The Car That Went Abroad Part 1

The Car That Went Abroad.

by Albert Bigelow Paine.

PREFACE

FELLOW-WANDERER:

The curtain that so long darkened many of the world's happy places is lifted at last. Quaint villages, old cities, rolling hills, and velvet valleys once more beckon to the traveler.

The chapters that follow tell the story of a small family who went gypsying through that golden age before the war when the tree-lined highways of France, the cherry-blossom roads of the Black Forest, and the high trails of Switzerland offered welcome to the motor nomad.

The impressions set down, while the colors were fresh and warm with life, are offered now to those who will give a thought to that time and perhaps go happily wandering through the new age whose dawn is here.

A. B. P.

_June, 1921._

Part I

THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD

Chapter I

DON'T HURRY THROUGH Ma.r.s.eILLES

Originally I began this story with a number of instructive chapters on shipping an automobile, and I followed with certain others full of pertinent comment on ocean travel in a day when all the seas were as a great pleasure pond. They were very good chapters, and I hated to part with them, but my publisher had quite positive views on the matter. He said those chapters were about as valuable now as June leaves are in November, so I swept them aside in the same sad way that one disposes of the autumn drift and said I would start with Ma.r.s.eilles, where, after fourteen days of quiet sailing, we landed with our car one late August afternoon.

Most travelers pa.s.s through Ma.r.s.eilles hastily--too hastily, it may be, for their profit. It has taken some thousands of years to build the "Pearl of the Mediterranean," and to walk up and down the rue Cannebiere and drink coffee and fancy-colored liquids at little tables on the sidewalk, interesting and delightful as that may be, is not to become acquainted with the "pearl"--not in any large sense.

We had a very good and practical reason for not hurrying through Ma.r.s.eilles. It would require a week or more to get our car through the customs and obtain the necessary licenses and memberships for inland travel. Meantime we would do some sight-seeing. We would begin immediately.

Besides facing the Old Port (the ancient harbor) our hotel looked on the end of the Cannebiere, which starts at the Quai and extends, as the phrase goes, "as far as India," meaning that the nations of the East as well as those of the West mingle there. We understood the saying as soon as we got into the kaleidoscope. We were rather sober-hued bits ourselves, but there were plenty of the other sort. It was the end of August, and Ma.r.s.eilles is a semi-tropic port. There were plenty of white costumes, of both men and women, and sprinkled among them the red fezzes and embroidered coats and sashes of Algiers, Morocco, and the Farther East. And there were ladies in filmy things, with bright hats and parasols; and soldiers in uniforms of red and blue, while the wide pavements of that dazzling street were literally covered with little tables, almost to the edges. And all those gay people who were not walking up and down, chatting and laughing, were seated at the little tables with red and green and yellow drinks before them and pitchers of ice or tiny cups of coffee, and all the seated people were laughing and chattering, too, or reading papers and smoking, and n.o.body seemed to have a sorrow or a care in the world. It was really an inspiring sight, after the long, quiet days on the ship, and we loitered to enjoy it. It was very busy around us. Tramcars jangled, motors honked, truckmen and cabmen cracked their whips incessantly. Newswomen, their ap.r.o.ns full of long pockets stuffed with papers, offered us journals in phrases that I did not recognize as being in my French phonograph; cabmen hailed us in more or less English and wanted to drive us somewhere; flower sellers'

booths lined both sides of a short street, and pretty girls held up nosegays for us to see. Now and then a beggar put out a hand.

The pretty drinks and certain ices we saw made us covetous for them, but we had not yet the courage to mingle with those gay people and try our new machine-made French right there before everybody. So we slipped into a dainty place--a _patisserie boulangerie_--and ordered coffee and chocolate ice cream, and after long explanations on both sides got iced coffee and hot chocolate, which was doing rather well, we thought, for the first time, and, anyhow, it was quite delicious and served by a pretty girl whose French was so limpid that one could make himself believe he understood it, because it was pure music, which is not a matter of arbitrary syllables at all.

We came out and blended with the panaroma once more. It was all so entirely French, I said; no suggestion of America anywhere. But Narcissa, aged fifteen, just then pointed to a flaming handbill over the entrance of a cinematograph show. The poster was foreign, too, in its phrasing, but the t.i.tle, "_L'aventures d'Arizona Bill_" certainly had a flavor of home. The Joy, who was ten, was for going in and putting other things by, but we overruled her. Other signs attracted us--the window cards and announcements were easy lessons in French and always interesting.

