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The Squashed version of
Travels in France
by
Arthur Young
1787

I: THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY IN 1787
May 15.-The strait that separates England, fortunately for her, from the rest of the world must be crossed many times before the traveller ceases to be surprised at the sudden and universal change that surrounds him on landing at Calais. The scene, the people, the language, every object is new.

The noble improvement of a salt marsh by M. Mourons, of this town, occasioned my acquaintance some time ago with that gentleman. I spent an agreeable and instructive evening at his house.

May 17.-Nine hours rolling at anchor had so fatigued my mare that I thought it necessary to rest her one day; but this morning I left Calais. For a few miles the country resembles parts of Norfolk and Suffolk. The aspect is the same on to Boulogne. Towards that town I was pleased to find many seats belonging to people who reside there. How often are false ideas conceived from reading and report! I imagined, that nobody but farmers and labourers in France lived in the country; and the first ride I take in that kingdom shows me a score of country seats. The road is excellent.

May 18.-Boulogne is not an ugly town, and from the ramparts of the upper part the view is beautiful. Many persons from England reside here, their misfortunes in trade or extravagance in living making their sojourn abroad more agreeable than at home.

The country around improves. It is more enclosed. There are some fine meadows about Bonbrie, and several chateaux. I am not professedly on husbandry in this diary, but must just observe that it is to the full as bad as the country is good: corn miserable and yellow with weeds, yet all summer fallowed with lost attention.

May 22.-Poverty and poor crops to Amiens. Women are now ploughing with a pair of horses to sow barley. The difference of the customs of the two nations is in nothing more striking than in the labours of the sex; in England they will do very little in the fields except to glean and make hay; the first is a party of pilfering, and the second of pleasure; in France they plough and fill the dung-cart.

May 27.-At Versailles. After breakfasting with Count de la Rochefoucauld at his apartments in the palace, where he is grand master of the wardrobe, was introduced by him to the Duke de la Rochefoucauld. As the duke is going to Luchon, in the Pyrenees, I am to have the honour of being one of the party.

May 30.-At Orleans. The country around is one universal flat, unenclosed, uninteresting, and even tedious, but the prospect from the steeple of the fine cathedral is commanding, extending over an unbounded plain, through which the magnificent Loire bends his stately way, in sight for fourteen leagues.

May 31.-On leaving Orleans, enter the miserable province of Sologne. The poor people who cultivate the soil here are metayers, that is, men who hire the land without ability to stock it; the proprietor is forced to provide seed and cattle, and he and his tenant divide the produce; a miserable system that perpetuates poverty and prevents instruction. The same wretched country continues to La Loge; the fields are scenes of pitiable management, as the houses are full of misery. Heaven grant me patience while I see a country thus neglected.

June. 11.-See for the first time the Pyrenees, at the distance of 150 miles. Towards Cahors the country changes and is of a savage aspect, yet houses are seen everywhere, and one-third of it under vines. The town is bad; its chief trade and resource are vines and brandies.

June 16.-A ridge of hills on the other side of the Garonne, which began at Toulouse, became more and more regular yesterday; and is undoubtedly the most distant ramification of the Pyrenees, reaching into this vast vale quite to Toulouse, but no farther. Approach the mountains; the lower ones are all cultivated, but the higher seem covered with wood. Meet many wagons, each loaded with two casks of wine, quite backward in the carriage, and as the hind wheels are much higher than the front ones, it shows that these mountaineers have more sense than John Bull.

The wheels of these wagons are all shod with wood instead of iron. Here, for the first time, see rows of maples, with vines, trained in festoons from tree to tree; they are conducted by a rope of bramble, vine cutting or willow. They give many grapes but bad wine. Pass St. Martine, and then a large village of well-built houses, without a single glass window.

June 17.-Quit the Garonne some leagues before Serpe, where the River Neste falls into it. The road to Bagnere is along this river, in a narrow valley, at one end of which is built the town of Luchon, the termination of our journey.

Having now crossed the kingdom, and been in many French inns, I shall in general observe that they are, on an average, better in two respects, and worse in all the rest, than those in England. We have lived better in point of eating and drinking than we should have done in going from London to the Highlands of Scotland at double the expense.

The common cookery of the French gives great advantage. It is true they roast everything to a chip if they are not cautioned, but they give such a number and variety of dishes that if you do not like some there are others to please your palate. The dessert at a French inn has no rival at an English one. But you have no parlour to eat in; only a room with two, three, or four beds. Apartments badly fitted up, the walls whitewashed, or paper of different sorts in the same room, or tapestry so old as to be a fit nidus for moths and spiders, and the furniture such that an English innkeeper would light his fire with it.

