The Automobilist Abroad

Of the road from Vienna, through Moravia and Bohemia, the tourist wrote also feelingly. "May I never see those miserable countries again," he said. Things must have improved in the last two or three years, but the cause of the little De Dion's troubles was the frequent recurrence of culverts or canivaux across the road. Five hundred in one day nearly did for the little De Dion, or would have done so had not it been carefully driven.

From Prague the German frontier was crossed at Zinnwalo, a tiny hamlet well hidden on a mountain-top, beyond which is a descent of fifty kilometres to Dresden. From Dresden to Berlin the way lay over delightful forest roads, little given to traffic, and most enjoyable at any season of the year, unless there be snow upon the ground.

From Berlin the route was by Magdebourg, Hanover, Munster, and Wesel, and Holland was entered at Beek, a little village ten kilometres from Nymegen. At Nymegen the Waal was crossed by a steam ferry-boat, and at Arnhem the Rhine was passed by a bridge of boats, a surviving relic in Continental Europe still frequently to be found, as at Wesel and Dusseldorf in Germany, and even in Italy, near Ferrara on the Po.

Utrecht came next, then Amsterdam – "a little tour of Holland," as the De Dion's conductor put it. In the suburbs of the large Dutch towns, notably Utrecht, one makes his way through miles and miles of garden walls, half-hiding coquettish villas. The surface of the roads here is formed of a peculiar variety of paving that makes them beloved of automobilists, it being of small brick placed edgewise, and very agreeable to ride and drive upon.

From Utrecht the route was more or less direct to Antwerp. At the Belgian frontier acquaintance was made with that horrible granite-block road-bed, for which Belgium is notorious. After Antwerp, Brussels, then forty-five kilometres of road even worse – if possible – than that which had gone before. (The Belgian chauffeurs call that portion of the route between Brussels and Gemblout a disgrace to Belgium.) The French frontier was gained, through Namur, at Rocroi, and Paris reached, via Meaux, thirty-nine days after the capital had previously been quitted.

This was probably the most remarkable "grand tour" which had been made up to that time, and it was done with a little six horse-power car, which suffered no accidents save those that one is likely to meet with in an afternoon's promenade. The automobile itself weighed, with its baggage and accessories, practically six hundred kilos, and with its two passengers 760 kilos. The distance covered was 4,496 kilometres.

Part II

Touring In France

Chapter I

Down Through Touraine: Paris To Bordeaux

As old residents of Paris we, like other automobilists, had come to dread the twenty-five or thirty kilometres which lead from town out through Choisy-le-Roi and Villeneuve St. Georges, at which point the road begins to improve, and the execrable suburban Paris pavement, second to nothing for real vileness, except that of Belgium, is practically left behind, all but occasional bits through the towns.

At any rate, since our automobile horse was eating his head off in the garage at St. Germain, we decided on one bright May morning to conduct him forthwith by as comfortable a road as might be found from St. Germain around to Choisy-le-Roi.

Getting across Paris is one of the dreaded things of life. For the traveller by train who, fleeing from the fogs of London, as he periodically does in droves from November to February of each year, desires to make the south-bound connection at the Gare de Lyon, it is something of a problem. He may board the "Ceinture" with a distrust the whole while that his train may not make it in time, or he may go by cab, provided he will run the risk of some of his numerous impedimenta being left behind, for – speak it lightly – the Englishman is still found who travels with his bath-tub, though, if he is at all progressive, it may be a collapsible india-rubber affair which you blow up like the tires of an automobile.

For the automobilist there is the same dread and fear. To avoid this one has simply to make his way carefully from St. Germain, via Port Marly, or Marly-Bailly, to St. Cyr (where is the great military school), to Versailles, thence to Choisy-le-Roi via the Route Nationale which passes to the south of Sceaux. The route is not, perhaps, the shortest, and it takes something of the skill of the old pathfinders to worry it out, but it absolutely avoids the pavements between St. Germain and Versailles and equally avoids the drive through Paris with its attendant responsibilities.

The automobilist, once clear of Paris, has only to think of the open road. There will be little to bother him now, save care in negotiating the oft-times narrow, awkward turnings of an occasional small town where, if it is market-day, untold disaster may await him if he does not look sharp.

On the occasion of our flight south, nothing on the whole journey happened to give us any concern, save at Pithiviers, where a market-wagon with a staid old farm-horse – who did not mean any harm – charged us and lifted off the right mud-guard, necessitating an hour's work or more at the blacksmith's to straighten it out again.

At any rate, we had covered a trifle over a hundred kilometres from Paris, and that was something. We lunched well at the Hôtel de la Poste, and sent off to city-bound friends in the capital samples of the lark patties for which the town is famous.

Nearly every town in France has its specialty; Pithiviers its pâté des allouettes; Montélimar its nougat; Axat its mousserons; Perigueux its truffes, and Tours its rillettes. When one buys them away from the land of their birth he often buys dross, hence it is a real kindness to send back eatable souvenirs of one's round, much more kind than would be the tawdry jugs and plates emblazoned in lurid colours, or white wood napkin-rings and card-cases, usually gathered in as souvenirs.

