Outre-Mer, Volume 1 Read online

  OUTRE-MER; A PILGRIMAGE BEYOND THE SEA. No I. I have passed manye landes and manye yles and contrees, and cherched manye fulle straunge places, and have ben in manye a fulle gode honourable companye. Now I am comen home to reste. And thus recordynge the tyme passed, I have fulfilled these thynges and putte hem wryten in this boke, as it woulde come into my mynde.

  Sir John Maundeville. BOSTON: HILLIARD, GRAY, & CO. M DCCC XXXIII. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1833, by Hilliard, Gray, & Co. in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of Massachusetts. J. GRIFFIN, PRINTER, BRUNSWICK, ME.

  THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY.

  The cheerful breeze sets fair; we fill our sail,

  And scud before it. When the critic starts,

  And angrily unties his bags of wind,

  Then we lay to, and let the blast go by.

  Hurdis. WORTHY AND GENTLE READER!

  I dedicate this little book to thee with many fears and misgivings of heart. Being a stranger to thee, and having never administered to thy wants nor to thy pleasures, I can ask nothing at thy hands, saving the common courtesies of life. Perchance, too, what I have written will be little to thy taste;--for it is little in accordance with the stirring spirit of the present age. If se, I crave thy forbearance for having thought, that even the busiest mind might not be a stranger to those moments of repose, when the clock of time clicks drowsily behind the door, and trifles become the amusement of the wise and great.

  Besides, what perils await the adventurous author, who launches forth into the uncertain current of public favor in so frail a bark as this! The very rocking of the tide may overset him; or peradventure some freebooting critic, prowling about the great ocean of letters, may descry his strange colors,--hail him through a gray goose-quill, and perhaps sink him without ceremony. Indeed, the success of an unknown author is as uncertain as the wind. “When a book is first to appear in the world,” says a celebrated French writer, “one knows not whom to consult to learn its destiny. The stars preside not over its nativity. Their influences have no operation on it; and the most confident astrologers dare not foretell the diverse risks of fortune it must run.”

  It is from such considerations, Worthy Reader, that I would fain bespeak thy friendly offices at the outset. But in asking these, I would not forestall thy good opinion too far, lest in the sequel I should disappoint thy kind wishes. I ask only a welcome and god-speed; hoping, that when thou hast read these pages, thou wilt say to me in the words of Nick Bottom, the weaver, “I shall desire you of more acquaintance, good master Cobweb.”

  Very sincerely thine, The Author.

  THE PILGRIM OF OUTRE-MER.

  Epigraph

  Si j’ai long tems été en Romanie,

  Et outre-mer fait mon pelerinage.

  Thibaut, Roi De Navarre.

  THE PILGRIM OF OUTRE-MER.

  I am a Palmer, as ye se,

  Whiche of my lyfe muche part have spent,

  In many a fayre and farre cuntrie,

  As pilgrims do of good intent.

  The Four P’s.

  ‘Lystenyth ye godely gentylmen, and all that ben hereyn!’ I am a pilgrim benighted on my way, and crave a shelter till the storm is over, and a seat by the fireside in this honorable company. As a stranger I claim this courtesy at your hands; and will repay your hospitable welcome with tales of the countries I have passed through in my pilgrimage.

  This is a custom of the olden time. In the days of Chivalry and romance, every baron bold, perched aloof in his feudal castle, welcomed the stranger to his halls, and listened with delight to the pilgrim’s tale, and the song of the troubadour. Both pilgrim and troubadour had their tales of wonder from a distant land, embellished with the magic of oriental exaggeration. Their salutation was,

  ‘Lordyng lysnith to my tale,

  That is meryer than the nightingale.’

  The soft luxuriance of the eastern clime bloomed in the song of the bard; and the wild and romantic tales of regions so far off, as to be regarded as almost a fairy land, were well suited to the childish credulity of an age, when what is now called the old world was in its childhood. Those times have passed away. The world has grown wiser and less credulous;-- and the tales, which then delighted, delight no longer. But man has not changed his nature. He still retains the same curiosity--the same love of novelty--the same fondness for romance, and tales by the chimney corner--and the same desire of wearing out the rainy day and the long winter evening with the illusions of fancy, and the fairy sketches of the poet’s imagination.--It is as true now as ever, that ‘Off talys, and tryfulles, many man tellys;

  Sume byn trew, and sume byn ellis;

  A man may dryfe forthe the day that long tyme dwellis

  Wyth harpyng and pipyng, and other mery spellis,

  Wyth gle, and wyth game.’

