing their way from the resorts of the Riviera to Biarritz.

Toulouse has many historic sights and monuments, and a cuisine which is well worth a trip across France. What with truffles and the famous cassoulet and the chapons fins de Toulouse one forgets to speak of anything else on the menu, though the rest will be sufficiently marvellous.

There are three "leading" hotels in Toulouse catering for the automobile tourist. According to report they are all equally good. We chose the Capoul, on the Square Lafayette, and had no cause to regret it. We dined sumptuously, slept in a great ducal sort of an apartment with a hygiénique bedstead (a thing of brass openwork and iron springs) tucked away in one corner, full fifteen paces from the door by which one entered – "Un bon kilomètre encore," said the garçon de chambre, facetiously, as he showed us up. It promised airiness, at any rate, and if we were awakened at four in the morning by the extraordinarily early traffic of the city what did it matter, since automobiles invariably take early to the road.

It's worth stating here that the café au lait at six A. M. at the Hôtel Capoul was excellent. Frequently hotel coffee in the morning in France (at no matter what hour) is abominable. Usually it is warmed over from the night before. No wonder it is bad!

Toulouse delayed us not on this occasion. We had known it of old; so we started a little before seven on a brilliant September morning, just as the sun was rising over the cathedral towers and strengthening the shadows on the tree-lined boulevard which leads eastward via Castlemaudry to the walled city of Carcassonne, ninety-six kilometres away. The road-books say of this route;

"Pl. Roul. puis Ond Tr. Pitt." This freely translated means that the road is at first flat, then rolling and hilly, but very picturesque throughout. Castlemaudry delayed us not a moment, except to extricate ourselves from a troop of unbridled, unhaltered little donkeys being driven to the market-place, where there was a great sale of these gentle little beasts of burden. Pas méchant, these little donkeys, but stubborn, like their brethren elsewhere, and it was exceedingly difficult to force our way through two hundred of them, all of whom wiggled their ears at us and stood their ground until their guardians actually came and pushed them to one side. "You can often push a donkey when you can't pull him," they told us, a fact which was most apparent, though unknown to us previously. We arrived at Carcassonne in time for lunch, which we had always supposed was called déjeuner in France, but which we learned was here called dîner, the evening meal (at the fashionable hour of eight) being known as souper, though in reality it is a five-course dinner.

Carcassonne was a disappointment. Imagine a puffed-up little metropolis of twenty-five thousand souls with all the dignity that half a dozen pretentious hotels and gaudy cafés can give it; not very clean, nor very well laid out, nor very ancient-looking, nor very picturesque. Where was the Carcassonne of the frowning ramparts, of the gem of a Gothic church, and of the romance and history of which all school-books are filled?

"Oh! You mean la Cité," said the buxom hostess of our hotel. (They are always buxom hostesses in books, but this was one in reality.) Well, yes, we did mean la Cité, if by that name the referred to the old walled town of Carcasonne, la ville la plus curieuse de France, un monument unique au mond.

It is but a short kilometre to reach la Cité from the Ville Basse, as the modern city of Carcassonne is known. Once within the double row of walls, flanked by more than fifty towers, any preconceived ideas that one may have had of what it might be like will be dispelled in air. It is the most stupendously theatrical thing yet on top of earth, unless it be the sad and dismal Pompeii or poor rent Les Baux, in Provence.