ACROSS FRANCE IN A CARAVAN.*
WE must confess to being something wearied of the floods of so-called books of travel with which the comparatively inno- cent public is constantly inundated by every previously harmless individual whom a thoughtless Providence has per- mitted to wander beyond a radius of three or four miles from his own front-door. The mere fact of crossing the Channel is held to be quite a sufficient excuse for such a publication, and we can foresee the not distant period when even this bare remnant of decency will be no longer considered necessary, and the hapless reviewer will have to contend with mighty volumes describing " Our Tour in South Kensington," or " Round Hyde Park on a Watering-Cart." Not that the wandering a little further from home by any means improves this class of literature, for the worst of all the " travel" book- makers are those who visit far countries by railway or steamboat for the sake of saying they have done so, and without ever venturing far beyond the conveyances of civilisation, write on their return an account out of the guide- books of what more adventurous persons might have seen.
The book before us, however, belongs to neither of the classes to which we have referred ; it deals with a journey, not, perhaps, exactly adventurous, but at least original, and requiring a considerable amount of resource and determination to carry successfully through, over a very considerable extent of country, only some little part of which is familiar to English. men in general. It is cleverly told, with the quiet, dry humour that many readers will remember in the little books published by the same author while a boy at Eton, and must rank very much above the ordinary level of books dealing with kindred sub- jects. The journey proposed and accomplished from Bordeaux to Genoa, by Toulouse, Caroassonne, Narbonne, Marseilles, Toulon, and the Riviera had apparently the merit of being undertaken with no arriere-pence of book-making, but as a genuine pleasure excursion ; possibly even the jottings by the way, which go to make up the volume before us, may also have been made and preserved with no ulterior intentions, should the gentleman to whom we owe it be afflicted with the pernicious e Across France in a Caravan : being some Account of a Journey from Bornholm to Genoa in the 'Escargot.' By the Author of " A Day of My Life at Eton." Edinburgh and London : Blackwood and Sons. 1892. habit of keeping a diary. Certainly, the account of each day seems to present obvious signs of having been recorded at once, —a circumstance which probably contributes to give them that air of freshness which is the principal charm of the book. The caravan in which the journey was taken was apparently an ordinary vehicle of this kind, though perhaps fitted up in a more elaborate style than Mrs. Jarley would have considered necessary, and was, for the whole way, with the exception of a short stay at a hotel at Alaseio, when more than three quarters of the way had been accomplished, the bona fide residence of the travellers, or at least of the principal per- sonages. The travellers who embarked on this enterprise may be described in our author's own words, as these will give a a very fair representation of the style of narrative generally "Our party was to consist of Peggy, the collie 'James,' and myself. Peggy was to do the cooking ; James '—well, `James' was to have certain undefined duties, which now I come to think over it after it is all finished, never were exactly defined : for the• most part, he enacted the role of distinguished passenger. But, of course, it would have been out of the question to have left him behind : one might almost as well have thought of leaving me. As for myself, I was to look after the horses when we had got them ! I didn't know very much about horses, to tell the truth, at that time, except how to actually drive them, and perhaps take a stone out if it got into a shoe on the road ; and when I had studied various books on horses and their ailments—the chief part of said books being devoted to their ailments—and had heard all that my more horsey friends had to tell me about them, I must own I began to feel a little tremulous, and to revolve in my mind whether it wouldn't perhaps be better to get a traction-engine instead, as being less delicate. And I was to make myself generally useful to Peggy—and, I suppose, to James."
Before setting out on the journey, the company was in- creased by a French stable-lad named Joseph, and a later reinforcement was received at Toulouse in the person• of, apparently, a young officer, described as Willie. For this exterior circle, however, there was no room in the caravan, and they were obliged to have recourse to the common methods of civilisation,—sleeping, and even eating occasionally, in mere houses of public entertainment. The party was completed by two very important persons, respectively known as Mary Ann' and the' Miasma,' the mares who drew the caravan. The chronicle of the doings of this small party forms the contents of the book. Each has his little adventures, and develops his particular idiosyn- crasies; we are interested at one time in the haunting fear of brigands with which Joseph is afflicted, we are grieved again- at the caprices of the Atissus,' and observe with approval the blameless 'Mary Ann,' whose only fault appears to be a delicacy of constitution ; but our principal interest undoubtedly centres- upon James,' whose name might appropriately have been changed to Mercurius, as he appears to have been generally the chief speaker, and, indeed, chief actor, in many incidents. Not that it should be supposed that James' is in any way a buffoon, or even a poseur ; in too many books of this kind we are apt to find a low comedy dog dragged in to raise laughter in the reader by such expedients of broad farce as would hardly be becoming even in a man. The conduct of ' James'
is- only described, with all necessary veracity, as that of any other member of the party ; indeed, there is very considerable literary art displayed in the simplicity of the description of James " singing himself to sleep " or trying to get the pigs and turkeys to play with him, with that strain of apparently unconscious humour which makes the reader in- clined to think that it is his own joke be is laughing at. One of the best instances we can quote is that where the caravan was surrounded by "several dogs wandering about in a pur- poseless way, all of whom James' invited home to lunch :-
" They all accepted, and sat round in a semicircle in front of the Escargot, while we were having our lunch, waiting for James to hand them down something; but I am sorry to say that he ate all we gave him himself : it was only two chop bones, certainly. We gave the poor doggies what we could sparo beyond that, as we didn't like to disappoint them; but James shouldn't have invited them in that reckless manner, considering the somewhat straitened• circumstances that we were in."
There is generally a difficulty in the case of this kind of book as to the proper amount of description of the country that is passed through. We think that our author's plan of not attempting any special account of the antiquities or archi- tectural beauties he meets with, is well-advised. Snch• accounts we can find at greater length than would here be possible, in many other works ; while a long description of, say, St. Trophime at Arles, would come in somewhat incon. gruonsly among all the fanny little experiences of Peggy and 'James' and the Author (as the latter studiously preserves his incognito, we may perhaps be allowed to fall back on his old designation, which was quite sufficiently particular at Eton, where authors are scarce). On the other hand, of the people of the country, whom travellers in this fashion have special opportunities to observe, we have always an interesting and sympathetic picture, though we regret an apparent prejudice against the Italians, whom we ourselves should regard as generally rather more obliging than their French neighbours.
The printers who are responsible for the production of this book have shown a rather more than usually frolicsome spirit in dealing with French words and names. If the late Prince of Monaco addressed the caravan party as voyoux, he was certainly insulting them; but if he only called them voyaux- a term of unknown meaning—we see no special cause for in- dignation. Other mild eccentricities, such as "La Luc," might be passed over, but " ceufs a la plat" is rather too bad. The present writer can speak feelingly on such subjects, as his early ambition to earn a distinction for scholarship by an abstruse treatise on a point of the social life of antiquity, was blighted by a printer who insisted, in spite of repeated cor- xections, in spelling " chiton " with a "y." But, perhaps, con- sidering what a depressing employment it must be to set up the yards of rubbish which the confraternity of letters thrust upon nnoffending compositors, it is not astonishing if they take their revenge occasionally. The illustrations contributed by Mr. John Wallace, after sketches by the author, are of uniform excellence.
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