A SPRING JOURNEY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22064, 21 September 1933, Page 11

A SPRING JOURNEY

By G. S. Cox. I— FROM DIEPPE TO PARIS I decided to begin my vacation by walking from Dieppe to Paris. A Frenchman at Oxford had told me that there are two sides to the coin of Prance— Paris and the country. To know Prance you must know both. • I wanted the exercise, too, and the spring sunshine and the birds and the awakening trees called me into the open. So I began to read travellers’ accounts of Northern Prance, Amongst them I came across a description by an Englishman of a tramp he had made from Dieppe to Geneva, by way of Paris. His enthusiasm for the Normandy countryside. and the Normandy omelettes settled the matter. I would set out with a rucksack and sample both for myself. So I gathered a few things together, read Hazlitt’s essay “ On Going a Journey,” and bought a ticket from London to Dieppe. I left London in a mood as dank as the fog which hung over the buildings and filled the streets. London and I are not the best of friends. Perhaps the fault is mine. Perhaps I do not treat the place with the circumspection it deserves. All I know is that two or three days of London, of thundering buses and crowded tubes and noise and hurrying people, reduce me to a state of exhaustion and gloom. I was like that this morning. I tried to take an interest in the departure of the boat train, but without much success. I remember a fat cabby in the street nearby feeding some equally fat pigeons. The birds perched on his arm, eating from his hand, and one of them even strutted along the horse’s back to pick a grain off its rump. At a first-class carriage window a fleshy, well-dressed woman was reading the Tatler. Where was she going? I wondered. Paris? Biarritz? St. Moritz? A young man In a cloth cap, probably a clerk going on his holiday, was being farewelled by a palefaced, vivid-lipped girl. In the corridor a couple were talking Italian. Then we were off, gliding out of the dark cavern of the station. A glimpse of steam from a tea urn on the platform; nearby, a chauffeur in a green uniform raising his hand in salute to someone in the train; then out, amid the tracks and sidings and swift-moving trains, until at last we were running through the forest of back yards and chimney pots and backs of drear, grey brick houses which make up the suburbs of London.

Even the green fields and hedgerows of Surrey appeared soggy and dejected that morning, so I gave up gazing from the window and relapsed into a corner to bury my gloom in the Spectator's petty bourgeois comments on the political situation. Newhaven turned out to be a small place, not unlike the Bluff in appearance, looking out on to a flat, grey sea. We sailed at midday, and I was glad to go. Then occurred an event which was theoutcome of sheer good luck and which completely changed my< mood. I was leaning over the rail, watching the white cliffs and the grey-green Sussex Downs, when I noticed, standing next to me, ft very pretty girl in a brown beret and ft big, fur-collared travelling coat. Her face was burnt brown by the sun, a rare sight in this part of the world in March. Should I speak to her ? Why not? At the worst she could only snub me. So I pointed to a line of houses in what was obviously an outlying part of Newhaven, and said, “ Can you tell me if that is Brighton over there, please ? ” “ I’m afraid,” came the answer in a voice with a faint foreign accent, a very charming foreign accent, “I’m afraid I really don’t know. But I think Brightpn is further south.” What did it matter where Brighton was? The proprieties were satisfied, and the opening was made. I followed it up. “ You are French, yes ? ” Yes, she was French, a teacher of English and music. She was returning to Paris after a pleasure cruise in the West Indies. Some wealthy English friends had paid her passage in order to secure a companion for their daughter during the trip. We talked of the West Indies, of travel in general, of England and France, and of national differences. “ Yes, I like the English very, very much,” she said, “ but they are so solemn. On the boat when I felt happy I used to sing as I walked the corridors, and then people used to turn and stare at me. But what is the use of always being restrained? In France it is not like that. We like to share our feelings with other people. If you are gay, you should express it, and laugh and sing. Then perhaps you make someone' else happy, too. In France you will find that everyone is cheerful, friendly, and toujours, toujours gfti.” I began to, feel sure that I would like France. The English have many virtues, but excessive sociability is not one of them. Every traveller is familiar with the scene in an English railway compartment, with its occupants. spending a five or six hour journey each in glorious isolation in his own corner. This reserve is even more marked between Englishman and Englishman than between an Englishman and a stranger, who will usually try to start a conversation somehow. I stayed once in a London boarding house where two young men had breakfasted together for a month without exchanging more than a “ Good morning,” and an occasional, “ Pass the marmalade, please.” This is-not due, as we are apt to think, to “standoffishness” so much as to shyness and disinterestedness, neither of which is an insurmountable barrier. But, for all that, making acquaintances in England remains an art, and a difficult one. As we talked the sun parted, the clouds and gleamed on the sea, and the world seemed infinitely brighter and more cheerful. Slowly the grey line of the southern horizon materialised into low cliffs, grasstopped, and then the breakwater and the buildings of Dieppe came into sight. By 3 o’clock we were moored alongside the quay at Dieppe. I saw mademoiselle into the Paris train and then set about settling my own arrangements.

There were two courses open to me. My original intention had been to walk all the way from Dieppe to some town like Mantes on the outskirts of Paris. My shipboard friend had declared, however, that the road from Dieppe to Rouen was uninteresting—a long, straight high-

way over flat country. What was I to do? To go by train over this first bit promised to bring me sooner into better walking country. On the other hand I had made up my mind to walk from Dieppe, and I wanted to keep to this resolve. I drank a cup of coffee in the quay restaurant in the hope that my feelings might become more definite in the meanwhile. Yes, dash it, I would go by train. So I got into an empty third class compartment ’’ bound for Rouen. Then I looked tut of the window, and the sunshine seemed to be mocking me, calling, “ This is a nice way to start a walking tour! Going by train, indeed!” So I took down my‘rucksack from the rack, clambered out of the train (fortunately I had not bought a ticket) and set off up the street at what amounted to a jog trot, determined to get well away before my mind could change again. And I felt this time that' I had cided wisely.