Mary Eyre

“ There are no restaurants where one can get a cheap and good dinner. When the editor of the “Times” said, during the Crimean war, that the French were “born cooks,” he could never have heard of Saumur. I wish he had had my goose for dinner, that’s all. I was tired of dining on melons, peaches, bread, and sour wine; and seeing an old woman under a tree at Pont Fouchard, with geese and half-geese and quarter-geese to sell, I desired Madame Bayot to buy me half a goose. ”

“ The fact is, cooking is a very difficult affair in a Saumur house. There is neither stove, nor range; nothing but a few sticks placed on a hearth, gipsey fashion, and not the gipsey’s covered kettle to cook with. Wood is very dear, and the ménagère calculates the cost of every stick she burns. Even if one paid her, she could not find in her heart to consume wood enough to cook any dish properly,—she would consider it a sinful waste. No doubt in the houses ou l’on tient pension pour les officiers, it is different. ”

“ There is no life in the streets. Nobody ever seems to enter those dreary, miserable-looking shops—and indeed I do not wonder. The people of Saumur generally seem to look upon a stray visitor as a gold-mine to be exploitée to their profit; and if you demand the price of any article, calculate how much you may be fool enough to give. Yesterday I was asked eight sous (fourpence) for a ball of cotton, its real price being three at most. ”

“ On my right were many little plantations, chiefly of evergreen oak, and on the left, amid the meadows, two old castellated châteaux, whose names I forget. Just where the road divided I saw a peasant shaking down plums, and asked the way to Rou, which he pointed out. There was nothing interesting in the village, except that its style of architecture was unmistakeably French. Nowhere in England do we see those steep high-pitched roofs, projecting garret-windows, persiennes, and ledges and corners that are indescribable, but which give variety and picturesqueness to the most tumble-down grenier. ”

“ Swing looking-glasses are only used by great people. From my window I look out upon an old tower of singular form and curious construction, whose use and history are unknown. It is conjectured, however, to have served at some distant date as a phare, or lighthouse. A number of gentlemen have been lately sent through France to sketch all antique monuments, and this among them. The stones of which it is built are so placed as to lay like tiles, one over the other—all sloping and regularly diminishing to the top. ”

“ Even on earth the first are the happiest, for in their sorrows, however dark and rough their path, the sunshine of God shines above the mountain peaks, while the unhappy doubter sees nothing but the bleak rocks and precipices around him. ”

“ A heavy shower of rain fell just as the fête concluded; and we again rejoiced that we had been so lucky as not to get seats on the uncovered tribune, but to get sent to the grenier, where we saw everything infinitely better than even the general from his tent, and were safely sheltered from the heavy downfall. As we scuttled home as fast as we could to avoid the great crush we had endured on entering, we saw the gay ladies from the tents endeavouring to save their elegant dresses from being spoiled. ”

“ It can neither burn nor spoil. You may go all over Paris, and when you come back find your dinner of soup and five or six dishes, all done to a turn. Dressing a dinner seems no trouble there.
I have had bad weather nearly ever since I came to Saumur; but the first fine day I went to visit Les Pierres Couvertes, the Dolmen of Pontigné, about a mile from Saumur, beyond Pont Fouchard, in a village to the left, called Bagnieu. It stands in a little croft belonging to some labourers, and a few sous are usually asked for showing it. ”

“ The chimney-piece is of brownish marble, and the open chimney has no grate, only two iron dogs with the usual sphinx-heads, for confining the wood fire. Sur la cheminée stands a very beautiful ormolu clock which strikes the hours, under a glass shade; and two handsome large china vases of elegant form, which I always keep filled with fresh flowers. I can buy a large bouquet for a sou. There are none of the vulgar little trumpery china baskets, dogs with three legs, glass ships, and other horrors, which make lodgings in England seem so vulgar. ”

“ There are generally between three and four hundred sous officiers at the École. Among the jousters were three Spaniards,—for foreign officers are permitted to study here,—and there are Russian, Swedish, and Wallachian officers. The Duke of Wellington was partly educated at the Ecole de Cavalerie at Angers, since transferred to Saumur. The French may therefore at least boast with truth, that they taught our greatest general how to beat them.
It is impossible to describe the gay and splendid uniforms. ”

“ I speak of the mode of life among the bourgeoisie, or middling class, and of the inconveniences any one living in lodgings, and unable from want of means to dine at the hotels, where there is a table d’hôte, must expect to meet. ”

“ He was a man of the ordinary French peasant type, in blue blouse, blue linen trousers, naked feet, and wooden shoes or sabots, but possessed some information. He told me I should find all about les pierres and other antiquités near Saumur in the work of Monsieur Bodin, of whom the employé at the chemin de fer had also told me, but whose book I have never been able to get, inasmuch as the public library at Saumur, stated by Mr. Bell to be a very good one, seems to be non inventus. ”

“ In the railway carriages, from officers, merchants, labourers, travellers of all ranks and degrees, when no priest or nun was present, I have heard nothing but sneers at the weakness of those who believed in la mythologie of Christianity. The Revolution has left its traces, and a vast proportion of the people are atheists still. ”

“ I ask for everything civilly, and I get all I want. It would be a great saving of expense to all these householders, if the cuisine customary in Paris were adopted. There, there is in every kitchen an iron stove, with a small square grating in the midst for fire, which is rarely used ”

“ Beyond it is a pretty garden, and a house au fond, where lodge some officers. My salon opens with large French windows on to a balcony with oleanders, and a Persian lilac tree, flowering now for the second time. There is none of the vulgarity of an English lodging in a back street in London about it. I have a long settee with two large cushions, two fauteuils, and an easy chair of mahogany, covered with scarlet damask, two rush chairs, and a small round walnut-tree centre table covered with a scarlet and black cloth. ”

“ After this the crosses were removed, four little hillocks of sand erected, and coloured balls, to represent heads, stuck on them; each officer held a pistol in his right hand, a drawn sword in his left, and as he cantered round the lists to music, fired his pistol, threw it on the ground, where it was picked up by men stationed on purpose, changed his sword from his left hand to his right, and tried to spear as many of the heads as he could. One officer speared four, which he carried round the arena, and deposited on the ground before the general’s tent. ”

“ The people here have a way of their own—neither like English life, nor that of any other French towns—owing, it is said, to the officers living chiefly en pension, eight or ten taking their meals together in a house, where no other person is admitted. ”

“ I hope it has not gone, like that of Alexandria, to feed les fours, and that my goose was not cooked à la Bodin, or by any other learned work. I inquired of every one for this library, meaning to do a little literary work here as I had at Tours. ”