A SPRING JOURNEY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22066, 23 September 1933, Page 2

A SPRING JOURNEY

,By G. S. Cox.

lI.—ON NORMANDY ROADS I paused at a corner to ask my way of a passer-by. It is always an adventure to speak one’s first sentence in a foreign tongue. What a feeling of anxiety as you repeat the carefully-rehearsed words, and what a feeling of confidence and pride follows if you are actually understood and answered! I remember almost bursting with, self-development when. I said to a Berlin taxi-driver, “ Haben sie ein mark? and he replied, “ Ja, mein Herr.” My career as a French conversationalist began with “ Quelle est la route pour Rouen, s’il vous plait?” The man whom I addressed failed to show any consciousness of honour in the fact that fate 'had selected him of all people of. France to initiate me into the mysteries of his native tongue. He merely regarded me with a baffled stare: “ Comment ? ’ "Rouen, Rouen,” I repeated. “Ah, Rouen! ” he exclaimed, smiling broadly, and pronouncing the word so that it sounded to me like "H’ Wu’onl "Vous allez. ...” The way lay first through the rather dirty streets of the town. Dieppe and many other French country towns have something of the appearance of the East. The narrow, winding streets* the windows whose shutters give the houses a secretive, discreet appearance, as if they sheltered strange harems and Oriental Council Chambers, the faint, sweet, not unattractive smell of litter were all faintly reminiscent of Bombay and Fort Said. On the outskirts the road rose steeply towards the open. country. It was certainly not attractive in its earlier stages. It was'a Route Rationale, a main highway, wide, bitumenised, many with cars and lorries rushing along it, and plentifully decorated with advertisements, inviting one to “ Drink Quinquina as an aperitif," - or to have my clothes made by "Guyon Freres et Cie, Rouen.” About a mile and a-half, and I was. in the country proper. It was all farming land, wide open plains rising, near the coast, to low uplands. The fields were very big, but were worked in patches. Here would be five or six acres of grass; side by side with them, unfenced, separated only by a strip of turf or a single furrow, would be several acres of brown ploughland; then a stretch of young wheat; then an, area which had apparently grown turnips in the winter, and was now being ploughed.. In many of the fields there were harrowing. The peasant walked ahead, leading two hoysea, who dragged a set of heavy wooden harrows. In this part of the country many of the farmhouses, as?in England, were not grouped in villages, but stood amidst the fields. They were mostly of brick-covered plaster, often half-timbered, with dark, hand-hewn wooden beams.

I had not gone very far when a boy, in the plaster-spattered overalls of a carpenter’s apprentice, rode alongside me on his bicycle and opened a conversation. Evidently I was not going to be lonely on this march. I am sure I gave him a wonderful opinion of his powers as a raconteur, because I was so pleased at being able to follow almost all that lie said that I laughed and smiled at his most commonplace remarks. , Meanwhile the number of lorries which kept passing gave me an idea. Why should I not try for a lift, why not; attempt a bit of hitch-hiking? So I waited at the next bend, held out my hand, and managed to stop, a coal lorry. In halting French I asked if he would “me permettre a voyager vers Rouen? ” This time I called it v H’ Wu’on." Fortunately he understood and agreed. Had I met with a refusal at the start I am sure I would have tramped miles before 1 had the nerve to try again. The lorry driver was a young fellow,, and very friendly. He had evidently heard nothing of New Zealand except the name, but he knew that in Australia the fields were very big, and there were a great number of rabbits. He himself had wanted to emigrate to America, but the crisis had prevented him. It was from him that I first met with a question which many people were to put to me in France. Had I done my military service? Yes, I always replied, having in my mind the pictures of New Zealand drill sheds and half-dav parades on the showgrounds and the white tents of the battalion camp at Waianakarua. When I left him, about 20 kilometres along, the way, I stood him a glass of winh, and we parted the best of friends. „ , _ . , Just after dark I came to Totes, and entered the first hotel, L’ Hotel du Cygne. It was a lucky choice. I stepped from the street into a big, warm kitchen, its walls hung with crockery and gleaming brassware. In one corner a white-capped chef bent over the stove; in another two girls were ironing. Yes, I could certainly nave a bed and an omelette and a bottle of wine. .... I sat in a brightly-papered dining room, hung with some surprisingly good water colours and a terrible oleograph of Louis Philippe and his family in 1843. Madame and her daughter sat in the corner and sewed. At dinner time three young men came in. . They talked animatedly and cheerfully with each other, with madame and the maids. After the meal they were joined by another young man and his wife, and the whole party settled down over glasses of cherry brandy to pass the evening in conversation, at times serious at times light-hearted. They were all—especially the woman —dressed in a smart, tasteful manner, which would have looked chic in any street in London and, I presume, Paris. And yet this was a town about the size of Paeroa! I took in these details with difficulty. I had walked myself into a sort of stupor, and found I had no energies left witn which to write even a letter, so I took myself off early to bed. The bed was comfortable enough, but the mattress was as soft as foam, and no amount of straining, would open the window, so my night s sleep was not of the best. In the morning I noticed on the wall of the dining room a framed account of the history of the inn. It was founded in 1611, beside the road along which Joan of Arc had ridden on her way to Rouen, D’Artagnan, of the Three Musketeers, had slept there; Madame Pompadour had used it as a hunting lodge; Napoleon had lunched there on his way to Dieppe m 1804, and had presented the cuisine with a great brass pot, which was produced for my inspection. In its dining room Flaubert had dined with Madame Bovary., It had afforded lodging to Lnnb Phi'ipno and the Duke D’Orleana and, during the Great War, to the King of the Belgians and to many English and colonial ofheers. Most interesting of all. however, was the information that the Hotel du Cygue was the spot which De Maupassant depicts in Ms short - story “ Boule de Suif. ’ It was fun to speculate whether this company had slept in the room I had occupied. I wondered whether D’Artagnan had struggled to get that window open, and what Madame Pompadour had thought in her time of the clinging softness of that bed.