Bois de Boulogne

“ Quite close to it, however, was the town of Boulogne, with its well-provided market and shops, and at a distance of a few minutes the chemin-de-fer de ceinture, a line of tramways, one of omnibuses, and the steamboats not very far off. Clématis had a very small garden—a recommendation to my husband—but was still sufficiently isolated from the neighboring villas by their own grounds on each side. ”

“ Patrick was an Armorican Britain, born at Boulogne-sur-Mer.
Boulogne-sur-Mer, or ancient Bononia, was called by the same name, "Bonaven," as the town in which St. Patrick implies that he was born. Boulogne possessed a Roman encampment, and it was, therefore, Bonaven Taberniae, mentioned in the "Confession."
Caligula's tower, on the north-eastern cliffs, in the town and within the suburbs, was called "Turris Ordinis" by the Romans, but "Nemtor" by the Gaulish Celts, as Hersart de la Villemarque states in his "Celtic Legend." ”

“ The country round Boulogne is steeply undulating pasture-land, hedged and timbered like a typical English countryside. From the Camp St Martin the lighthouse of Etaples can be seen, a white splash where the coast-line disappears over the horizon; and on such a day as this, when the haze of the sun's heat makes all distant objects indistinct, even the most powerful lens will not show more of the English coast than just a shadow that mixes with the blur of sea and sky.
The streets of Boulogne were busy all that day with marching troops. ”

“ To meet the demand, the original drive on the lake was widened to 45 ft., and a pad or bridle path introduced by its side, 40 ft. wide. Under ordinary circumstances the greater part of the visitors to the wood concentrate on these roads and the adjoining walk. There were in the whole wood of Boulogne before 1870, when a considerable space both of the old and new planting was cleared in preparation for the defence of Paris against the Germans, 1,009 acres of wooded land, 674 of unshaded turf, 75 of water surface, and 286 of drives, rides, and walks (not including the race track) . ”

“ I pulled out a sovereign and a half-sovereign from my pocket, and said:
"Here is the money. I have leisure, and I would as soon go to Boulogne as to Sutherlandshire."
He did not thank me effusively, as might one of the more excitable and less efficient races; but he grasped my hand and blessed me silently. I then left him.
* * * * * * * * * * In the steamer to Boulogne, as I was musing over this strange adventure, a sturdy Anglo-Saxon man, a true son of Drake or Raleigh, came up and asked me for my ticket. As I gave it him my eye fell idly upon the price of the ticket. ”

“ They camped for lunch early, seizing a patch of deep shade, where a great blue gum grew out of a gully—the only big tree visible among the sparse scrub. A huge boulder had sheltered it as a sapling, protecting it until it had won strength sufficient to outgrow the kindly refuge, and fling its great head towards the sky. The boulder lay at its feet now, and the riders camped in its shadow. Near at hand a spring trickled softly into a rainwashed hole, which brimmed over, sending a silver thread of water down among the stones below. There was little or no grass for the horses ”

“ I had never heard of Lord Iffield, but her mention of his having been at Boulogne helped me to give him a niche. Mrs. Meldrum had incidentally thrown a certain light on the manners of Mrs. Floyd- Taylor, Flora's recent hostess in that charming town, a lady who, it appeared, had a special vocation for helping rich young men to find a use for their leisure. She had always one or other in hand and had apparently on this occasion pointed her lesson at the rare creature on the opposite coast. I had a vague idea that Boulogne was not a resort of the world's envied ”

“ The grandfathers of the present generation of Boulonnese remembered the great day of the National Fete, when all Boulogne, for twenty-four hours, went crazy with joy. So many families had fathers, brothers, sons, languishing in prison under some charge of treason, real or imaginary; so many had dear ones for whom already the guillotine loomed ahead, that the feast on this memorable day of September, 1793, was one of never-to-be-forgotten relief and thanksgiving. ”

“ At this they all laughed, and the captain gave her an angel, whereupon she went with him to Boulogne.
Chapter IX. Of her Beating the Frenchman off the Walls of Boulogne, for which gallant behaviour she is rewarded by the King with Eightpence per Day for Life.
King Henry, passing the seas, took Boulogne. Hereupon the Dauphin with a great number of men surprised and retook it. Meg, being a laundress in the town, raised the best of the women ”

