DOI issue:
October 18, 1873
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.16937#0169
October 18, 1873.] PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. 157
OUR REPRESENTATIVE MAN.
Represents himself as en voyage, and safely returns to his native
Country.
S a useful hint, Sir, to in-
tending Tourists in Brit-
tany, remember that, how-
ever powerful may be the
Silver Key, you must al-
ways have ready a neat set
of compliments wherewith
to oil the locks. Also,
stick to your traps, for,
as my Step-Grandmother
says, “ A Fool and his lug-
gage are soon parted.”
We did all the environs
of Dinan in a triumphal
chariot. Having come out
for a drive, we -flatly re-
fused to descend and eke
out the time by walking
to points of view. The
Driver tried very hard to
induce us. With a crack-
ing of whip, a jangling of
bells, and a hullabaloo
enough to have alarmed
even a Breton village on
a sultry day, he pulled up
his noble steeds at the
border of a grand avenue,
about two hundred yards
in length by a hundred in breadth, and at the end we saw what
appeared to us to resemble a dirty, old, broken, useless, and
unused pump.
“ There it is!” cried the man waving his whip, and trying to
dance himself into an ecstasy of admiration and delight, as he held
the carriage-door open. “There’s the fountain! There’s the
spring! It is magnificent! Every one descends here to see the
spring ! ”
“ Is that it ? ” we asked, pointing to the pump.
“ Oui-dam. Yes, certainly, that’s it,” said the brave Breton.
But we wouldn’t budge. We told him it was nothing, and not
worth taking two steps to see ; whereupon he shruggedhis shoulders,
his eyes twinkled with humour, and he admitted that we were quite
right; adding that, after all, everything round about was pretty
much like this ; and, in fact, he began to depreciate all the ordinary
excursions from Dinan, except one really beautiful route, which he
would show us. Of course this resulted in his keeping us out double
the time we had bargained for, but it was well worth the money.
In driving through a new country it was, I had hitherto considered,
and so also had my second Step-Grandmother, a great thing to have
with us a Well-informed Friend, who “knew the place well, and
had seen most of it before.”
He had utterly forgotten all about it. His explanation was that
the place had been. so altered since his last visit. As, however, all
the most recent guide-books state that in their principal character-
istic features neither the towns nor villages of Brittany have under-
gone any change for the last six hundred years, this computation
would make my Well-informed Friend a Patriarch of some consider-
able standing, and first cousin, perhaps, to the Wandering Jew.
He made up. for this, however, by being highly instructive.
His plan of imparting information to us as we drove along, seemed
to be based upon the same motive as that which induced the simple
soldat in La Grande Duchesse to ask for a schoolmaster’s place, “in
order that, he might learn something himself.”
“ This,” said my Well-informed Friend, as we drove along the
road ’twixt Dinan and Dol, “ is an interesting country. Let me see,
this was the great place for the Vendeens.”
“ The who ? ” asked my Grandmother.
“ The Vendeens,” replied my Well-informed Friend, adding im-
mediately, as he turned tome, “wasn’t it?” as if he still had his
doubts of his own historical accuracy.
I asked him, “ Why were the Vendeens so called ? ”
“ Well, let me see,” he observed, meditatively, “they were in the
Revolution,”—this is always a safe thing to say of any Frenchmen
—“ and were a sort of sharpshooters, eh, weren’t they ?” I return
that I am depending upon him for information.
“ Well,” he answered, with, probably, an inward resolve to look
up the whole subject the instant he should get home among his
books, ‘ ‘ the Vendeens were like the franc-tireurs, and their name
was something to do with—I fancy, I don’t say I am absolutely
right—with Vendetta ; and they took a vow of eternal vengeance,
and so on.”
“ But,” I remarked, “ the Vendetta was Corsican.”
“Exactly,” returned my Well-informed Friend ; “why not?
Napoleon was a Corsican, wasn’t he ? ”
This was, evidently, decisive, and as I had nothing to say for or
against it, we set ourselves to admire the vast panorama of the
thickly-wooded country by which we seemed to be hedged in on
every side. My Well-informed Friend improved the occasion by
giving us a few statistics on apple-growing. The statistics were, on
examination, limited to the information that Devonshire and Corn-
wall were great apple counties, that Brittany resembled both these,
in having plenty of orchards, and that he himself invariably took
eider-cup at his Club in summer, which of course went far to
encourage the general trade in England and France.
