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Read Ebook: Old Picture Books With Other Essays on Bookish Subjects by Pollard Alfred W Alfred William Pollard Alice Contributor
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Ebook has 20 lines and 5519 words, and 1 pages
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The Diligence--French Country Places--The English in Guienne--Bordeaux--Old Bordeaux--A Bordeaux Landlord--A Suburban Vintaging--The Vintage Dinner 1-20
The Claret Vintage--The Treading of the Grape--The Last Drops of the Grape--Wanderings amongst the Vineyards--Wandering Vintagers--The Vintage Dinner--The Vintagers' Bedroom--The Claret Chateaux--The Chateau Margaux 39-57
The Landes--The Bordeaux and Teste Railway--M. Tetard and his Imitator--Start for the Landes--The Language of the Landes--A Railway Station in the Landes--The Scenery of the Landes--The Stilt-walkers of the Landes--A Glimpse of Green 58-76
Dawn on the Garonne--The Landscape of the Garonne--The Freaks of the Old Wars in Guienne--Agen--Jasmin, the Last of the Troubadours--Southern Cookery and Garlic--The Black Prince in a New Light--Cross-country Travelling in France 102-126
Pau--The English in Pau--English and Russians--The View of the Pyrenees--The Castle--The Statue of Henri Quatre--His Birth--A Vision of his Life--Rochelle--St. Bartholomew--Ivry--Henri and Sully--Henri and Gabrielle--Henri and Henriette d'Entragues--Ravaillac 127-136
The Val d'Ossau--The Vin de Jurancon--Pyrenean Cottages--The Bernais Peasants--The Devil learning Basque--The Wolves of the Pyrenees--The Bears of the Pyrenees--The Dogs of the Pyrenees--An Auberge in the Pyrenees--Omens and Superstitions in the Pyrenees--The Songs of the Pyrenees 137-155
Wet Weather in the Pyrenees--Eaux Chaudes out of Season, and in the Rain--Plucking the Indian Corn at the Auberge at Laruns--The Legend of the Wehrwolf, and the Baron who was changed into a Bear 156-166
Languedoc--The "Austere South"--Beziers and the Albigenses--The Fountain of the Greve--The Bishop and his Flock--The Canal du Midi--The Mistral--Rural Billiard-playing 187-199
Backward French Agriculture--French Rural Society--The Small Property System--French "Encumbered Estates" 256-264
CLARET AND OLIVES.
THE DILIGENCE--OLD GUIENNE AND THE ENGLISH IN FRANCE--BORDEAUX AND A SUBURBAN VINTAGING.
The conductor's voice roused me from the dreamy state of dose in which I lay, luxuriously stretched back amid cloaks and old English railway-wrappers, in the roomy banquette of one of the biggest diligences which ever rumbled out of Caillard and Lafitte's yard.
I rubbed my eyes and looked. We were on the ridge of a wooded hill. Below us lay a flat green plain, carpetted with vines. Right across it ran the broad, white, chalky highway, powdering with dust the double avenue of chestnuts which lined it. Beyond the plain glittered a great river, crowded with shipping, and beyond the river rose stretching, apparently for miles, a magnificent fa?ade of high white buildings, broken here and there by the foliage of public gardens, and the dark embouchures of streets; while, behind the range of quays, and golden in the sunrise, rose high into the clear morning air, a goodly array of towering Gothic steeples, fretted and pinnacled up to the glancing weather-cocks. It was, indeed, Bordeaux.
An Englishman ought to feel at home in the south-west of France. That fair town, rising beyond the yellow Garonne, was for three hundred years and more an English capital. Who built these gloriously fretted Gothic towers, rising high into the air, and sentinelled by so many minor steeples? Why Englishmen! These towers rise above the Cathedral of St. Andrew, and in the Abbey of St. Andrew the Black Prince held high court, and there, after Poitiers, the captive King of France revelled with his conqueror, with the best face he might. There our Richard the Second was born. There the doughty Earl of Derby, long the English seneschal of Bordeaux, with his retinue, "amused themselves," as gloriously gossipping old Froissart tells, "with the citizens and their wives;" and from thence Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, went forth, being eighty-six years of age, mounted upon a little palfrey, to encounter the Duke of Anjou, in those latter days when our continental dominions were shrinking, as we deserved that they should shrink, after the brutal murder of the glorious Maid of Domr?my. It is true that we are at this moment in the department of the Dordogne, and that when we cross the river we shall be in that of the Gironde. But we Englishmen love the ancient provinces better than the modern departments, which we are generally as bad at recognising, as we are in finding out dates by Thermidors and Brumaires. No, no, departments may do for Frenchmen, but to an Englishman the rich land we are crossing will ever be Guienne, the "Fair Dutchy," and part and parcel of old Aquitane, the dowry of Eleanor, when she wedded our second Henry.
All sensible readers will be gratified when I state that I have not the remotest intention of describing the archaeology of Bordeaux, or any other town whatever. Whoever wants to know the height of a steeple, the length of an aisle, or the number of arches in a bridge, must betake themselves to Murray and his compeers. I will neither be picturesquely profound upon ogives, triforia, clerestorys, screens, or mouldings; nor magniloquently great upon the arched, the early pointed, the florid, or the flamboyant schools. I will go into raptures neither about Virgins nor Holy Families, nor Oriel windows, in the fine old cut-and-dry school of the traveller of taste, which means, of course, every traveller who ever packed a shirt into a carpet bag; but, leaving the mere archaeology and carved stones alone in their glory, I will try to sketch living, and now and then historical, France--to move gossippingly along in the by-ways rather than the highways--always more prone to give a good legend of a grey old castle, than a correct measurement of the height of the towers; and always seeking to bring up, as well as I can, a varying, shifting picture, well thronged with humanity, before the reader's eye.
"With many a cross-bearer before, And many a spear behind,"
the christening procession of King Richard the Second.
"Could anything be more lucky? His particular friend M. So-and-so was beginning his harvesting that very day, and was going to give a dinner that very night on the occasion. I should go--he should go. A friend of his was M. So-and-so's friend; in fact, we were all friends together." The truth I suspect to be, that my ally was dreadfully in want of an excuse to go to the dinner, and he welcomed my application as the Israelites did manna in the desert. It was meat and drink and amusement to him, and off we went.
As I shall presently describe the real claret vintage upon a large scale, I shall pass
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