BOOKS.
THE ROOF OF FRANCE.*
CIVILISATION and English customs need not be always an& entirely synonymous terms. We are led to make this remark by Miss Betham-Edwards's astonishment at finding "in the- houses of rich landed proprietors in Anjou and Berri, brick- floored bedrooms, carpetless salons, dqetiner served on the bare table," &c. It is very true in the most splendid old chateaux, the upper rooms and corridors are often floored with. old shining tiles or bricks ; carpets are considered out of keeping in the great salon, with its beautiful parquet; and it is the custom to lay the dejeaner on a polished table, like the • The Roof of France ; or, the Causses of the Dozers. By M, Betham.Edwards,. London ; Richard Bentley and Bon. 1
dessert of our savage grandfathers. In these and many other ways of the same kind, the French differ from the English. In France, indeed, we may almost venture to say, the nobler the name, the simpler the life. Rightly or wrongly, material prosperity, luxury of daily living, softness and self-indulgence, have not till now been the ideal of the best among French people. That their way of life should be considered a bad example to the peasants, seems at first strange ; but the difference of ideals explains everything. Miss Betham. Edwards's remarks on the subject give one more proof, if we wanted it, of the utterly material spirit of the Revolution, to her so glorious, great, and good. In her eyes, the Republic can do no wrong: she would have all schools laicised, science triumphant, France at the feet of men like Gambetta and Paul Bert, French society levelled down to that great peasant- proprietary whose lives and aims and work she views through such rose-coloured spectacles. Other people's experience has been different from hers. The present writer knows enough of France to say that the sympathy of " convent- bred Frenchwomen" with "their humbler neighbours in rural districts" is not very small, but very great. And as to the peasants, we believe that some inquiry into their real circum- stances, in Provence, for instance, or a little careful examination of their absolutely wretched petite culture in Anjou, would go far to counterbalance the bright accounts of their prosperity in the Lozere. A recent writer in the Spectator is more practi- cally right, we suspect, when he talks of "life-long overwork," "eternal devotion to petty meannesses," " persistently sordid care," and shows us how laborious, penurious, stolid, the peasant-proprietor is and must be, and how " the petite culture, to succeed, involves the continuous, persistent, resigned over- work of the entire family, and not merely of its head." All this is not encouraging as to a peasant-proprietary in England, though in Miss Betham-Edwards's experience—not in that of most people, fortunately—the English labourer exists on 9s. a week, and" Christmas doles of beef and flannel petticoats from the Hall." However, we must not linger on these questions. France, and England too, are walking quickly in the way that Miss Betham-Edwards desires : the ideals of luxury and material comfort are already those of the majority in both countries; money, carpets and table-cloths axe less and less found wanting. The possession of these and other things per- taining to le confort, is fast proving its claim to be the highest ambition of man Having expressed our disagreement with Miss Betham- Edwards's social and political views, we must go on to say with what great enjoyment we have followed her wanderings in the Lozere. A true lover of France is not surprised to hear of any hidden beauty in that land of endless variety ; but the mountain-barrier of the Cevennes, with its extraordinary lime- stone summits, called Les Causses—till now, owing to the great difficulty of approach, hardly known to the French themselves —seems to carry off the palm for wonder and beauty from any other part of France. We do not think it remarkable that in- formation about the Causses should have been difficult to obtain. The name itself is a local patois name, meaning the limestone tops of the mountains; it was not, therefore, likely to be found in older geographical books. The region is so wild, so remote, so far above and beyond the ordinary world of ordinary people, that the inhabitants, the true Caussenards, are almost savage, and to this day it is unsafe to go among them without a guide. In the winter these high solitudes are covered with many feet of snow, and in 1887, having started on her travels too late in the summer, Miss Betham-Edwards was obliged to give up her visit to the Causses, and to be contented with seeing them afar off. But in 1888, with a spirited perseverance delightful to read of, suggesting that "romance of travel" which is so enchanting to the imagination, she succeeded in making her way into the very heart of the Causses, though not without a good deal of difficulty and some danger. She found the people of the Lozere as ideal as their scenery : handsome, obliging, intelligent, honest, even disinterested. She cannot help sighing over the thought that in a very short time the Lozere, the highest ground in France, with its wonderful air, its wonderful beauty, and at present its equally wonderful loneliness, will become the haunt of thousands of tourists, English as well as French ; that great hotels will be built, instead of the charming inns that sheltered her; that there will be "tourist-laden flotillas" on the Tarn, and waggonettes to the Cite du Diable. The traveller who fears these things does well to be sorry : we are sorry, too : but it is a rather amusing thought that, by
publishing such a book as this, one brings the dreaded time a great deal nearer. And, after all, from Miss Betham-Edwards's own point of view, it is a good work to bring civilisation,
carpets, bells, and all the advantages of the Republic, and of English example, into these remote and ignorant solitudes.
