A path to Rome

Louis Jebb

Eighty-two years ago, my great-grand- father, Hilaire Belloc, walked from his old garrison, Toul, to Rome — a journey which resulted in his celebrated book The Path to Rome. This being a Holy Year, I resolved to follow in his footsteps. Since, unlike Belloc, I chose to walk all the way from London, it was two weeks before I reached his starting-point. On the first morning of his Path to Rome, Belloc was greeted by unfriendly dogs in Flavigny, but thereafter found little cause to complain of them. But for me the French have yet to learn the lesson of the Dreyfus Affair. Everywhere alsatians are left chained in front yards, abandoned sen- tries symbolic of their masters' insecurity, vulnerable to the taunts and schemes of local enemies and an assured means of alienating the foreigner. I have yet to discover the religion of any of these demented dogs but a regiment of Jewish moneylenders in the Prussian army in 1870 could not have been more of a bane to Belloc than these dogs have been to me. A barrage of barking and howling is irksome early in the day and intolerable at the end of 30 miles, when the morning's bonhomie and esprit d'achevement have long since disappeared. I first encountered them in force on the road into Beauvais. After a morning's sub- jection to mindless barking I came to a roadside alimentaire where I decided to shot). Restrained by an enormous rubber band, the gates would only open enough to allow a black cur to bark at me from close range. The owner reacted not at all and he allowed me only a cursory glance while con- tinuing to pee against the wall, and I passed on angrily.

For some days before, I looked forward • to reaching Toul. I knew I should not escape canine company but hoped the Moselle road would provide at least tem- porary relief from the buffeting of flying traffic. Of all lorries, milk and petrol car- riers are the worst. The vortex produced by their cylindrical vessels has a particularly violent multidirectional thrust, sending map- case, hair and cape flying into blinding Positions, It was in Commercy on Thursday evening, after a particularly wet and windy day of this type, that I found the most col- ourful welcome of my journey. Madame Lucette is an extrovert widow who runs a hotel with the help of one of five daughters. Monsieur Willy, a German exile with no teeth and imperfect French, comes tote house for all his meals — a prisoner of war in France in 1945, with no family left to go home to, he was befriended by Madame Lucette and has remained close by ever

since. I heard evening mass, and we four then sat down to eat. It was Piaf in full cry on the wireless that first moved Madame to song. We had soon progressed to a Brindisi from Traviata, Madame in perfect tune and resolving the difficult phrase endings exact- ly, later to dissolve into a slurred barcarolle from Hoffman and a confused version of Carmen's Habanera; and Madame must have been drunk because she said I had a beautiful voice.

There could have been no greater con- trast to the previous evening. The hotel din- ing room was filled with 50 men at large tables, and I was placed at a table with five others. The walls were covered with green and orange floral wallpaper, framed in Louis XV mouldings, with bulbous-hearted light fittings almost of the type favoured by Lutyens in many of his smaller houses. A squat Turk moved about behind the service hatch, peering into steaming saucepans, from which great bowls of soup and plates of shredded meat were brought by Marion, the only waitress. Each man had jugs of wine and water at his place, to be mixed in the glass. I wondered who they all were; some were hotel guests — overgroomed commercial travellers — but most were local residents, seeking agreeable company away from intersexual strife in a poor Frenchman's Pratt's.

Conversation was declamatory, involving much handshaking and showing off, but my table was a study in conscious verbal in- action. I did not wish to break the spell and we left the table in silence one by one.

Toul is a town of many squares and small open spaces, connected by narrow alleys and passageways that bring one to the cathedral and other important sites as if by accident. My stay there was frequently disturbed by a group of Germans, one dap- per man with four wives and three sons, possessed of the sleeping habits and retiring disposition of starlings. The hotel walls were thin. My spite was perhaps mere

jealousy of their strident cheerfulness. At the same restaurant, two grosses French couples were plainly distracted by the hole

in the right elbow of my jersey. When Belloc dined dirty at Archettes after two days travelling rough, he minded embarass-

ing the middle class with his appearance and invented stories of unfortunate adventures on the road. I felt no such compunction and looked straight ahead and listened to the German discussion of Britain's America's Cup challenge, while waiting twenty minutes for my soup.

A sometimes steep climb from the Moselle brought me to the clearing where Belloc first rested. I launched into an uncer- tain version of `AoPres de ma blonde,' but all I received in reply was a distant popping of light arms on the rifle range and the buzz of an approaching tractor. I tried to follow the canal footpath for the next two days, but was forced by disrepair and obstruction to adopt Belloc's general scheme of changing frequently from path to road to field.

Charmes I found attractive only in name, and distinguished only by the fact that a

soigne English couple brought a dog to breakfast in the dining-room. I resisted engaging them on its age and sex, and pass- ed on through incessant rain to Epinal.

I was not disappointed in St Maurice's church, whichiBelloc so admired, its hybrid nature and solid construction being something of a relief after the vaulting airiness of Beauvais, Soissons, Reims and Toul.

Belloc felt that daily mass was important to the pilgrim, because it is a calm and rapid ritual that helps to sort out the mind, in which a man is doing what humans have done for thousands of years. It is arguable that this last quality no longer remains. In most churches I have visited there has been mild handshaking, and priests have retired more and more in favour of lay cantors. Only once have I been really shocked by liturgical progressiveness. In Bar-le-Duc, an entire mass was conducted by a tight- plaited laywoman en Gannex, ceding only the giving of communion to a male Solidari- ty supporter.

On Sunday morning, I returned to St Maurice for mass and took breakfast in the neighbouring cafe, accompanied by the tramps who make their home in the chur- ch's 15th-century Portail des Bourgeois. At the back of the room, a man and two women sat behind trestle tables, passing cards through punching machines. It was not for 20 minutes that I realised that bets were being placed on the tierce for the Prix Lupin and the rest of the day's card at Longchamps. I don't know whether Mr Belloc ever backed a horse, but perhaps he did.

Louis Jebb's account of his path to Rome will be continued in further articles.