For a table you have everywhere a board laid on cross-bars. Oak chairs with rush bottoms, and the back universally perpendicular, defying all idea of rest after fatigue. Doors give music as well as entrance; the wind whistles through their chinks, and hinges grate discord. Windows admit rain as well as light; when shut they are not easy to open, and when open not easy to shut.

Mops, brooms and scrubbing-brushes are not in the catalogue of the necessaries of a French inn. Bells there are none, the fille must always be bawled for and, when she appears, is neither neat, well-dressed, nor handsome. The kitchen is black with smoke, the master commonly the cook, and the less you see of the cooking the more likely you are to have a stomach to your dinner. The mistress rarely classes civility or attention to guests among the requisites of her trade. We are so unaccustomed in England to live in bed-chambers that it is at first awkward in France to find that everybody, let his rank be what it may, lives in his bed-chamber.

II: WESTERN FRANCE IN 1788

August 27, 1788.-Cherbourg. Not a place for a residence longer than is necessary. I was here fleeced more infamously than at any other town in France.

September 5.-To Montauban. The poor people seem poor indeed; the children terribly ragged, if possible worse clad than if with no clothes at all; as to shoes and stockings, they are luxuries. A beautiful girl of six or seven playing with a stick, and smiling under such a bundle of rags as made my heart ache to see her. One-third of this province seems uncultivated, and nearly all of it in misery. What have kings and ministers, and parliaments and states to answer for their prejudices, seeing millions of hands that would be industrious idle and starving through the execrable maxims of despotism, of the equally detestable prejudices of a feudal nobility. Slept at the Lion d'Or, an abominable hole.

September 21.-Came to an improvement in the midst of sombre country. Four good houses of stone and slate, and a few acres run to wretched grass, which have been tilled, but all savage, and become almost as rough as the rest. I was afterwards informed that this improvement, as it is called, was wrought by Englishmen, at the expense of a gentleman they ruined as well as themselves. I demanded how it had been done. Pare and bum, and sow wheat then rye, and then oats. Thus it is for ever and ever! The same follies, blundering and ignorance, and then all the fools in the country said, as they do now, that these wastes are good for nothing.

The 22nd.-At Nantes, a town which has that sign of prosperity of new buildings that never deceives. The quarter of the Comédie is magnificent, all the streets at right angles and of white stone. Nantes is as enflamme in the cause of liberty as any town in France can be.

The conversations I have witnessed here prove how great a change is effected in the mind of the French; nor do I believe it will be possible for the present government to last half a century longer. The American revolution has laid the foundation of another in France. On the 23rd one of the twelve prisoners from the Bastille arrived here. He was the most violent of them all, and his imprisonment had not silenced him. It wanted no great spirit of prophecy to foretell this revolution; but later events have shown that I was very wide of the mark when I talked of fifty years.

The twelve gentlemen of Bretagne deputed to Versailles, mentioned above, were sent with a denunciation of the ministers for their suspension of provincial parliaments. They were at once sent to the Bastille. It was this war of the king and the parliaments that brought about the assembly of the States-General, the step being decided on by the Assembly of Grenoble, July 21, 1788.

Ill: THE FERMENT OF REVOLUTION

June 5, 1789.-Passage to Calais; fourteen hours for reflection in a vehicle that does not allow one power to reflect.

The 8th.-At Paris, which is at present in such a ferment about the States-General, now holding at Versailles, that conversation is absolutely absorbed by them. The nobility and clergy demand one thing, the Commons another. The king, court, nobility, clergy, army and parliament are nearly in the same situation. All these consider with equal dread the ideas of liberty now afloat; except the king, who, for reasons obvious to those who know his character, troubles himself little even with circumstances that concern him the most intimately.

The 9th.-The business going forward at present in the pamphlet shops of Paris is incredible. Every hour produces something new. This spirit of reading political tracts spreads into the provinces, so that all presses of France are equally employed. Nineteen-twentieths of these productions are in favour of liberty, and commonly violent against the clergy and nobility. Is it not wonderful that, while the press teems with the most levelling and seditious principles, that if put into execution would overturn the monarchy, nothing in reply appears, and not the least step is taken by the court to restrain this extreme licentiousness of publication? It is easy to conceive the spirit that must thus be raised among the people.

