La Douce France
Unknown France. By Georges Pillement. (John- son, 30s.) • By Way of the Golden Isles. By Anthony (Faber, 10s. 6d.) The Splendour of France. By Robert Payne. (Robert Hale, 21s.) The Splendour of France. By Robert Payne. (Robert Hale, 21s.) THE great rivers and the great wines of France are a theme that might make a prose poem for someone itching to write another book about this rich and enigmatic land. The very fact that so much has been written about France and yet here are two authors who can, they imply, tell us more still, may be taken as evidence that there are mysteries to solve and solitudes to explore. Is it really so?
Mr. Newman was somewhat tied to his title, having at least three unknowns to his credit— Germany, Spain and Yugoslavia. Therefore we must not try him too hard, and be ready to for- give his assumption that the Gorges du Tarn may be beyond our ken, but the same leniency cannot apply to Domremy nor now to Colombey-les-deux-Eglises. We know them, although we may not have been there, as well as we know Jeanne d'Arc and le Gendrat him- self. Those who do not know Mr. Newman had better be warned that he is on the side of the General and la gloire.
A nice anecdote from his notebook: he was told that the reason that pregnant women come fourth on the list of those who may use the reserved seats on the Metro (after the military and civilian wounded and the sick) was, 'The first three categories are there through no fault of their own.'
M. Pillement's is not a collection of traveller's tales. It is a guide book, originally published as La France Inconnue, for French tourists. This means that M. Pillement's France (again, one of a family of unknowns—he has done Italy and Spain) is for the most part likely to be 'very little known even to the Francophile British traveller. It is tiresomely divided up into itineraries, eight in all, and although these
routes naturally link up the great tourist centres, they do traverse some off-beat territory, as in the route from Aix to Marseilles via the Etang de Berre. But all the routes are squeezed into a tall, thin triangle with its base on the Marseilles-Menton coastline and its apex in Paris.
From the unknown to the less known. M r. Rushworth-Lund voyages with his family from Honfleur to the Med. (where he apparently managed to live for five years). He saw France from the water, perhaps the best way to regard a people who live so much on and by rivers and oceans. Anyone who does as much or as little as Jason's Trip along the Regent Canal gets a revealing backstairs look at city life and landscape. Here, is instant travel for the arm- chair voyager, but for imitation only by a fortunate few.
Most of us get our glimpses of la douce France on foot or from the family auto, and it is our mode of travel that determines how heavy our reading will be. Air travellers will bless Faber for a paperback version of Freda White's classic; in fact one could go further and say that visitors to the centre of France through which flow the Tarn, Dordogne and Lot would be wise. to add this delightful and evocative guide to their Michelin. Like Pope-Hennessy's Aspects of Provence the book is both intimate and instruc-, tive, like having with you on the journey a, charming and knowledgeable friend. whose erudition does not obtrude nor irritate. Mr., Payne's historical essay, on the other hand, is more like the well-informed friend with a good, memory, who keeps on and on about it. If you can take it, you can learn a lot. Not to like him may be a form of envy, he is such a mine of,
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