By and by bouquets of lights breaking out along the streets reminded us that it was evening and that we were hungry. There were plenty of hotels, including our own, but the dining rooms looked big and warm and expensive and we were dusty and economical and already warm enough. We would stop at some open-air place, we said, and have something dainty and modest and not heating to the blood. We thought it would be easy to find such a place, for there were perfect seas of sidewalk tables, thronged with people, who at first glance seemed to be dining. But we discovered that they were only drinking, as before, and perhaps nibbling at little cakes or rolls. When we made timid and rudimentary inquiries of the busy waiters, they pointed toward the hotels or explained things in words so glued together we could not sort them out. How different it all was from New York, we said. Narcissa openly sighed to be back on "old rue de Broadway," where there were restaurants big and little every twenty steps.

We wandered into side streets and by and by found an open place with a tiny green inclosure, where a few people certainly seemed to be eating.

We were not entirely satisfied with the look of the patrons, but they were orderly, and some of them of good appearance. The little tables had neat white cloths on them, and the gla.s.sware shone brightly in the electric glow. So we took a corner position and studied the rather elaborate and obscure bill of fare. It was written, and the few things we could decipher did not seem cheap. We had heard about food being reasonable in France, but single portions of fish or cutlets at ".45"

and broiled chicken at "1.20" could hardly be called cheap in this retired and unpretentious corner. One might as well be in a better place--in New York. We wondered how these unfashionable people about us could look so contented and afford to order such liberal supplies. Then suddenly a great light came. The price amounts were not in dollars and cents, but in francs and centimes. The decimals were the same, only you divided by five to get American values. There is ever so much difference.[1]

The bill of fare suddenly took on a halo. It became almost unbelievable.

We were tempted to go--it was too cheap to be decent. But we were weary and hungry, and we stayed. Later we were glad. We had those things which the French make so well, no matter how humble the place--"_pot au feu, bouillabaisse_" (the fish soup which is the pride of Ma.r.s.eilles--our first introduction to it), lamb chops, a crisp salad, Gruyere cheese, with a pint of red wine; and we paid--I try to blush when I tell it--a total for our four of less than five francs--that is to say, something under a dollar, including the tip, which was certainly large enough, if one could judge from the lavish acknowledgment of the busy person who served us.

We lingered while I smoked, observing some curious things. The place filled up with a democratic crowd, including, as it did, what were evidently well-to-do tradesmen and their families, clerks with their young wives or sweethearts, single derelicts of both s.e.xes, soldiers, even workmen in blouses. Many of them seemed to be regular customers, for they greeted the waiters and chatted with them during the serving.

Then we discovered a peculiar proof that these were in fact steady patrons. In the inner restaurant were rows of hooks along the walls, and at the corners some racks with other hooks. Upon these were hanging, not hats or garments, but dozens of knotted white cloths which we discovered presently to be table napkins, large white serviettes like our own.

While we were trying to make out why they should be variously knotted and hung about in that way a man and woman went in and, after a brief survey of the hooks, took down two of the napkins and carried them to a table. We understood then. The bill of fare stated that napkins were charged for at the rate of five centimes (one cent) each. These were individual leaseholdings, as it were, of those who came regularly--a fine example of French economy. We did not hang up our napkins when we went away. We might not come back, and, besides, there were no empty hooks.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The old rates of exchange are used in this book.

Chapter II

MOTORING BY TRAM

A little book says: "Thanks to a unique system of tramways, Ma.r.s.eilles may be visited rapidly and without fatigue." They do not know the word "trolley" in Europe, and "tramway" is not a French word, but the French have adopted it, even with its "w," a letter not in their alphabet. The Ma.r.s.eilles trams did seem to run everywhere, and they were cheap. Ten centimes (two cents) was the fare for each "zone" or division, and a division long enough for the average pa.s.senger. Being sight-seers, we generally paid more than once, but even so the aggregate was modest enough. The circular trip around the Corniche, or sh.o.r.e, road has four of these divisions, with a special rate for the trip, which is very long and very beautiful.

We took the Corniche trip toward evening for the sake of the sunset. The tram starts at the rue de Rome and winds through the city first, across shaded courts, along streets of varying widths (some of them so old and ever so foreign, but always clean), past beautiful public buildings always with deep open s.p.a.ces or broad streets in front of them, for the French do not hide their fine public architectures and monuments, but plant them as a landscape gardener plants his trellises and trees. Then all at once we were at the sh.o.r.e--the Mediterranean no longer blue, but crimson and gold with evening, the sun still drifting, as it seemed, among the harbor islands--the towers of Chateau d'If outlined on the sky. On one side the sea, breaking against the rocks and beaches, washing into little sheltered bays--on the other the abrupt or terraced cliff, with fair villas set in gardens of palm and mimosa and the rose trees of the south. Here and there among the villas were palace-like hotels, with wide balconies that overlooked the sea, and down along the sh.o.r.e were tea houses and restaurants where one could sit at little tables on pretty terraces just above the water's edge.

