Cambridge Pieces [3]
have been, let us proceed to what was.
If on Tuesday, June 9 [i.e. 1857], you leave London Bridge at six o'clock in the morning, you will get (via Newhaven) to Dieppe at fifteen minutes past three. If on landing you go to the Hotel Victoria, you will find good accommodation and a table d'hote at five o'clock; you can then go and admire the town, which will not be worth admiring, but which will fill you with pleasure on account of the novelty and freshness of everything you meet; whether it is the old bonnet-less, short-petticoated women walking arm and arm with their grandsons, whether the church with its quaint sculpture of the Entombment of our Lord, and the sad votive candles ever guttering in front of it, or whether the plain evidence that meets one at every touch and turn, that one is among people who live out of doors very much more than ourselves, or what not--all will be charming, and if you are yourself in high spirits and health, full of anticipation and well inclined to be pleased with all you see, Dieppe will appear a very charming place, and one which a year or two hence you will fancy that you would like to revisit. But now we must leave it at forty-five minutes past seven, and at twelve o'clock on Tuesday night we shall find ourselves in Paris. We drive off to the Hotel de Normandie in the Rue St. Honore, 290 (I think), stroll out and get a cup of coffee, and return to bed at one o'clock.
The next day we spent in Paris, and of it no account need be given, save perhaps the reader may be advised to ascend the Arc de Triomphe, and not to waste his time in looking at Napoleon's hats and coats and shoes in the Louvre; to eschew all the picture rooms save the one with the Murillos, and the great gallery, and to dine at the Diners de Paris. If he asks leave to wash his hands before dining there, he will observe a little astonishment among the waiters at the barbarian cleanliness of the English, and be shown into a little room, where a diminutive bowl will be proffered to him, of which more anon; let him first (as we did) wash or rather sprinkle his face as best he can, and then we will tell him after dinner what we generally do with the bowls in question. I forget how many things they gave us, but I am sure many more than would be pleasant to read, nor do I remember any circumstance connected with the dinner, save that on occasion of one of the courses, the waiter perceiving a little perplexity on my part as to how I should manage an artichoke served a la francaise, feelingly removed my knife and fork from my hand and cut it up himself into six mouthfuls, returning me the whole with a sigh of gratitude for the escape of the artichoke from a barbarous and unnatural end; and then after dinner they brought us little tumblers of warm lavender scent and water to wash our mouths out, and the little bowls to spit into; but enough of eating, we must have some more coffee at a cafe on the Boulevards, watch the carriages and the people and the dresses and the sunshine and all the pomps and vanities which the Boulevards have not yet renounced; return to the inn, fetch our knapsacks, and be off to the Chemin de Fer de Lyon by forty-five minutes past seven; our train leaves at five minutes past eight, and we are booked to Grenoble. All night long the train speeds towards the south. We leave Sens with its grey cathedral solemnly towering in the moonlight a mile on the left. (How few remember, that to the architect William of Sens we owe Canterbury Cathedral.) Fontainebleau is on the right, station after station wakes up our dozing senses, while ever in our ears are ringing as through the dim light we gaze on the surrounding country, "the pastures of Switzerland and the poplar valleys of France."
It is still dark--as dark, that is, as the midsummer night will allow it to be, when we are aware that we have entered on a tunnel; a long tunnel, very long--I fancy there must be high hills above it; for I remember that some few years ago when I was travelling up from Marseilles to Paris in midwinter, all the way from
If on Tuesday, June 9 [i.e. 1857], you leave London Bridge at six o'clock in the morning, you will get (via Newhaven) to Dieppe at fifteen minutes past three. If on landing you go to the Hotel Victoria, you will find good accommodation and a table d'hote at five o'clock; you can then go and admire the town, which will not be worth admiring, but which will fill you with pleasure on account of the novelty and freshness of everything you meet; whether it is the old bonnet-less, short-petticoated women walking arm and arm with their grandsons, whether the church with its quaint sculpture of the Entombment of our Lord, and the sad votive candles ever guttering in front of it, or whether the plain evidence that meets one at every touch and turn, that one is among people who live out of doors very much more than ourselves, or what not--all will be charming, and if you are yourself in high spirits and health, full of anticipation and well inclined to be pleased with all you see, Dieppe will appear a very charming place, and one which a year or two hence you will fancy that you would like to revisit. But now we must leave it at forty-five minutes past seven, and at twelve o'clock on Tuesday night we shall find ourselves in Paris. We drive off to the Hotel de Normandie in the Rue St. Honore, 290 (I think), stroll out and get a cup of coffee, and return to bed at one o'clock.
The next day we spent in Paris, and of it no account need be given, save perhaps the reader may be advised to ascend the Arc de Triomphe, and not to waste his time in looking at Napoleon's hats and coats and shoes in the Louvre; to eschew all the picture rooms save the one with the Murillos, and the great gallery, and to dine at the Diners de Paris. If he asks leave to wash his hands before dining there, he will observe a little astonishment among the waiters at the barbarian cleanliness of the English, and be shown into a little room, where a diminutive bowl will be proffered to him, of which more anon; let him first (as we did) wash or rather sprinkle his face as best he can, and then we will tell him after dinner what we generally do with the bowls in question. I forget how many things they gave us, but I am sure many more than would be pleasant to read, nor do I remember any circumstance connected with the dinner, save that on occasion of one of the courses, the waiter perceiving a little perplexity on my part as to how I should manage an artichoke served a la francaise, feelingly removed my knife and fork from my hand and cut it up himself into six mouthfuls, returning me the whole with a sigh of gratitude for the escape of the artichoke from a barbarous and unnatural end; and then after dinner they brought us little tumblers of warm lavender scent and water to wash our mouths out, and the little bowls to spit into; but enough of eating, we must have some more coffee at a cafe on the Boulevards, watch the carriages and the people and the dresses and the sunshine and all the pomps and vanities which the Boulevards have not yet renounced; return to the inn, fetch our knapsacks, and be off to the Chemin de Fer de Lyon by forty-five minutes past seven; our train leaves at five minutes past eight, and we are booked to Grenoble. All night long the train speeds towards the south. We leave Sens with its grey cathedral solemnly towering in the moonlight a mile on the left. (How few remember, that to the architect William of Sens we owe Canterbury Cathedral.) Fontainebleau is on the right, station after station wakes up our dozing senses, while ever in our ears are ringing as through the dim light we gaze on the surrounding country, "the pastures of Switzerland and the poplar valleys of France."
It is still dark--as dark, that is, as the midsummer night will allow it to be, when we are aware that we have entered on a tunnel; a long tunnel, very long--I fancy there must be high hills above it; for I remember that some few years ago when I was travelling up from Marseilles to Paris in midwinter, all the way from