It is forty-two kilometres to Orleans, one of the most historic and, at the same time, one of the most uninteresting cities in France, a place wholly without local dignity and distinction. Its hotels, cafés, and shops are only second-rate for a place of its rank, and the manners and customs of its people but weak imitations of those of Paris. You can get anything you may need in the automobile line most capably attended to, and you can be housed and fed comfortably enough in either of the two leading hotels, but there is nothing inspiring or even satisfying about it, as we knew from a half-dozen previous occasions.

We slept that night beneath the frowning donjon walls of Beaugency's L'Ecu de Bretagne, for something less than six francs apiece for dinner, lodging, and morning coffee, and did not regret in the least the twenty-five kilometres we had put between us and Orleans.

At one time it was undecided whether we should come on to Beaugency, or put in at Meung, the attraction of the latter place being, for the sentimentalist, that it is the scene of the opening pages of Dumas's "Trois Mousquetaires," and, in an earlier day, the cradle of Jehan de Meung, the author of the "Roman de la Rose." No evidences of Dumas's "Franc Meunier" remained, and, as there was no inn with as romantic a name as that at Beaugency, we kept on another seven kilometres.

We had made it a rule, while on the trip, not to sleep in a large town when we could do otherwise, and that is why Orleans and Blois and Bordeaux are mere guide-posts in our itinerary.

From Beaugency to Blois is thirty odd kilometres only, along the flat, national highway, with glimpses of the broad, shining ribbon of the Loire here and there gleaming through the trees.

Blois is the gateway of the châteaux country; a score of them are within a day's compass by road or rail; but their delights are worthy of a volume, so they are only suggested here.

The châteaux of Blois, Chambord, Cheverny, Amboise, Chaumont, Chenonceaux, Loches, Azay le Rideau, Luynes, and Langeais, at any rate, must be included in even a hurried itinerary, and so we paid a hasty visit to them all in the order named, and renewed our acquaintance with their artistic charms and their historical memories of the days of François and the Renaissance. For the tourist the châteaux country of the Loire has no beginning and no end. It is a sort of circular track encompassing both banks of the Loire, and is, moreover, a thing apart from any other topographical division of France.

Its luxuriant life, its splendidly picturesque historical monuments, and the appealing interest of its sunny landscape, throughout the length and breadth of old Touraine, are unique pages from a volume of historical and romantic lore which is unequalled elsewhere in all the world.

The climate, too, combines most of the gentle influences of the southland, with a certain briskness and clearness of atmosphere usually found in the north.

By road the Loire valley forms a magnificent promenade; by rail, even, one can keep in close and constant touch with its whole length; while, if one has not the time or inclination to traverse its entire course, there is always the delightful "tour from town," by which one can leave the Quai d'Orsay by the Orleans line at a comfortable morning hour and, before lunch-time, be in the midst of the splendour and plenty of Touraine and its châteaux.

We made our headquarters at Blois, and again at Tours, for three days each, and we explored the châteaux country, and some other more humble outlying regions, to our hearts' content.

Blois is tourist-ridden; its hotels are partly of the tourist orders, and its shopkeepers will sell you "American form" shoes and "best English" hats. It is really too bad, for the overpowering splendours of the château, the quaint old Renaissance house-fronts, the streets of stairs, and the exceedingly picturesque and lively congregation of countryside peasants on a market-day would make it a delightful artists' sketching-ground were one not crowded out by "bounders" in bowler hats and others of the genus tripper.

The Hôtel d'Angleterre et de Chambord is good, well-conducted, and well-placed, but it is as unsympathetically disposed an hostelry as one is likely to find. Just why this is so is inexplicable, unless it be that it is a frankly tourist hotel.

At Tours we did much better. The praises of the Hôtel de l'Univers are many; they have been sung by most latter-day travellers from Henry James down; and the Automobile Club de France has bestowed its recommendation upon it – which it deserves. For all this one is not wholly at his ease here. We remembered that on one occasion, when we had descended before its hospitable doors, travel-worn and weary, we had been pained to find a sort of full-dress dinner going on where we expected to find an ordinary table d'hôte. For this reason alone we passed the hotel by, and hunted out the quaintly named Hotel du Croissant, in a dimly lighted little back street, indicated by a flaring crescent of electric lights over its porte-cochère.

We drove our automobile more or less noisily inside the little flagged courtyard, woke up two dozing cats, who were lying full-length before us, and disturbed a round dozen of sleek French commercial travellers at their evening meal.

They treated us remarkably well at Tours's Hôtel du Croissant. "Follow the commis-voyageur in France and dine well (and cheaply)" might readily be the motto of all travellers in France. The bountiful fare, the local colour, the hearty greeting, and equally hearty farewell of the patronne, and the geniality of the whole personnel gave us an exceedingly good impression of the contrast between the tourist hotel of Blois and the maison bourgeois of Tours, always to the advantage of the latter.

The banks of the Loire immediately below Tours grow the only grape in France – perhaps in all the world – which is able to produce a satisfactory substitute for champagne.

