Bored by France, heading for Spain

The type of stagecoach he travelled in (though this is twenty years later).

He's heading for the city of Burgos via the Basque country, but first he has to cross part of France.  He shrugs. "It is one of the least interesting of French routes." Plus there is also the hazard of Chatellerault, a town where the people are under the illusion they produce good cutlery, and insist on travellers buying some.  It's a common tourist problem, even today.

"At Chatellerault...the inn-door is besieged by women offering knives for sale.  It is everywhere known that cutlery is not one of the departments of French manufactures which have attained the greatest degree of superiority.  A glance at the specimens offered for our choice while changing horses at Chatellerault, showed them to be bad, even for France.

This did not, however, prevent a multitude of travellers from purchasing each his knife, nor one of them from laying in a plentiful stock, stating that he destined a knife for each member of his family - evidently one of the most numerous in France.  I inquired of a native the explanation of this scene, and whether these knives were considered superior to those met with in other towns.  "Oh no," was the reply; "but it is usual to buy knives here." I ventured to say I thought them very bad.  "That is of no consequence; because, whenever you have passed through Chatellerault, every one asks you for a knife made on the spot."

These victims of custom had paid enormous prices for their purchases."

Yes.  This is how it is when you are a tourist.

Regency Nathaniel v. Victorian Nathaniel

He has one further comment about Chatellerault, or rather the forest which the coach passed through on leaving the town.  He wants us to know it was the scene of a notorious incident during the Napoleonic era, in which a Polish regiment disgraced itself by first inviting the townsfolk to a picnic, then when they accepted, staging a sort of re-enactment of the Rape of the Sabine Women...Not that Nathaniel quite says that.  He is Regency enough to want to include this anecdote, and Victorian enough to wish to do so opaquely:

"It is related that Polish gallantry overstepped etiquette to such a degree...as to urge these cavaliers, by force of bayonet, and sentries, to separate all the husbands, and other male relatives, from the fairer portion of the guests. The consequences of such a termination of the festivities may easily be imagined...The inhabitants of Chatellerault are said to take great offence on being asked their age, suspecting the inquirer of a malicious calculation."

He goes on to say that Bonaparte, ("a rigid judge with regard to all divorces but his own"), was so angry he posted the regiment to the Peninsula, deliberately sending it into the scenes of greatest danger so that scarcely a man survived. 

Well: Victoria had only been on the throne for four or five years. Another decade or so and he would have struck that whole passage out, I think.  And he certainly wouldn't have included this observation about the public baths in Bordeaux.  These had separate entrances, for Ladies and for Men, and as you entered the Men's entrance you saw a large sign in stark black letters on the white wall:   

"It consists of the following single and rather singular statute: "Il est expressement défendu aux garçons de permettre à deux hommes de se servir de la même baignoire."(*It is expressly forbidden for attendants to allow two men to share a bathroom.)

And he adds innocently

After some reflection I concluded it to be a measure of precaution with regard to cleanliness..."

No you didn't, Nathaniel.  You knew damn well why two men weren't allowed to share a bathroom. And this is not the kind of side-eye we expect to get from a Victorian gent.

Time to look at a modern map and see where on earth we're up to.  He's gone Paris - Chatellerault: then on to Bordeaux: now from Bordeaux he's heading down to Bayonne, very near the Spanish border.



Today the roads linking those places today take you conveniently almost in a straight line, and according to interactive maps, from Bordeaux you will be in Bayonne in under two hours. Unless you want to take the old road, which nearly doubles the mileage.. I feel sure it's this one his diligence took. He travelled "forty leagues" through an area called the Landes, and the Landes apparently is the dreariest stretch of landscape on the planet:

"One sighs for the Steppes of Russia...unvarying gloom of the pine and cork forests...dreary and bare...presenting to the wearied eye a wide interminable waste, replete with melancholy and desolation."

Making an unconvincing stab at fairness, he adds this depressing effect may have been due to the unceasing rain...yes, yes. (Memo to self: never holiday in the Landes.)

The Landes: okay, but not for 40 leagues. In pouring rain.

End of Letter II