  The Pays d’Outre-Mer, or the Land beyond the Sea, is a name by which the pilgrims and crusaders of old usually designated the Holy Land. I, too, in a certain sense, have been a pilgrim of Outre-Mer; for to my youthful imagination the old world was a kind of Holy Land, lying afar off beyond the blue horizon of the ocean; and when its shores first rose upon my sight, looming through the hazy atmosphere of the sea, my heart swelled with the deep emotions of the pilgrim, when he sees afar the spire which rises above the shrine of his devotion.

  In this my pilgrimage “I have passed many lands, and countries, and searched many full strange places.” I have traversed France from Normandy to Navarre;--smoked my pipe in a Flemish inn;--floated through Holland in a Trekschuit; trimmed my midnight lamp in a German university; wandered and mused amid the classic scenes of Italy; and listened to the gay guitar and merry castanet on the borders of the blue Guadalquiver. The recollection lection of many of the scenes I have passed through is still fresh in my mind; whilst the memory of others is fast fading away, or is blotted out forever. But now I will stay the too busy hand of time, and call back the shadowy past. Perchance the old and the wise may accuse me of frivolity; but I see in this fair company the bright eye and listening ear of youth, --an age less rigid in its censure and more willing to be pleased. “To gentlewomen and their loves is consecrated all the wooing language, allusions to love-passions, and sweet embracements feigned by the muse, mongst hills and rivers;--whatsoever tastes of description, battell, story, abstruse antiquity, and law of the kingdome, to the more severe critic. To the one, be contenting enjoyments of their auspicious desires: to the other, a happy attendance of their chosen muses.”1

  And now, fair Dames, and courteous Gentlemen, give me attentive audience;--

  ‘Lordyng lystnith to my tale,

  That is meryer than the nightingale.’

  1. Selden’s Prefatory Discourse to the notes in Drayton’s Poly-Olbion.

  THE NORMAN DILIGENCE.

  Epigraph

  Crack, crack,--crack, crack;--what a fuss thou makest?--as if it concerned the good people to be informed, that a man with a pale face and clad in black, had the honor to be driven into Paris at nine o’clock at night, by a postillion in a tawny yellow jerkin, turned up with red calamanco!

  Sterne

  THE NORMAN DILIGENCE.

  The French guides, otherwise called the Postilians, have one most diabolicall custome in their travelling upon the wayes. Diabolicall it may be well called: for whensoever their horses doe a little anger them, they will say in their fury Allons diable, that is, go thou divel. This I know by mine own experience.

  Coryat’s Crudities

  It was early in the “leafy month of June,” that I travelled through the beautiful province of Normandy. As France was the first foreign country I visited, every thing wore an air of freshness and novelty, which pleased my eye, and kept my
fancy constantly busy. Life was like a dream. It was a luxury to breathe again the free air, after having been so long cooped up at sea: and, like a long-imprisoned bird let loose from its cage, my imagination revelled in the freshness and sunshine of the morning landscape.

  On every side, valley and hill were covered with a carpet of soft velvet green. The birds were singing merrily in the trees, and the landscape wore that look of gaiety so well described in the quaint language of an old romance, making the “sad, pensive, and aching heart to rejoice, and to throw off mourning and sadness.” Here and there a cluster of chesnut trees shaded a thatch-roofed cottage, and little patches of vineyard were scattered on the slope of the hills, mingling their delicate green with the deep hues of the early summer grain. The whole landscape had a fresh, breezy look. It was not hedged in from the highways, but lay open to the eye of the traveller, and seemed to welcome him with open arms. I felt less a stranger in the land: and as my eye traced the dusty road winding along through a rich cultivated country, and skirted on either side with blossomed fruit trees, and occasionally caught glimpses of a little farm-house resting in a green hollow, and lapped in the bosom of plenty, I felt that I was in a prosperous, hospitable, and happy land.

