We bicycled yesterday
through Montigny, Grez, Villliers-sous-Grez, Larchant and Nemours. And I
exhausted myself in pushing Marguerite about 10 mies altogether against a head
wind. We had tea at Villiers, just a straggling village without any attraction
except that of its own life. During our tea the drone of a steam-thresher was heard
rising and falling continually.
Tea in the street; they brought out and
pitched for us a table, also vast thick basins, which we got changed for small
coffee-cups. But we could not prevent the fat neat clean landlady from serving
the milk in a 2-quart jug which would have filled about a million coffee-cups.
We sat in the wind on yellow iron chairs, and we had bread and perhaps a pound
of butter, and a plate of sweet biscuits which drew scores of flies. Over the
houses we could just see the very high weather-cock of the church. Everything
was beaten by wind and sunshine. From the inside of the little inn came hoarse
argumentative voices. Curious to see in this extremely unsophisticated village
a Parisian cocotte of the lower
ranks, She was apparently staying at the inn. With her dog, and her dyed hair
(too well arranged), and her short skirt, and her matinée (at 4.30 p.m.), and her hard eyes, she could not keep from
exhibiting herself in the road. The instinct of ‘exposition’ was too strong in
her to be resisted. She found fifty excuses for popping into the house and out
again.
Then we rode through
woods 5 kilometres to Larchant. You know that the cathedral at Larchant is a
show-place because the post cards are 2 sous each. Then the 8 kilometres of
straight but atrocious road to Nemours, whence, having deposited our wives at
the station, Marriott and I rode home at 2½ miles an hour.
Arnold Bennett's Journals - August 26th 1907
No comments:
Post a Comment