My Well-informed Friend was immense on architecture. When
we visited a cathedral or any ancient church, my Step-Grandmother
begged that we might have a verger, or some one who knew all
about it.
“ I can tell you all about it,” said my Well-informed Friend,
qualifying this assertion immediately afterwards by adding, ‘ ‘ That
is, quite as much as you’ll want to know.”
My Grandmother yielded at first, and so did I. When we were
quit of my Well-informed Friend, we delivered ourselves over to
professional guides, and the amount of remarkable things which >ve
had allowed to escape our notice, owing to our reliance upon our
friend’s information, would have formed quite a valuable catalogue.
“ That’s Saxon,” he used to say, pointing to a plain archway, “ and
that’s Norman,” pointing to another uncommonly like the first.
“ That’s pointed Gothic, and that the floriated Gothic, all different
styles at different periods. Here ! ” he would continue, moving us
on rapidly, so as to avoid giving us a minute to think over details,
“is a lovely Rose Window; and observe in those side-lights how the
old glass has been preserved.”
AVith this he has begun and finished any and every Cathedral.
If he can get to some part of the building, and decipher a Latin in-
scription before our arrival, he will tell us that “here was buried
old Gozlan de Doing ; we ought to find his tomb somewhere about
with an effigy.” Then he used to pretend to be searching for it.
Presently he would announce, joyfully, that his labours had been
rewarded. “ Here it is ! ” he would exclaim, pointing to a broken-
nosed warrior, doing his best to seem at his ease in the most uncom-
fortable armour. “Here’s Sir Gozlan. Look! He was three
times at the Crusades, you see ; that you know by his having his
legs crossed three times,” and so on.
“What,” asked my Grandmother, “ is the date of Norman archi-
tecture ?—and is Gothic later ? ”
“Well,” replied my AYell-informed Friend, considering the
matter, “the Norman was first, of course;” he evidently had his
doubts on the subject, and was making another mental Mein.—to
look it up directly he got home. “The Norman,” he continued,
“was first, and the Gothic improved on it.”
“ But,” said my Grandmother, who is wonderful for her years,
“if the Goths were such barbarians—as they were, or why should
everyone with bad taste be called a Goth or a Vandal?—how is it
they built such beautiful churches ? ”
“ Ah! ” replied my AYell-informed Friend, with a sort of sigh, and
a shrug that seemed to intimate how, at last, my worthy relative had
formulated in so many words the difficulty of his lifetime. “ Ah !
that’s it! How did the Egyptians build the Pyramids ? How did
the Druids pile up Stonehenge ? AYe don’t know.”
The list of things that my AYell-informed Friend will have to
“look up” when he “gets back among his books,” must have
amounted to a considerable number by the time he quitted us at
Mont St. Michel, where, on seeing a pilgrimage, he observed,
“ History repeats itself ; ” but on being questioned by us as to the
particular instance that came to his mind at that moment, he returned,
“AVhy, don’t you recollect, before the return of Loins the
Eighteenth, or Charles the Tenth—or—let me see which was
it came first ? ”
This was another item to be added to his list. Mont St. Michel is,
as all the world knows from Staneield’s pictures (I think he painted
it twice), a spot marvellously wild and romantic. The monastery,
the fortress, and the houses have perched themselves on the rock,
like the sea-birds on Puffin Island. The monastery belongs, . I
believe, to Friars Preachers: Friars Perchers would be a name in
accordance with the situation of their monastic nest. From
Avranches, from Coutances, on the one side, from Dol, Dinan,
Pontorson, on the other, and, indeed, from every place in Normandy
or Brittany lying within forty miles of Mont St. Michel, came omni-
buses, caleches, waggons with springs, waggons without springs,
diligences of a fashion that must have been out of date in eighteen
thirty, carts covered, carts uncovered, in fact every sort of vehicle
imaginable and unimaginable, drawn by animals of all sorts and
sizes, on their first legs and on their last legs, crowded (the vehicles,
I mean) inside and outside with middle-class people, young, middle-
aged, and old, cheerful and decorous, all bound for the pilgrimage,
but with as little of the fanatic about them as there was of the
OUR REPRESENTATIVE MAN.