  I had taken my seat on top of the Diligence, in order to have a better view of the country. It was one of those ponderous vehicles, which totter slowly along the paved roads of France, laboring beneath a mountain of trunks and bales of all descriptions, and, like the Trojan horse, bore a groaning multitude within it. It was a curious and cumbersome machine, resembling the bodies of three coaches placed upon one carriage, with a cabriolet on top for outside passengers. On the pannels of each door were painted the fleurs-de-lis of France, and upon the side of the coach emblazoned in golden characters: “Exploitation Générale des Messageries Royales des Diligences pour le Havre, Rouen et Paris.”

  It would be useless to describe the motley groups, that filled the four quarters of this little world. There was the dusty tradesman, with green coat and cotton umbrella; the sallow invalid, in skull-cap, and cloth shoes; the priest in his cassock; the peasant in his frock; and a whole family of squalling children. My fellow travellers on top were a gay subaltern, with fierce mustaches, and a nut-brown village beauty of sweet sixteen. The subaltern wore a military undress, and a little blue cloth cap in the shape of a cow-bell, trimmed smartly with silver lace, and cocked on one side of his head. The brunette was decked out with a staid white Norman cap, nicely starched and plaited, and nearly three feet high; a rosary and cross about her neck; a linsey-woolsey gown, and wooden shoes.

  The personage who seemed to rule this little world with absolute sway, was a short pursy man, with a busy, self-satisfied air, and the sonorous title of Monsieur le Conducteur. As insignia of office, he wore a little round fur cap, and fur-trimmed jacket; and carried in his hand a small leathern port folio, containing his way-bill. He sat with us on top of the Diligence, and with comic gravity issued his mandates to the postillion below, like some petty monarch speaking from his throne. In every dingy village we thundered through, he had a thousand commissions to execute and to receive: a package to throw out on this side, and another to take in on that: a whisper for the landlady at the inn: a love-letter and a kiss for her daughter: and a wink, or a snap of his fingers for the chamber-maid at the window. Then there were so many questions to be asked and answered, while changing horses! Every body had a word to say. It was Monsieur le Conducteur! here; Monsieur le Conducteur! there. He was in complete bustle; till at length crying en route! he ascended the dizzy height and we lumbered away in a cloud of dust.

  But what most attracted my attention was the grotesque appearance of the postillion and the horses. He was a comical looking little fellow, already past the heyday of life, with a thin, sharp countenance, to which the smoke of tobacco and the fumes of wine had given the dusty look of wrinkled parchment. He was equipped in a short jacket of purple velvet, set off with a red collar, and adorned with silken cord. Tight pantaloons of bright yellow leather arrayed his pipe-stem legs, which were swallowed up in a huge pair of wooden boots, iron-fastened, and armed with long, rattling spurs. His shirt-collar was of vast dimensions, and between it and the broad brim of his high, bell-crowned, varnished hat, projected an eel-skin queue, with a little tuft of frizzled hair, like a powder-puff at the end, bobbing up and down with the motion of the rider, and scattering a white cloud around him.

  The horses, which drew the Diligence, were harnessed to it with ropes and leather, and in the most uncouth manner imaginable. They were five in number:--black, white, and gray; as various in size as in color. Their tails were braided and tied up with wisps of straw; and when the postillion mounted and cracked his heavy whip, off they started, one pulling this way, another that; one on the gallop, another trotting and the rest dragging along at a scrambling pace, between a trot and a walk. No sooner did the vehicle get comfortably in motion, than the postillion, throwing the reins upon his horse’s neck, and drawing a flint and steel from one pocket, and a short-stemmed pipe from another, leisurely struck fire, and began to smoke. Ever and anon some part of the rope harness would give way; Monsieur le Conducteur from on high would thunder forth an oath or two; a head would be popped out at every window: half a dozen voices exclaim at once, “what’s the matter?” and the postillion, apostrophizing the diable as usual, thrust his long whip into the leg of his boot, leisurely dismount, and drawing a handful of packthread from his pocket, quietly set himself to mend matters in the best way possible.