Vineyard after vineyard line the banks for miles on either side and give great crops of the celebrated vin mosseaux, the most of which finds its way to Paris, to be sold by second-rate dealers as the "vrai vin de champagne." There's no reason why it shouldn't be sold on its own merits; it is quite good enough; but commerce bows down to American millionaires, English dukes, and the German emperor, and the king of wines of to-day must be labelled champagne.

From Tours to Niort is 170 kilometres, and we stopped not on the way except to admire some particularly entrancing view, to buy gasoline for the automobile, and for lunch at Poitiers.

The whole aspect of things was changing; there was a breath of the south already in the air; and there was an unspeakable tendency on the part of everybody to go to sleep after the midday meal.

We passed Chatellerault and its quaint old turreted and bastioned bridge at just the hour of noon, and were tempted to stop, for we had just heard of the latest thing in the way of a hotel which was brand-new, with steam heat, and hot and cold water, electric lights, baths, etc. Nothing was said about the bill of fare, though no doubt it was equally excellent. The combination didn't appeal, however; we were out after novelty and local colour, and so we rolled on and into Poitiers's Hôtel de l'Europe and lunched well in the most charmingly cool garden-environed dining-room that it were possible to conceive. We had made a wise choice, though on a hit-or-miss formula, and we were content.

Here at least the dim echo of the rustle and bustle of Paris, which drifts down the valley of the Loire from Orleans to the sea, was left behind; a whole new chromatic scale was being built up. No one hurried or rushed about, and one drank a "tilleuil" after déjeuner, instead of coffee, with the result that he got sleepy forthwith.

There are five magnificent churches at Poitiers, dating from Roman and mediæval times, but we saw not one of them as we passed through the town. Again we had decided we were out after local manners and customs, and, for the moment, churches were not in the category of our demands.

We had only faint glimmerings as to where Niort was, or what it stood for, but we were bound thither for the night. We left Poitiers in mid-afternoon, gaily enough, but within five kilometres we had stopped dead. The sparking of course; nothing else would diagnose the case! It took three hours of almost constant cranking of the unruly iron monster before the automobile could be made to start again.

Once started, the automobile ran but fitfully the seventy-five kilometres to Niort, the whole party, with fear and trembling, scarcely daring to turn sidewise to regard the landscape, or take an extra breath. There was no assistance to be had this side of Niort, and should the sparking arrangements go back on us again, and we were not able to start, there was no hope of being towed in at the back of a sturdy farm-horse; the distance was too great. Once we thought we had nearly lost it again, but before we had actually lost our momentum the thing recovered itself, and we ran fearingly down the broad avenue into Niort, and asked anxiously as to whether there might be a grand maison des automobiles in the town.

Indeed there was, and in the twinkling of an eye we had shunted our poor lame duck into the courtyard of a workshop which gave employment to something like seventy-five hands, all engaged in the manufacture of automobiles which were exported to the ends of the earth.

Here was help surely. Nothing could be too great or too small for an establishment like this to undertake, and so we left the machine with an easy heart and hunted out the excellent Hôtel de France – the best hotel of its class between Paris and Bordeaux. We dined sumptuously on all the good things of the north and the south, to say nothing of fresh sardines from La Rochelle, not far distant, and we gave not a thought to the automobile again that night, but strolled on the quay by the little river Sêvre-Niortaise, and watched the moon rise over the old château donjon, and heard the rooks caw, and saw them circle and swing around its battlement in a final night-call before they went to rest. It was all very idyllic and peaceful, although Niort is, as may be inferred, an important centre for many things.

We had planned to be on the road again by eight the next morning, but, on arrival at the garage, or more correctly stated, the usine, where we had left the automobile the night before, we found it the centre of a curious group who were speculating – and had been since six o'clock that morning – as to what might be the particular new variety of disease that had attacked its vital parts so seriously that it still refused to go.

It was twelve o'clock, high noon, before it was discovered – with the aid of the electrician from the electric light works – that two tiny ends of copper wire, inside the coil (which a Frenchman calls a bobine), had become unsoldered, and only when by chance they rattled into contact would the sparking arrangements work as they ought.

This was something new for all concerned. None of us will be likely to be caught that way again. The cost was most moderate. It was not the automobile owner who paid for the experience this time, a thing which absolutely could not have happened outside of France. Pretty much the whole establishment had had a hand in the job, and, if the service had been paid for according to the time spent, it might have cost anything the establishment might have chosen to charge.

Ten francs paid the bill, and we went on our way rejoicing, after having partaken of a lunch, as excellent as the dinner we had eaten the night before, at the Hôtel de France.

La Rochelle, the city of the Huguenots, and later of Richelieu, was reached just as the setting sun was slanting its red and gold over the picturesque old port and the Tour de Richelieu. If one really wants to know what it looked like, let him hunt up Petitjean's "Port de la Rochelle" in the Musée de Luxembourg at Paris. Words fail utterly to describe the beauty and magnifycence of this hitherto unoverworked artists' sketching-ground.