Represents himself as en voyage, and safely returns to his native
Country.
S a useful hint, Sir, to in-
tending Tourists in Brit-
tany, remember that, how-
ever powerful may be the
Silver Key, you must al-
ways have ready a neat set
of compliments wherewith
to oil the locks. Also,
stick to your traps, for,
as my Step-Grandmother
says, “ A Fool and his lug-
gage are soon parted.”
We did all the environs
of Dinan in a triumphal
chariot. Having come out
for a drive, we -flatly re-
fused to descend and eke
out the time by walking
to points of view. The
Driver tried very hard to
induce us. With a crack-
ing of whip, a jangling of
bells, and a hullabaloo
enough to have alarmed
even a Breton village on
a sultry day, he pulled up
his noble steeds at the
border of a grand avenue,
about two hundred yards
in length by a hundred in breadth, and at the end we saw what
appeared to us to resemble a dirty, old, broken, useless, and
unused pump.
“ There it is!” cried the man waving his whip, and trying to
dance himself into an ecstasy of admiration and delight, as he held
the carriage-door open. “There’s the fountain! There’s the
spring! It is magnificent! Every one descends here to see the
spring ! ”
“ Is that it ? ” we asked, pointing to the pump.
“ Oui-dam. Yes, certainly, that’s it,” said the brave Breton.
But we wouldn’t budge. We told him it was nothing, and not
worth taking two steps to see ; whereupon he shruggedhis shoulders,
his eyes twinkled with humour, and he admitted that we were quite
right; adding that, after all, everything round about was pretty
much like this ; and, in fact, he began to depreciate all the ordinary
excursions from Dinan, except one really beautiful route, which he
would show us. Of course this resulted in his keeping us out double
the time we had bargained for, but it was well worth the money.
In driving through a new country it was, I had hitherto considered,
and so also had my second Step-Grandmother, a great thing to have
with us a Well-informed Friend, who “knew the place well, and
had seen most of it before.”
He had utterly forgotten all about it. His explanation was that
the place had been. so altered since his last visit. As, however, all
the most recent guide-books state that in their principal character-
istic features neither the towns nor villages of Brittany have under-
gone any change for the last six hundred years, this computation
would make my Well-informed Friend a Patriarch of some consider-
able standing, and first cousin, perhaps, to the Wandering Jew.
He made up. for this, however, by being highly instructive.
His plan of imparting information to us as we drove along, seemed
to be based upon the same motive as that which induced the simple
soldat in La Grande Duchesse to ask for a schoolmaster’s place, “in
order that, he might learn something himself.”
“ This,” said my Well-informed Friend, as we drove along the
road ’twixt Dinan and Dol, “ is an interesting country. Let me see,
this was the great place for the Vendeens.”
“ The who ? ” asked my Grandmother.
“ The Vendeens,” replied my Well-informed Friend, adding im-
mediately, as he turned tome, “wasn’t it?” as if he still had his
doubts of his own historical accuracy.
I asked him, “ Why were the Vendeens so called ? ”
“ Well, let me see,” he observed, meditatively, “they were in the
Revolution,”—this is always a safe thing to say of any Frenchmen
—“ and were a sort of sharpshooters, eh, weren’t they ?” I return
that I am depending upon him for information.
“ Well,” he answered, with, probably, an inward resolve to look
up the whole subject the instant he should get home among his
books, ‘ ‘ the Vendeens were like the franc-tireurs, and their name
was something to do with—I fancy, I don’t say I am absolutely
right—with Vendetta ; and they took a vow of eternal vengeance,
and so on.”
“ But,” I remarked, “ the Vendetta was Corsican.”
“Exactly,” returned my Well-informed Friend ; “why not?
Napoleon was a Corsican, wasn’t he ? ”
This was, evidently, decisive, and as I had nothing to say for or
against it, we set ourselves to admire the vast panorama of the
thickly-wooded country by which we seemed to be hedged in on
every side. My Well-informed Friend improved the occasion by
giving us a few statistics on apple-growing. The statistics were, on
examination, limited to the information that Devonshire and Corn-
wall were great apple counties, that Brittany resembled both these,
in having plenty of orchards, and that he himself invariably took
eider-cup at his Club in summer, which of course went far to
encourage the general trade in England and France.
