CORRESPONDENCE:
A PYRENEAN HOLIDAY.—II. TO SAN SEBASTIAN.
[To THE EDITOR OF TEl " SPECTATOR:3 Sta,—How difficult it is for a place to look historical, almost as difficult, I should think, as for a man to look statesmanlike. Poitiers does not look historical, it looks slightly tea-gardeny. In spite of its picturesque situa- tion on a hill which two little rivers so encircle as almost to turn it into an island,—of the statue of "Notre Dame des Dunes," which towers over it among the sandy heights to the east—of the miracles which are said to be still wrought at the subterranean shrine of St. Radegonde, saint and queen of France in the sixth century, where we saw an old woman kneel- ing in devout ecstasy,—in spite of the historical memories of the Black Prince's exploits and the traces of the middle-ages, including memories of Saracen invasion, strewn about the neighbourhood, Poitiers seemed to me hopelessly modern and bourgeois. The famous Blossac Gardens have even a savour of Margate, and are as different from the stately hill- terraces at Blois, as Helvellyn from Primrose Hill. What is it which gives even to a town the air of distinction? Whatever it be, Poitiers has not got it. A middle-aged compatriot who had previously trodden heavily on my toes in the hotel omnibus in her eagerness to tell her husband that there was no need for him to brave the dangers and incur the separation from herself incidental to his box-seat, and who sighed out, as she listened hopelessly to the French reply to their request for a room, " Well, I suppose we shall get along !" seemed to me much more in keeping with Poitiers than the traditions of the Black Prince who waited on the French King so chivalrously after he had defeated and taken him prisoner. I thought that good woman would get along in Poitiers, and have good reason to think she did. Now, Angouleme, on the other hand, has an air of true distinction, which gratified me very much, as my "historic consciousness" had always yearned for Angoulame. Not that I knew anything about it. I am quite guiltless of French history, but I still feel a certain gentle glow of conscious meritoriousness at having visited Angoaleme. And now, at least, it is not only the name, though I am conscious that it was the name, and the name only, before I went there. Still less is it the historical associations which the excellent "Murray" suggested to me, but which (to me) were not of an exciting character, for I read without emotion that "the walls of Angoul&me gave shelter to Marie de Medicis, who retired hither after her husband's (Henry 'V.'s) assassination, under the protection of the Due d'Epernon, Governor of the Angoumois, who has been suspected of being the accomplice of Ravaillac; while the queen-mother herself was not entirely free from suspicion,—' the death of Henry did not sufficiently surprise her." Nor is it the striking cathedral, "Romanesque," says Murray, with its wide, aisleless nave and three beautiful cupolas. It is the beautiful old ramparts, with their shady walks and lovely views of the winding Charente which circles the town, the hosts of little paper-mills that were dotted far and wide beneath us, the gleaming back-waters, the poplar groves, and the vast plain through which the serpentine little river winds past the celebrated Cognac regions to the Atlantic, that gives to Angonleme a charm worthy of its name. Little fountains played among the trees on the "Impart Beaulieu;" old ladies sat beside them, studying the large print of their newspapers, and attended by steadfast-eyed poodles. The setting sun caught all the bends and back-waters of the river ; and the Cathedral clock broke the stillness with its deep tones. It was a lovely scene. It is one of the many oddities of human nature that I feel to deserve better of my fellow- creatures and my country for having spent that day at Angon- lame. Even the depressing smell of new mortar, the sight of mean modern buildings, and the dull leads behind our hotel, did not materially diminish this remarkable feeling of conscious
moral worth in visiting Angouldme, though they tended slightly to impair it.
We had hoped for a quiet Sunday at Arcachon, among the sandy pine-woods of the Bay of Biscay, and beside the largest of those many curious Range, or bassine, in other words, land- locked enclaves of sea ; but a noisier Sunday we never spent. Not only Bordeaux had poured a considerable portion of its surplus population into that little, straggling village of bathing-houses, lodging-houses, and bazaars, but from all the neighbouring stations streamed forth players on "the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and dulcimer," who too-tooed on their brass instruments, were jubilantly greeted of station-masters, and took off their hats with a tri- umphant flourish to each other and to everybody else, and who, it appeared, were to hold high festival at Arcachon, on the very day we had selected tor quiet there. When we arrived, there was a French crowd waving handkerchiefs and hurrahing spasmodically at the gates of the station, while French small-boy achieved feats of gymnastics in the space .allotted for the identification of luggage. We only just got a room at the top of the great hotel, and even that was nearly snatched from us by an agile Frenchman, who promptly "occu- pied " it before Henry, who had previously secured it, had finished the many sentences beginning with " Est-ce-que " which, like Dickens's young gentleman with the lumpy fore- head in Our Mutual Friend, he was not always very apt in bringing to any successful conclusion. However, the agile Frenchman had to evacuate his hardly-won position, and we found ourselves at leisure to gaze over the wide, blue ' bassin " of Arcachon, and the sandy pine-forests which stretch away for forty miles southwards to Bayonne. At night, when the crescent moon was shining on the blue water, and on the little fleet of fishing-boats, with one great vessel that had taken refuge in the great but not very accessible harbour—the "bassin" is all but land-locked, is sixty miles in cir- cumference, and is very deep—the scene was inexpressibly beau- tiful, as even a French bride admitted, who, coming out with her young husband on the terrace, exclaimed, " Qu'il est beau !" and then retired like a shot to the more important business of supper. There was too-tooing all Sunday ; how many direc- tors of how many various bands waved their gloved hands and their directorial kitons in succession in the Grand Hotel's court- yard, I am sure I &old not say, but it was not till Monday that we had peace. Then we found a great charm in the forest, though so many of the trees are drained of their turpentine by that cruel barking-process which is the equivalent for cupping,- . indeed, it is cupping, for at the bottom of every wound a cup is placed to receive the oozing resin. Nevertheless, these ,great, fragrant pine-woods, with a few hollies and thorn-trees interspersed, and the frequent glimpses of the smooth blue water, or the white lighthouse, or the gleaming sails of the fishing- boats, have a simple fascination of their own, when you once .got out of range of the flimsy booths of Arcachon and its parading bathers. Sand-hills, with their bare pasturage and multitudes of hiding-places, are always wild ; and when they mount up to considerable heights, are covered with forest thickly strewn with the brown pine-needles, and command the surface of a blue southern sea, I know no more charming shelter to idle in on a warm September day. Further in the Landes, there are great spots of desert, where mighty thistles grow so thick that the shepherds walk about on stilts, to look after their sheep, and sit knitting on a sort of perch made for them on a third pole which they carry, and occasionally fix deep into the sandy soil. But of these startling apparitions we unfortunately saw nothing, though I looked eagerly for them, as we journeyed through that barren land of wounded pines, loose sand, and thorny underwood, to Bayonne.