“ An air of slow respectability pervades the place; the bulk of the colonists are people well-to-do, who can afford the expense of a winter away from home and of a villa at £150 the season. The bankrupt element of Boulogne, the half-pay element of Dinan or Avranches, is as rare on the Riviera as the loungers who rejoice in the many-changing toilets of Arcachon or Biarritz. The quiet humdrum tone of the parson best harmonises with that of the winter resort, and parsons of all sorts abound there. ”

“ This same day I desired the chief to shew me where I might cut wood. The low country where we were, was covered only with fruit trees, and a kind of wood full of gum, and of little consistence; the hard wood grows upon the mountains. Ereti pointed out to me the trees which I might cut down, and even shewed towards which side I should fell them. The natives assisted us greatly in our works; our workmen cut down the trees and made them into faggots, which the islanders brought to the boats ”

“ The idlers, that is to say, all the inhabitants of Boulogne, range themselves outside the ropes on foot, horseback, in carriages, or anyhow, to take the chance of seeing someone they know, to laugh at the melancholy looks of those who have been sick, and to criticise the company, who are turned into the guarded space like a flock of sheep before them. ”

“ But romance was at this time nearer to the boy’s heart than chemistry; their way had lain through a part of the French Arcadia, “the pleasant Pays de Forest, where the Marquis d’Urfé had laid the scene of the adventures and amours of that Astrea with whom so many gallants are still in love, long after both his and her decease.” [81]
Lyons itself, where they stayed for a time, seemed to Robert Boyle “a town of great resort and trading, but fitter for the residence of merchants than of gentlemen.” ”

“ The village of Saint-Philbert stands at the angle formed by the river Boulogne as it falls into the lake of Grand-Lieu; the village is on the left bank of the river. The church and the principal houses are somewhere about fifteen hundred yards from the lake; the main, in fact the only street follows the river-bank, and the lower it goes to the lake, the fewer and poorer the houses; so that when the vast blue sheet of water, framed in reeds, which forms the terminus of the street is reached, there is nothing to be seen but a few thatched huts occupied by men who are employed in the fisheries. ”

“ People used to say, “What makes those Arundell girls so pale? They must dance too much.” Alas, poor things! it was just 47the want of these innocent recreations that drove us to so dark a deed!
I have already said that we were taken to Boulogne for masters and economy. Our house in the Haute Ville was next to the Convent, and close to the future rising—slowly rising—Notre Dame. My sister Blanche and I gradually made up our minds to this life, our European Botany Bay. ”

“ It is worthy of notice how often husband and wife went to Boulogne together during their married life. It seemed as though the place was endeared to them by the recollection that it was here that they had first come together. From Boulogne they went to Switzerland, where they passed Christmas. When they were at Montreux they celebrated their wedding day (January 22) , and the people in the hotel overwhelmed them with presents and flowers and pretty speeches. Lady Burton says, "I got quite choky, and Richard ran away and locked himself up." ”

“ That night we lay at a small hostelry in the town; and the next morning hired a cart with one horse, which carried us to Boulogne in one day, and thence to this village, where we have lived since for many years in great peace. ”

“ Down in the valley, hid from us by a turn in the road, lies Beaulieu. But a little farther on we reach part of the old Abbey walls, broken here and there, clustered with ivy, and grass, and yellow mullein, and white yarrow, whilst vine-clad cottages stand against its sides. The village is situated on a bend of the Exe, where, spanned by a bridge, the stream falls over the weir, formerly turning the old mill-wheel of the monks, and then, broadening with the tide, winds through meadows and thick oak copses down to the Solent. ”

“ All the mountain world is rapturous with this same joy of something more than life which the bobolinks brought from on high in their songs, dancing and singing with it and tossing something of beauty skyward day and night. Round the margins of the bobolink meadows the apple trees have completed their adoration of bloom, the strewing of incense and purity of white petals down the wind, and now yearn skyward with tenderness of young leaves. ”