My Well-informed Friend was immense on architecture. When
we visited a cathedral or any ancient church, my Step-Grandmother
begged that we might have a verger, or some one who knew all
about it.
“ I can tell you all about it,” said my Well-informed Friend,
qualifying this assertion immediately afterwards by adding, ‘ ‘ That
is, quite as much as you’ll want to know.”
My Grandmother yielded at first, and so did I. When we were
quit of my Well-informed Friend, we delivered ourselves over to
professional guides, and the amount of remarkable things which >ve
had allowed to escape our notice, owing to our reliance upon our
friend’s information, would have formed quite a valuable catalogue.
“ That’s Saxon,” he used to say, pointing to a plain archway, “ and
that’s Norman,” pointing to another uncommonly like the first.
“ That’s pointed Gothic, and that the floriated Gothic, all different
styles at different periods. Here ! ” he would continue, moving us
on rapidly, so as to avoid giving us a minute to think over details,
“is a lovely Rose Window; and observe in those side-lights how the
old glass has been preserved.”
AVith this he has begun and finished any and every Cathedral.
If he can get to some part of the building, and decipher a Latin in-
scription before our arrival, he will tell us that “here was buried
old Gozlan de Doing ; we ought to find his tomb somewhere about
with an effigy.” Then he used to pretend to be searching for it.
Presently he would announce, joyfully, that his labours had been
rewarded. “ Here it is ! ” he would exclaim, pointing to a broken-
nosed warrior, doing his best to seem at his ease in the most uncom-
fortable armour. “Here’s Sir Gozlan. Look! He was three
times at the Crusades, you see ; that you know by his having his
legs crossed three times,” and so on.
“What,” asked my Grandmother, “ is the date of Norman archi-
tecture ?—and is Gothic later ? ”
“Well,” replied my AYell-informed Friend, considering the
matter, “the Norman was first, of course;” he evidently had his
doubts on the subject, and was making another mental Mein.—to
look it up directly he got home. “The Norman,” he continued,
“was first, and the Gothic improved on it.”
“ But,” said my Grandmother, who is wonderful for her years,
“if the Goths were such barbarians—as they were, or why should
everyone with bad taste be called a Goth or a Vandal?—how is it
they built such beautiful churches ? ”
“ Ah! ” replied my AYell-informed Friend, with a sort of sigh, and
a shrug that seemed to intimate how, at last, my worthy relative had
formulated in so many words the difficulty of his lifetime. “ Ah !
that’s it! How did the Egyptians build the Pyramids ? How did
the Druids pile up Stonehenge ? AYe don’t know.”
The list of things that my AYell-informed Friend will have to
“look up” when he “gets back among his books,” must have
amounted to a considerable number by the time he quitted us at
Mont St. Michel, where, on seeing a pilgrimage, he observed,
“ History repeats itself ; ” but on being questioned by us as to the
particular instance that came to his mind at that moment, he returned,
“AVhy, don’t you recollect, before the return of Loins the
Eighteenth, or Charles the Tenth—or—let me see which was
it came first ? ”
This was another item to be added to his list. Mont St. Michel is,
as all the world knows from Staneield’s pictures (I think he painted
it twice), a spot marvellously wild and romantic. The monastery,
the fortress, and the houses have perched themselves on the rock,
like the sea-birds on Puffin Island. The monastery belongs, . I
believe, to Friars Preachers: Friars Perchers would be a name in
accordance with the situation of their monastic nest. From
Avranches, from Coutances, on the one side, from Dol, Dinan,
Pontorson, on the other, and, indeed, from every place in Normandy
or Brittany lying within forty miles of Mont St. Michel, came omni-
buses, caleches, waggons with springs, waggons without springs,
diligences of a fashion that must have been out of date in eighteen
thirty, carts covered, carts uncovered, in fact every sort of vehicle
imaginable and unimaginable, drawn by animals of all sorts and
sizes, on their first legs and on their last legs, crowded (the vehicles,
I mean) inside and outside with middle-class people, young, middle-
aged, and old, cheerful and decorous, all bound for the pilgrimage,
but with as little of the fanatic about them as there was of the