The 10th.-Everything conspires to render the present period in France critical. The want of bread is terrible, and accounts arrive every moment from the provinces of riots and disturbances, and calling in the military to preserve the peace of the markets. It appears that there would have been no real scarcity if M. Necker would have let the corn trade alone.

The 15th.-This has been a rich day, and such a one as ten years ago none could believe would ever arrive in France. Went to the Hall of States at Versailles, a very important debate being expected on the condition of the nation. M. L'Abbé Sièyes opened it. He is a violent republican, absolutely opposed to the present government, which he thinks too bad to be regulated, and wishes to see overturned. He speaks uneloquently but logically.

M. Ie Comte Mirabeau replied, speaking without notes for near an hour in most eloquent style. He opposed with great force the reasoning of the abbé, and was loudly applauded.

The 20th.-News! News! Everyone stares at what everyone might have expected. A message from the king to the presidents of the three orders, that he should meet them on Monday; and, under pretence of preparing the hall for the occasion, the French guards were placed with bayonets to prevent any of the deputies entering the room. The circumstances of doing this ill-judged act of violence have been as ill-advised as the act itself.

The 26th.-Every hour that passes seems to give the people fresh spirit. The meetings at the Palais are more numerous and more violent. Nothing less than a revolution in the government and a free constitution is talked of by all ranks of people; but the supine stupidity of the court is without example. The king's offers of negotiation have been rejected. He changes his mind from day to day.

The 15th.-At Nancy. Letters from Paris announce that all is confusion. The ministry has been removed and M. Necker ordered to quit France quietly. All to whom I spoke agreed that it was fatal news, and that it would occasion great commotion. I am told on every hand that everything is to be feared from the people, because bread is so dear; they are half starved, and consequently ready for commotion. But they are waiting on Paris, which shows the importance of great cities in the life of a nation. Without Paris I question whether the present revolution, which is fast working in France, could have had an origin.

The 20th-To Strasburg, through one of the richest scenes of cultivation in France. I arrived there at a crisis, for a detachment of troops had brought interesting news of the revolt in Paris-the Gardes Françaises joining the people; the little dependence on the rest of the troops; the storming of the Bastille; in a word, of the absolute overthrow of the old government.

The 21st.-I have been witness to scenes curious to a foreigner, but dreadful to Frenchmen who are considering. Passing through the square to the Hôtel de Ville, the mob were breaking the windows with stones, notwithstanding an officer and detachment of horse were there. Perceiving that the troops would not attack them, the rioters grew more violent, broke the windows of the Hotel de Ville, attempted to beat in the door with iron bars, and placed ladders to the windows.

In about a quarter of an hour they burst through and entered like a torrent. From that minute a shower of casements, shutters, chairs, tables, sofas, books, papers, pictures, etc., rained incessantly from all the windows of the house, and next followed tiles, skirting boards, banisters, framework, and everything that could be detached from the building. The troops were quiet spectators.

IV-IN PARIS AFTER THE TOUR

January 3, 1700.-Through the Forest of Fontainebleau to Melun and Paris. At Paris I went to my old quarters, the Hotel de la Rochefoucauld.

The 4th- After breakfast walk in the gardens of the Tuileries, where there is the most extraordinary sight that either French or English eyes could ever behold at Paris. The king, walking with six grenadiers of the milice bourgeoise, with an officer or two of his household and a page. The doors of the gardens are kept shut in respect to him, in order to exclude everybody but deputies or those who have tickets. When he entered the palace the doors were thrown open to all without distinction, though the queen was still walking with a lady of her court. She also was attended so closely by the citizen guards that she could not speak, but in a low voice, without being heard by them.

A mob followed her, talking very loud. Her majesty does not appear to be in health; but the king is as plump as ease can render him. By his orders there, is a little garden railed off for the Dauphin to amuse himself in.

He is a very pretty, good-natured-looking boy of five or six years old, with an agreeable countenance; wherever he goes all hats are taken off, which I was glad to observe. All the family being kept thus close prisoners (for such they are in effect) afford, at first view, a shocking spectacle; and it is really so, if the fact were not absolutely necessary to effect the revolution.

The 18th-After dining at the Duke of Liancourt's, at night friends carried me to the Revolution Club at the Jacobins. The room was that where the famous league was signed. There were above a hundred deputies present, with a president in the chair; I was introduced to him as the author of the Arithmetique Politique; the president, standing up, repeated my name to the company, and demanded if there were any objections. None; and this is all the ceremony, not merely of an introduction but of an election.

In this club the business that is to be brought into the National Assembly is regularly debated, and whatever passes in the club is almost sure to pass in the Assembly.