“ Blondine walked every day, always accompanied by Beau-Minon, who pointed out to her the most lovely and sequestered paths and the rarest and richest flowers.
Bonne-Biche had made Blondine promise solemnly never to leave the enclosure of the park and never to enter the forest. Many times Blondine had asked Bonne-Biche the reason of this prohibition. Sighing profoundly, she had replied:
"Ah, Blondine! do not seek to penetrate the forest. It is a fatal spot. May you never enter there." ”

“ The bobolink meadows begin on the grassy levels between the Ellis and Wildcat rivers, the bottom land which forms the foothold of Jackson town, and they climb the mountains in all directions as do the summer visitors, scattering laughter and beauty as they go, till you hear the tinkle of the bobolink's song and find the beauty of meadow blooms in tiny nooks well up toward the very summits. ”

“ Lastly, from its very nature, the New Forest is ever beautiful, at every season of the year, even in the depth of winter. The colouring of summer is not more rich. Then the great masses of holly glisten with their brightest green; the purple light gathers round the bare oaks, and the yews stand out in their shrouds of black. Then the first budding branch of furze sparkles with gold, and the distant hill-side glows with the red layers of beech-leaves. And if a snow-storm passes up from the sea, then every bough is suddenly covered with a silver filigree of whitest moss. ”

“ Sombre voices seem fittingly to be associated with subdued light, and joyous notes with the blaze of sunlit twigs and open meadows. A bobolink’s bubbling carol is unthinkable in a jungle, and the strain of a wood pewee on a sunny hillside would be like an organ playing dance-music. ”

“ Just beyond the boundary there lay Boolabong, and there were collected his enemies. A fire that should have passed for a mile or so across the pastures outside and beyond his own farm would be altogether unextinguishable by the time that it had reached his paddock. ”

“ Whilst at Boulogne he brought out two or three books and prepared another. Burton took a gloomy view of his prospects at this time; for he writes, “My career in India has been in my eyes a failure, and by no fault of my own; the dwarfish demon called ‘Interest’ has fought against me, and as usual has won the fight.” There was a good deal of prejudice against him even at Boulogne, for unfounded rumours about him had travelled home from India.
Burton, as it may be imagined, did not lead the life which was led by the general colony at Boulogne. “He had a little set of men friends,” Isabel notes ”

“ It is worth notice that we have never found any bulbous-rooted plant. Another singularity is, that in the southern part of the isle we inhabited, beyond a chain of hills which divides it from east to west, it appeared that there were hardly any of the resinous gum-plants, and that in their stead we found abundance of another plant of the same form, but of a different green, wanting the solidity of the other, and not producing any rosin, but only fine yellow flowers in the proper season. ”

“ And first, he calls it a White Mexican Wood, whereas (not to mention that Mornardes informs us that it is brought out of Nova Hispania) the Wood that we have met with in several places, and employ'd as Lignum Nephriticum, was not White, but for the most part of a much Darker Colour, not unlike that of the Sadder Colour'd Wood of Juniper. 'Tis true, that Monardes himself also says, that the Wood is White; and it is affirm'd, that the Wood which is of a Sadder Colour is Adulterated by being Imbu'd with the Tincture of a Vegetable, in whose Decoction it is steep'd. ”

“ To pass on to other matters, let us notice some of the superstitions of the New Forest. No one is now so superstitious, because no one is so ignorant as the West-Saxon. One of the commonest remedies for consumption in the Forest is the "lungs of oak," a lichen (Sticta pulmonaria) which grows rather plentifully on the oak trees; and it is no unfrequent occurrence for a poor person to ask at a chemist's shop for a "pennyworth of lungs of oak." ”

“ THE SNARING OF JACOBEA The great forest was so silent, so lonely, the aisles of a vast church could have been no more sanctified by holy stillness. Even the summer wind that trembled in the upper boughs of the huge trees had not penetrated their thick branches and intertwined leaves, so that the grass and flowers were standing erect, untroubled by a breath of air, and the sun, that dazzled without on the town of Frankfort did not touch the glowing green gloom of the forest. ”