So we left the tram at the end of a zone and made our way down to one of those places, and sat in a little garden and had fish, freshly caught, and a cutlet, and some ripe grapes, and such things; and we watched the sun set, and stayed until the dark came and the Corniche sh.o.r.e turned into a necklace of twinkling lights. Then the tram carried us still farther, and back into the city at last, by way of the Prado, a broad residential avenue, with trees rising dark on either side.

At the end of a week in Ma.r.s.eilles we had learned a number of things--made some observations--drawn some conclusions. It is a very old city--old when the Greeks settled there twenty-five hundred years ago--but it has been ravaged and rebuilt too often through the ages for any of its original antiquity to remain. Some of the buildings have stood five or six hundred years, perhaps, and are quaint and interesting, with their queer roofs and moldering walls which have known siege and battle and have seen men in gaudy trappings and armor go clanking by, stopping to let their horses drink at the scarred fountains where to-day women wash their vegetables and their clothing. We were glad to have looked on those ancient relics, for they, too, would soon be gone. The spirit of great building and progress is abroad in Ma.r.s.eilles--the old cl.u.s.ters of houses will come down--the h.o.a.ry fountains worn smooth by the hands of women and the noses of thirsty beasts will be replaced by new ones--fine and beautiful, for the French build always for art, let the race for commercial supremacy be ever so swift. Fifty or one hundred years from now it will be as hard to find one of these landmarks as it is to-day relics of the Greek and Roman times, and of the latter we found none at all. Tradition has it that Lazarus and his family came to Ma.r.s.eilles after his resuscitation, but the house he occupied is not shown. Indeed, there is probably not a thing above ground that Lucian the Greek saw when he lived here in the second century.

The harbor he sailed into remains. Its borders have changed, but it is the same inclosed port that sheltered those early galleys and triremes of commerce and of war. We looked down upon it from our balcony, and sometimes in the dim morning, or in the first dusk of evening when its sails were idle and its docks deserted, it seemed still to have something of the past about it, something that was not quite reality.

Certain of its craft were old in fashion and quaint in form, and if even one trireme had lain at anchor there, or had come drifting in, we might easily have fancied this to be the port that somewhere is said to harbor the missing ships.

It is a busy place by day. Its quays are full of trucks and trams and teams, and a great traffic going on. Lucian would hardly recognize any of it at all. The noise would appall him, the smoking steamers would terrify him, the _transbordeur_--an aerial bridge suspended between two Eiffel towers, with a hanging car that travels back and forth like a cash railway--would set him praying to the G.o.ds. Possibly the fishwives, sorting out sea food and bait under little awnings, might strike him as more or less familiar. At least he would recognize their occupation.

They were strung along the east quay, and I had never dreamed that the sea contained so many strange things to eat as they carried in stock.

They had oysters and clams, and several varieties of mussels, and some things that looked like tide-worn lumps of terra cotta, and other things that resembled nothing else under heaven, so that words have not been invented to describe them.

Then they had _oursins_. I don't know whether an _oursin_ is a bivalve or not. It does not look like one. The word "_oursin_" means hedgehog, but this _oursin_ looked a great deal more like an old, black, sea-soaked chestnut bur--that is, before they opened it. When the _oursin_ is split open--

But I cannot describe an opened _oursin_ and preserve the proprieties.

It is too--physiological. And the Ma.r.s.eillais eat those things--eat them raw! Narcissa and I, who had rather more limb and wind than the others, wandered along the quay a good deal, and often stood spellbound watching this performance. Once we saw two women having some of them for early breakfast with a bottle of wine--fancy!

By the way, we finally discovered the restaurants in Ma.r.s.eilles. At first we thought that the Ma.r.s.eillais never ate in public, but only drank. This was premature. There are restaurant districts. The rue Colbert is one of them. The quay is another, and of the restaurants in that precinct there is one that no traveler should miss. It is Pascal's, established a hundred years ago, and descended from father to son to the present moment. Pascal's is famous for its fish, and especially for its _bouillabaisse_. If I were to be in Ma.r.s.eilles only a brief time, I might be willing to miss the Palais Longchamps or a cathedral or two, but not Pascal's and _bouillabaisse_. It is a glorified fish chowder. I will say no more than that, for I should only dull its bloom. I started to write a poem on it. It began:

Oh, bouillabaisse, I sing thy praise.

But Narcissa said that the rhyme was bad, and I gave it up. Besides, I remembered that Thackeray had written a poem on the same subject.