Bayonne, Biarritz, St. Jean de Luz,—I think of them alto- gether as a grim, Biscayau picture of wild mountains and wilder seas. A great gale was blowing for most of the time we gave to them, and though there was a lull of a day or two, and our drive fr.an St. Jean de Luz into Spain was de- lightful, yet for the most part wherever we saw it, " Gascogne's vast gulf was raging wide," and " Biscay's whirlwinds " gave us a striking sample of their fury. From under the walls of the great citadel of Bayonne we saw the eastern Pyrenees swept by hurricanes of rain, and the blue Adour itself, rolling angrily through the town ; indeed, the driving storm from the avest was almost more than the carriage could hold its own against, as we descended the hill towards the Allees Marines.
Soon, however, it cleared, and we were able to drive to the
month of the Adour, and stand where Wellington and Sir John Hope and the rest of the English officers stood, sixty-six years
before, in February, 1814, to watch the terrible passage of the bar of the swift river by those thirty craft wanted to bridge the Adour, and so to enable the English and Allied armies to close in the great fortress on its northern side. Had such an equinoctical gale been blowing as was dashing the Atlantic on to the bar when we beheld it, none of the vessels, I suppose, could have reached the river in safety. It was a weird spectacle.
Ridge on ridge of white sea, stretching for many miles between the mountain promontory of Spain and the river-month, but doubly furious as they dashed upon the bar, and at this point reared so high above the surface of the sea, that the sullen background of the Bay of Biscay behind them seemed somehow to have nothing further to do with those surging jets and torrents of foam except to throw them into terrible relief, —they made me shiver to look on them. The sky was quite black, with just a little white angry cloud specking it here and there. The signal-station, from which signals are made to the vessels attempting the passage of the bar, had nothing to do such a day as that, and we were thankful to see no sail with- in sight; but we heard a day or two after that a cattle-ship went down in the bay with all hands during that terrible storm.
Even of Wellington's thirty craft, two perished in the breakers on the bar, though the other twenty-eight were sufficient for his floating-bridge, and enabled a large portion of the besieging force to pass to the northern bank of the Adour. In driving back, we saw a splendid double rainbow springing at first from the northern bank of the Adour and towering into the sky just over the middle of the turbid stream, then shifting its base to the river itself, and finally making the twin towers of the fine old Cathedral—in which, by the way, the arms of the old English Dukes of Bordeaux are still to be seen—glitter with a wonderful brilliance. The following day, at Biarritz, we saw from its lofty lighthouse something like the same grim sight again ; indeed, the two horses of our carriage could hardly make their way against the gale, and had to be lashed into a gallop as we met its full force. It was a strange day for Biarritz ; bathing was impossible even in that sheltered old bathing-place under the cliff; all the gay bathing-dresses hung up unused, and you hardly knew whether the rain or foam wetted you most.
Fortunately, we had brighter weather for our first Pyrenean drive from St. Jean de Luz to San Sebastian under the auspices of a gaily-dressed post-boy in a French beret, who whirled us past the steep Rhun mountain, which was once so strongly fortified by Marshal Soult against the English, and on the higher slopes of which we could still see some of the old bastions ; over the bridge of the Bidassoa into Spain ; past the Isle of Pheasants, where a Spanish Infanta was once exchanged in marriage for a French princess ; by the flintous fords of the glittering town of Passages, which stood' moat picturesquely in that flood-tide, under its high, green cliffk-L-
the place, I mean, where Wellington's soldiers crossed the river one November day in 1813, before the French had discovered that at low tide, during the spring-tide :.1, the river is fordable,— and finally into San Sebastian itself, the beautiful capital of the Basque country, with its long, broad, straight streets, its gay shops, full of pictured bull-fights, and its double bay and towering headlands, its citadel projecting far into the Bay of Biscay, and its little cemetery of English officers' graves. Among them was one which struck me much. "To Poor Court, who died under his colours in the battle of Ajeta, in 1813, mourned by beauty and friendship." Was Poor Court a dog, I wonder P 1 conclude, as well from the pathos as from the reticence of the epitaph, that he was, and that no grave of that romantic little group was gazed into with a more honeit sorrow. The gratitude felt towards faithful dependents is perhaps, of human emotions, the one least mingled with any vein of inconsistent or disturbing feeling ; and hence, you generally find it expressed with equal simplicity and reserve.—
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