  In this manner we toiled slowly along the dusty highway. Occasionally the scene was enlivened by a group of peasants, driving before them a little ass, laden with vegetables for a neighboring market. Then we would pass a solitary shepherd, sitting by the road-side, with a shaggy dog at his feet, guarding his flock, and making his scanty meal on the contents of his wallet; or perchance a little peasant girl, in wooden shoes, leading a cow, by a cord attached to her horns, to browse along the side of the ditch. Then we would all alight to ascend some formidable hill on foot, and be escorted up by a clamorous troop of sturdy mendicants,--annoyed by the ceaseless importunity of worthless beggary, or moved to pity by the palsied limbs of the aged, and the sightless eyeballs of the blind.

  Occasionally, too, the postillion drew up in front of a dingy little cabaret, completely overshadowed by wide-spreading trees. A lusty grape-vine clambered up beside the door; and a pine bough was thrust out from a hole in the wall, by way of tavern bush. Upon the front of the house was generally inscribed in large black letters; “ICI ON DONNE A BOIRE ET A MANGER; ON LOGE A PIED ET A CHEVAL;” a sign which may be thus paraphrased; “Good Entertainment for man and beast;” but which was once translated by a foreigner, “Here they give to eat and drink; they lodge on foot and on horse-back!”

  Thus one object of curiosity succeeded another; hill, valley, stream and woodland flitted by me like the shifting scenes of a magic lantern, and one train of thought gave place to another; till at length in the after part of the day, we entered the broad and shady avenue of fine old trees, which leads to the western gate of Rouen, and a few moments afterwards, were lost in the crowds and confusion of its narrow streets.

  THE GOLDEN LION INN, AT ROUEN.

  Epigraph

  He is a traveller into former times, whence he hath learnt their language and fashions. If he meets with an old manuscript, which hath the mark worn out of its mouth, and hath lost the date, yet he can tell the age thereof, either by the phrase or character.

  Fuller’s True Church Antiquary.

  THE GOLDEN LION INN.

  Monsieur Vinot. Je veux absolument un Lion d’Or; parce qu’on dit, Où allez-vous? Au Lion d’Or!--D’où venez-vous? Du Lion d’Or! --Où irons-nous? Au Lion d’Or!--Où y a-t-il de bon vin? Au Lion d’Or!

  La Rose Rouge.

  This answer of Monsieur Vinot must have been running in my head, as the Diligence stopped at the Messagerie; for when the porter, who took my luggage, said;

&
nbsp; “Où allez-vous, Monsieur?”

  I answered, without thinking, (for be it said with all the veracity of a traveller, at that time I did not know there was a Golden Lion in the city)

  “Au Lion d’Or.”

  And so to the Lion d’Or we went.

  The hostess of the Golden Lion received me with a courtesy and a smile, rang the house-bell for a servant--and told him to take the gentleman’s things to No. 35. I followed him up stairs. One--two--three--four--five--six-- seven! Seven stories high--by our Lady!-- I counted them every one;--and when I went down to remonstrate, I counted them again; so that there was no possibility of a mistake. When I asked for a lower room, the hostess told me the house was full; and when I spake of going to another hotel, she said she should be so very sorry, so désolée, to have Monsieur leave her, that I marched up again to No. 35.

  After finding all the fault I could with the chamber, I ended, as is generally the case with most men on such occasions, by being very well pleased with it. The only thing I could possibly complain of, was my being lodged in the seventh story, and in the immediate neighborhood of a gentleman who was learning to play the French horn. But to remunerate me for these disadvantages, my window looked down into a market-place, and gave me a distant view of the towers of the Cathedral, and the ruins of the church and Abbey of Saint-Ouen.

  When I had fully prepared myself for a ramble through the city, it was already sundown; and after the heat and dust of the day, the freshness of the long evening twilight was delightful. When I enter a new city, I cannot rest till I have satisfied the first cravings of curiosity by rambling through its streets. Nor can I endure a Cicerone, with his eternal “This way, Sir.” I never desire to be led directly to an object worthy of a traveller’s notice, but prefer a thousand times, to find my own way, and come upon it by surprise. This was particularly the case at Rouen. It was the first European city of importance that I visited. There was an air of antiquity about the whole city, that breathed of the Middle Ages; and so strong and delightful was the impression, that it made upon my youthful imagination, that nothing, which I afterwards saw, could either equal or efface it. I have since passed through that city; but I did not stop. I was unwilling to destroy an impression, which, even at this distant day, is as fresh upon my mind, as if it were of yesterday.