BILLETED

The natural course was to advertise. The Journal de Rouen received us tolerantly, even compassionately. No one of us could speak French, but one pretty member of the office staff (more accurately, one member of the pretty office staff) could speak a kind of English. The first demand was for a petite annonce in French. And when the lady saw this was out of the question for us, she offered a translation of an English paragraph.

It brought a shoal of responses in French. A kind of horse-sense had led us to get them addressed "to this office," where the fair translator could be requisitioned. They were seductive replies—in the inevitable language of proprietresses. Some offered rooms and meals; some rooms and breakfast; some rooms and no more; others specified a femme de chambre of the first quality (and these were looked at twice). None offered a bath. This is the most extraordinary country. It drives you to the conclusion, anyhow, that a bathroom is necessary neither to health nor good looks, and thereby runs counter to a long-established English prejudice. A bathroom is by no means a necessary part of the furniture of a good hotel. Those that have been driven by the English occupation into adding one, brag about it in their advertisements and charge "a franc a time." Those that steadily decline to add it are losing custom.

The conclusion of the matter was we yielded to none of their blandishments, but went to an hotel, and that for good reasons. They resolve themselves into a question of feeding—i.e., of meal-hours. You go into lodgings in a flat, and of necessity there are more or less definitely limited periods for meals. This is killing, even when not regarded in the light of irregular working hours. To be tied to 8 for breakfast, 1 for lunch, and 6 for dinner, is to be in gaol. The chief beauty of an hotel is that you may have breakfast from 6.30 to 10, lunch from 12 to 2.30, and dinner from 6 to 9.30. This leaves you, to some extent, at freedom with the leisure an exacting Headquarters does sometimes throw to you.

Breakfast is altogether French. You'll get no more than cafÉ au lait and roll—not even confiture, without paying through the nose for this violation of French usage. If you order eggs or omelette (or both) you not only wait long for it, but are looked on with disfavour even in a first-class establishment. But the coffee is so rich and mellow and the roll so crisp and the butter so creamy that you can make a large meal of them. You usually eat and drink far more than it's good form to consume. He's a barbarian who asks for anything better.

This you take in the early morning almost alone in the winter-garden looking on the courtyard. The matutinal femme de chambre is frequent and busy about the place. The call for hot water and for grub in the rooms is insistent. If you want to be called early and to shave, you write up on the blackboard in the bureau the formula: 31 (no. de chambre)—5-1/2—e.c. (eau chaude)—entrez; that is, let the damsel enter without knocking. And enter she does with the steaming jug; and, with a charming frankness, wakens you by the shoulder, and, if not abnormally busy (and she's seldom too busy for that), sits on the edge of the bed with her shining morning face, telling you sweetly the quality of the weather, and that it's time you were out, until satisfied you are on the way to uprising, as distinct from turning over again. And morning greetings of the most refreshing sort have been known to be exchanged thus over the edge of the bed. One of the satisfactions of such an exchange (though not necessarily the chief) would be that you know the sweet creature associates nothing sordid with the greeting—even though this is a bedroom and you're in your 'jamas. An English maid in the circumstances would probably begin with a hostile shriek, and end by relating to the manager how a base and licentious soldier had made violent overtures to her; and you would suffer ejection with ignomy.

And so the French (and especially the French women) score in morality at every turn.

You see nothing of the hotel all morning. But on returning for lunch your chambre is "done" with a taste and thoroughness that delight, and drive you to register a vow you'll never more be guilty of untidiness. British officers in France have a reputation for hoggishly littering their rooms that requires a lot of redeeming. But the French maid is not dismayed. She returns to the attack daily, with a pride in her art which no piggery can dissipate.

Luncheon has the light touch that's the prime charm of French cooking. There's endless variety without heaviness or monotony: a whiff of hors d'oeuvre, a taste of fish, a couple of "made" dishes (made well), a scrap of delicious cold-meat, salads, fruits (who shall do justice to the fruits of Normandy in June?—her strawberries, peaches, plums, grapes, melons, and cherries), crÊme, cheeses, biscuits, cidre and coffee. Then you hear a barbarous Captain beside you blaspheming: "The first thing I'll do when I get leave is to go to the Savoy and have a decent English feed. I can't stick this French grub!" This is the sort of man that ought to be suppressed by the State and debarred from going abroad. It's with justice that the French taunt us with our English "heaviness"—heaviness in eating, in drinking, thinking, and doing. One of the privileges of being in France is that of eating what the French alone know how to prepare.

All the same, one does not immediately get used to horse. Cheval, in some form or other, is served out every dinner. There's not nearly so much beef as horse consumed. The French like it better. The sign of a golden horse's head surmounts the doorway of most butcher's shops; many a shop displays the severed head, as the English do those of sheep and pigs. The Parisian taxi-cabs are ousting the horse-cabs fast. Proprietors are selling off their beasts. The newspapers, announcing the result of the sales, will tell you most of the horses went to butchers, as a matter of course.

In the medley of French on the menu-card (which you don't scan very closely) you miss cheval until it's pointed out to you: it's disguised. You then discover you've been eating horse for weeks, unwittingly, and enjoying it. It's too late to turn back, even if you didn't like the beast. So you continue to eat and relish the faithful defunct friend to man.

Dinner begins about nine. That's the meal for which people who don't live at the hotel "drop in"—people from the suburbs and the country: wounded and base-Colonels, with their wives and daughters; music-hall artistes, business-men. The place hums and echoes with high-spirited chatter. Much wine gets drunk—as much by the women as by the men. At the end of an hour the place is fairly agog. The proprietor himself, dressed in his best—as though persisting in the time-honoured practice of a tavern-host—carves an enormous joint (a kind of half a pony) in the centre of the room, under the apex of the dome. This is very interesting. Only one thing is awry: the women eat greedily. The prettiest of them (and whether they take wine or not) masticate with a primitive eagerness and abandon that is disgusting.

The late-sitters remain until eleven over their wine and cigarettes, and then adjourn to the courtyard and sit and call for coffee and liqueurs. If they move before midnight, it's unusual. The courtyard resounds until the small-hours have crept on. And in those hours the maids on duty are busy enough answering the call of the chamber-bells with drinks. You will see them hurrying up and down the lighted staircases and in and out the rooms of the brilliantly lit front, muttering (one imagines) the complaint of the frogs: "It may be sport to you, but it's death to us!" But they never let you think so: at two in the morning they will smile and rap out repartee with a good-humour that it's hard to believe feigned. And who's to say that it is? These people are unfeignedly light-hearted. They satirise us for our moods and our livers; and tell us (not without justice) we don't know how to live. By comparison, we're not happy unless we're miserable....

You will catch the youngsters in the courtyard only by dining at six. You can play with them an hour in the twilight after, and that's a joy not to be lost, recur as often as it may. You can talk their language, even if you can't talk French.