We are ourselves afraid that, though the intelligence of the- Lozeriens may increase, their honesty may diminish, and also their generous trust in strangers. Begging, now unknown, will be born and flourish, as in other tourist-haunted places. But all progress has its wrong side.
The author of this book began her second and successful journey to the Causses by steaming down the Rhone from Lyons to Avignon, which she found far pleasanter than the Paris, Lyons, and Mediterranean Railway. Her descriptions of Avignon and of Orange are most picturesque and in- teresting. Vaucluse she found disappointing; it was hot, dusty, and vulgarised. From Nimes, she and her companion went on to Le Vigan, here at once finding themselves far from the beaten track of tourists ; and yet this charmingly situated old town has a distinction of its own ; it was the birthplace of the gallant Chevalier d'Assas. Still, the travellers were eighty miles from St. Enimie, the threshold of the Causses, and there seemed at first to be no way of getting there, except by driving through a tract of almost desert country. In the end, they drove to Milan, in the Aveyron, travelled by railway to Mende, and then took their beautiful and adventurous drive to St. Enimie. From this strange and lovely little town, wedged in among perpendicular cliffs, they descended the Tarn in a boat, shooting the rapids in a fashion that would alarm most tourists, favoured with glorious weather, and in the midst of mountain scenery almost beyond even the author's great descriptive powers. The wildest point of their journey, and the strangest experience, was their visit to the marvellous dolomite city known as Montpellier-le-Vieux, or the Cite du Diable, which literally, Miss Betham-Edwards assures us, was only discovered by two French tourists in 1882. The approach to the city is as beautiful as itself is strange :—
"Every minute we obtain grander and wider horizons, the three Causses being now in view, their distant sides shining like gigantic walls of crystal; deep blue shadows here and there in- dicating the verdant clefts and valleys we know of. . . . . . Nothing can be softer, more harmonious, more delicate than the soft grey tints of the limestone against the pure heaven ; every bit of rock tapestried with the yellowing box-leaf, or made more
silvery still with the flowers of the wild lavender East, west, north, south, the lines of billowy curves in the far distance grow vaster, till we come in sight of what seems indeed a colossal city towering westward over the horizon ; a city well built, girt round with battlements, bristling with watch-towers, outlined in gold and amethyst upon a faint azure sky. It is our first glimpse of Montpellier-le-Vieux."
And a near view makes the wonder not much less
"What we deemed citadels, domes, and parapets, prove to he the silvery dolomite only : limestone rock thrown into every con- ceivable form, the imposing masses blocking the horizon a phantom capital, an eldritch city, whose streets now for the first time echo with the sound of human voice and tread."
This myeiterious freak of Nature, the effect of which we can well believe to be more eerie and terrifying than delightful, has been entirely created by the action of water, which " has gradually, and in the slow process of ages, built up the whole, then vanished altogether."
It is likely that these new hunting-grounds of the Lozere and the Aveyron will soon attain the popularity Miss Betham- Edwards has done her beat to give them. She is wise in not underrating the difficulties to be encountered in these Cook- less regions, where even a bold Swiss tourist might find himself sometimes at fault. To her own sex she gives a piece of advice which evidently strikes her as important, for it is repeated twice in the course of the book,—to buy a bonnet and travelling dress in Paris, before venturing into untravelled parts of France. " An outlandish appearance, sure to excite observation, is thus avoided."
We have to thank Miss Betham-Edwards for a great deal of charming description, eagerly to be read by those who love and admire France, in their own way, as cordially as she does, and who know well the truth of her words—" that France, excepting Brittany, Normandy, the Pyrenees, the Riviera, and the Hotel du Jura, Dijon, is really much less familiar to English travellers than Nijni-Novgorod or Jerusalem."
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