Prices in France
By GLYN DANIEL
DURING the recent strike of bus and Metro workers in Paris, which for a short while spread as a railway strike over most of France, a fact-finding commission declared that the cost of living in France was twelve per cent. higher now than it was a year ago. This figure was frequently quoted and very generally accepted. On the day when it was first published I was talking to a small hotelier in the Dordogne who has for years specialised in the tinning of con fits dole and con fits de pore and in the making of truffled foie-gras pate. He told me that since last year the cost of pork had gone up by thirty per cent. and of chicken and game by twenty per cent., while the cost of truffles was now so. high that he had given up tinning them. And a few days later the notice I saw in a few Paris shops (not, I am afraid, in many) Aucune hausse ; mettle prix que tannee derniere was ahother very clear indication that the price-rises are constantly in everyone's mind. Of one thing I am afraid there is no doutit ; in France, as in England. most things are a little more expensive than they were last year. The question which the intending traveller to France this summer asks himself, of course, is: How much more expen- sive? More English travellers are expected(in France this year than in any of the post-war years. Last ycar 86,000 cars were taken abroad, and already this year it is estimated that bookings are up a hundred per cent. on this figure. .1f car-bookings are a fair indication of the numbers who will this year escape for a while from the rationing and the Festival of Britain, there must be many who are now saying: " We know that food and drink is unlimited in France—if you can pay for it—but how much?
And how much more than last year? Shall we find ourselves hopelessly out if we budget on our costs in 1950 and 1949? "
I have just returned from four weeks travelling in France. We visited the west. the south-west, the centre, and, of course. Paris ; and my answer to this question is: " Budget as though every- thing were ten per cent. more expensive than last year and you will not go far Wrong." Without any doubt, meat. wine and petrol—those three essentials of a touring holiday abroad—are all more expensive than last year. Petrol is now 5s. a gallon in France for ordinary carburant auto—a source of some com- fort, perhaps. to those who are complaining at the increase of petrol in England to 3s. 61d. a gallon. A comparison of the Michelin Guides for 1950 and 1951, as well as my own observa- tion. shows that food and living costs are increasing. The rooms that were 200 to 400 francs a year ago are now 250 to 450 francs. and the prix-fixe meals of 250 to 350 are now 300 to 400. In the Paris hotel where I have stayed each year since the war, the same room was ten per cent. more expensive than in 1950, and then it was ten per cent. more expensive than in 1949. The Bilsteal4 aux pommes frites in the student restaurants in the Boul' Miche quarter. which was 110 francs in 1950, is now 120 francs. The carnets on the Paris buses are up from 140 francs to 150 francs. And in my favourite Paris restaurant the main dishes—admittedly still more than enough for two people—have gone up from six shillings to seven shillings. Rail-fares show a much greater increase. In 1950 a third-class single fare from Paris to Menton was £3 9s. 8d. ; this year it is £4 Its. I Id. Last year a first.- class single ticket from Boulogne to Paris was £1 14s. ; now it is £2.
But all these increases, sad though they are to the traveller, whose money for his holiday has remained the same or even been reduced—despite the increases in the legal travel-allowance to £100—have not meant any decrease in the quality of French life. It will still be possible this summer to get full pension in small hotels for as little as from 18s. to £1 a day—and this includes two five-course meals, and undoubtedly they will both include fish and meat and a lot of cheese 'and butter. It is still possible to go into cafds and bars in town and country and get a glass of white wine for between 4d. and 6d.—and, often enough, half a dozen oysters for 2s. And the English traveller, though he has heard of the increase in French wine prices, will still gaze rapt at the wine displays in grocers' and wine merchants', with their large stocks of good drinkable wines between ls. 6d. and 5s. a bottle, and will sigh at the duty which puts all these prices up by 4s. to 5s. a bottle by the time they reach England.
And although it is very difficult to get a prix-fixe meal (includ-, ing service and half a bottle of wine) for much less than 6s. or 7s., the range of prices between this cheapest meal and the very, best—I exclude the temples of gastronomy—is only 10s. to 15s. I ant recollecting two meals I ate just over three weeks ago. One was in a very famous hostelry in Maine. I had half a dozen Belon oysters. a sole cooked in butter, and covered with a superb cream sauce of mushrooms and lobster, a first- class steak, as much as I could eat of a fine selection of Normandy cheeses, and pannequels served in flaming cointreau, all with half a bottle of a local dry white wine, and the bill was £1—service and tax included. And a few days later, for, 7s.. this is the lunch I was given in a small Breton hotel on, Good Friday: langoustines mayonnaises, cold mackerel dressed, in a vinaigrette sauce, whiting cooked in butter, an omelette., cauliflower au gratin and camembert. Those six courses were served as a matter of course in the standard lunch menu, and, are the best indication I can give that, though prices are higher. the pleasures of the table remain in France a practicable delight for most travellers.
The pound sterling may go less far in France this year than it did at any time since the war, but what a distance it still goes. for those of us who live in rationed and food-subsidised England, and how agreeable that journey is, even if for some of us it has. perforce to be a little shorter than of yester-year.
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