LITERARY RAMBLES IN FRANCE.*
MSS BETHANI-EDWABDS is generally acknowledged in England as an authority on France and French matters. We have been obliged occasionally to differ from some of her opinions and conclusions, as well as to point out the existence of another France with which she has not seemed altogether familiar. The motto on her title-page, quoted from George Sand, " Belle et bonne France, on ne to connalt pas !" may have a wider signification than she would give it. There are in France worlds of beauty and goodness to which they must be blind who confine themselves to one political and religious point of view. However, there is plenty of common ground on which we can meet Miss Betham-Edwards,—love of the actual land of France; of her quaint towns, her forests, her hills and woody lanes, the quiet rivers and streams that steal between rich meadows and rows of trembling poplars; her great wide plains open to the sky ; her wild heaths purple with ling and studded with grey rocks and groves of fir. Truly they do not know France who only know her lines of railway. No one has explored the hidden beauties of French landscape more thoroughly than Miss Betham-Edwards ; no one knows the land more intimately well, from Normandy to Provence, from Burgundy to Brittany, or appreciates more keenly its peculiar and varied charm.
The idea of the present book is to follow in the footsteps of a few of the great writers of France, especially those who drew their inspiration from their own localities. Of course among these Balzac and George Sand are predominant. It is a good idea, and the different chapters of the book are full of interest. In the first we have a sufficiently vivid account of the laborious work of Flaubert. Sitting in his summer-house at Croisset, near Rouen, overlooking the Seine, that marvellous craftsman, with hard and constant work, produced thirteen pages in seven weeks. Reading aloud each sentence to himself—an excellent habit, as Miss Betham-Edwards remarks —he altered and polished until his own severe critical sense was satisfied. According to him, there is only one right word, and one right arrangement of words. It was at least a fine protest against the literary slovenliness of his day and ours. It is interesting to know that Flaubert's workshop, rescued from destruction, with the garden that surrounds it, has been presented to the city of Rouen, and will be honourably pre- served in his memory.
To follow Balzac about the scenes of his novels might mean years of pilgrimage. Miss Betham-Edwards contents herself in this book with Limoges, the scene of Le Cure du Village; Angouleme, the scene of Les Deux Poetes ; Guerande, that of Beatrix ; and the more familiar Saumur, the home of Eugenie Grandet. The first three are not well known to English travellers, though Limoges is a good stopping-place between Paris and Toulouse, and Angouleme is passed by everybody between Tours and Bordeaux. They pass a much more * Literary Rambles in France. By Miss Bethans•Rdwarda. London : A. Cou- ntable and Co. [10s. ad. net.]
beautiful place than they at all imagine. Miss Betham. Edwards gives a charming description of the grand situation of Angouleme, looking down from its rocky height on the plain watered by the exquisitely transparent, wandering Charente. Some of us, to whom Balzac is not a special attraction, might visit Angouleme for the sake of the Royal Marguerite, that splendidly tolerant, delightful, free-thinking lady, who would not have cared, we feel convinced, to have herself stamped Protestant, or excused her naughty stories because " libertinage was in the air." There never was a more staunch champion of Protestantism than Miss Betham- Edwards ; and we take leave to think that a. writer who hardly acknowledges any other religion in France cannot be said to know France thoroughly. Protestantism and
humanitarianism : thus the saintship of Louis IX. is "a very doubtful saintship if viewed in the light of humani- tarianism." Shade of Joinville ! A greater man, it seems, was Louis XI., who "lived for the aggrandisement and grandeur of France."
A good many pages of the book, as is natural, are given to George Sand and her haunts in the West. Some readers will
find the Brittany of Emile Souvestre more attractive : the
author is more at home in sketching the wild landscape, the old customs now past or passing away, than in repeating the tale, so often told, of George Sand's love affairs. For our- selves, we enjoy far more such unhackneyed subjects as Michelet's seaside village, St. Georges de Didonne, the scene of his famous " La Mer," or the story of Rouget de l'Isle and the "Marseillaise," founded on a visit to his early home at Montaigu, near Lons-le-Saulnier, in the Jura country. And few of us know anything about the little town of Brantome, whose great Abbey gave his title to Pierre de Bourdeilles, of the famous Chronicle ; or about Abbeville and its poet Mille- voye, though we may pass the gay little town a dozen times in the year.
However, we cannot follow Miss Betham-Edwards all round France in the space of a review. We can only mention some of her many interesting studies of scenery, local character and colour, old tradition, everything that goes to make up the age-long, irresistible charm of Fiance. She has been fortunate and persevering enough to penetrate into regions whose remoteness only makes them more attractive to the real traveller. It was she, we may remind our readers, who first made many of us familiar with "the Roof of France," the
extraordinary land of the Causses, discovered for France itself by M. Martel, not so very long ago. In her present book
she shows us the wonderful caves and subterranean waters of Padirac, which can now be visited from Limoges without any great difficulty by persons who are not "subject to vertigo or afraid of sudden chills." "Four hundred and forty steps and collapsible boats " : the crowd of tourists will never be large, probably, but the young and strong who can venture on the expedition are rewarded by a wonderful experience. They "navigated an underground river a mile and six furlongs in length, its meanderings forming four little lakes separated by natural weirs, all these set in a framework of glittering stalactites."
In these days tourists who care to see old France under different aspects can visit in the same day, very hurriedly, the caves of Padirac and that extraordinary home of tradition, Rocamadour. This, Rome, and Jerusalem were the three chief places of pilgrimage in the Middle Ages, and the shrine of St. Amadour—sometimes supposed to be another name for Zacchaeus, the publican—is quite as popular now as it was then. Indeed, it is one of the curious facts connected with the present state of religion in France that the men who neglect their parish churches crowd in thousands to the various centres of pilgrimage. Miss Betham-Edwards appears to have been rather strangely impressed by Rocamadour. In the height of the great September pilgrimage—which she advises her readers by no means to miss, for it transports them to the Middle Ages—in the midst of " an assemblage of Romanist devotees," she was reminded of "a Puritan concourse, a coming together of Covenanters." She saw no indecorum, no excitement, no drunkenness, nothing to suggest a Bank Holiday. The natural beauty of the place, which is remarkable, seems to have struck her even less than the reverence, the simple faith, of these unsophisticated people. Such testimony is both curious and valuable.
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