The Street I Know by Harold E. Stearns

Author:Harold E. Stearns
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781590774908
Publisher: M. Evans & Company

XIV. AROUND FRANCE AND BACK HOME

MOST of us, I think, are enamoured of itineraries–for what person with normal curiosity can resist the maps and folders of the well-known travel agencies? As the $15.00 a week New York stenographer cannot forever heroically refuse to go “window shopping,” with a tour of the swank and envy-creating shops of Fifth Avenue, so even the least imaginative of men has on occasion gone traveling in spirit– by looking at the alluring pictures of ocean liners of unrivalled luxury (always with beautiful and democratic women passengers), towns of unsurpassed quaintness and charm, and scenic wonders of penultimate grandeur. For more people than I like to think on, life would lose considerable of its savor, if these day-dreams were rigorously denied them. Hence I make no apology for presenting this chapter in the form I do. Only, if the reader wants fully to enjoy it, I urge that he provide himself with a large and detailed map of France.

The time of year, too, is important: It was– for the trip around France– from September 21st to October 24th, 1924. For the trip back home and the return to Paris (the trip over home by the Southern route), it was from December 1st, 1924, to the middle of February, 1925. I dodged the worst of the Paris winter that season, basking either on a sunny sea or on land in sunny climes. For the South of France, if you want to explore around at random, the month of October is almost the ideal one– the grapes have turned and it is harvesting time along the banks of the Gironde. There is not likely to be much rain; even the sudden summer showers have merged into the golden warm October haze that spells good wine and late fruits. As with us, too, the months with the “r” in them (consider the French, i. e., Septembre, Octobre, Novembre, Décembre, right through Avril, as against the four: Mai, Juin, Juillet and Août) are the “safe” months for eating oysters, so that the first crops of the aristocratic Marennes and the more humble Portugaises were on the menus. And later, as we got further South, the early game began to appear on the tables–partridges especially, thrushes or larks (alouettes), wood-cocks (bécasses), wild boar (sanglier, to be had near Carcassone in October), pheasants (faisans), jugged hare (civet de lièvre), rabbit (rable de lapin), and special forms of cured, smoked and clove-flavored hams. Chicken, turkey, and young turkey–the latter with chestnut stuffing–were, of course, common dishes, as were the marvellous mountain-stream trout (sometimes larger than a small salmon) near the Pyrenées. Like any tour of France, granted tourists of fair health and reasonable digestive powers, our tour turned out also to be a gastronomic adventure. And a mild vinous one, too, since obviously we had to drink the “wine of the country” wherever we went, if we wished to appreciate the full flavor and richness of the different dishes served us.

But now to

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