by Graham Robb
22. Rion (named Col de Severen: probably the Col de Louvie, north of the Great Saint Bernard).
23. About fifteen brown bears are thought to survive in the Pyrenees. Most were imported from Slovenia. The last female of pure Pyrenean stock was shot by boar hunters near Urdos in October 2004.
24. For his baselines, Delambre used the conveniently straight sections of road from Lieusaint to Melun (near Paris) and from Le Vernet to Salses (aligned with the Roman Via Domitia near Perpignan).
25. The Cassinis are numbered, for convenience, like kings. Cassini I, II, III and IV: Jean-Dominique (1625–1712), Jacques (1677–1756), César-François Cassini de Thury, who took the name of the family château in Normandy (1714–84), and Jacques-Dominique (1748–1845).
26. There were twelve lignes in a pouce (inch), twelve pouces in a pied (foot), six pieds in a toise (just under two metres) and two thousand pieds in a lieue (league).
27. The Beast of the Gévaudan was never this far south. The guide may have been referring to the Bête des Vaissettes which lived in a pond nearby at Le Bouquet. It made a horrible screaming noise at night and could be heard for miles around.
28. In 1756, the price was four livres for a sheet and five hundred livres for the whole map. Five hundred livres was the salary of a well-paid village schoolteacher or the annual income of a successful farmer.
29. 124, Rue Saint-Lazare (1837, to Le Pecq), 44, Boulevard Montparnasse (1840, to Versailles) and 1, Boulevard de l’Hôpital or ‘Jardin des Plantes’ (1843, to Corbeil and Orléans).
30. Oil of amber, caustic ammonia and alcohol.
31. To judge by the army handbook of 1884, it is fortunate that most road building was left to civil engineers:
Gradient on which troops can still march in good order: 25 per cent (1 in 4)
Gradient manageable by mounted horses and light carriages: 33 per cent (1 in 3)
Gradient manageable by mules: 50 per cent (1 in 2)
Escarpment that an infantryman can still cross by using his hands: 100 per cent (completely vertical).
32. Seine and Marne, Loire and Loiret, Rhône and Saône, Garonne and Dordogne. Northern bias chose as the Loire’s companion the diminutive Loiret, which runs to the south of Orléans for seven miles, rather than the Allier (two hundred and fifty-six miles) or the Cher (two hundred miles), which rise in the Auvergne.
33. The Perte du Rhône was later blown up to allow wood to be floated down the river. The cataract was one of the main tourist attractions of eastern France until 1948, when the waters of the Génissiat dam engulfed the belvedere, the tea-room and the slippery bridge.
34. Renamed Bourbon-Vendée at the Restoration, then, in 1848, Napoléon-Vendée. In 1870, it reverted to its original name, La Roche-sur-Yon.
35.‘Others shall have our fields, our paths and hiding places. / Your wood, my beloved, now belongs to strangers.’
36. ‘Pittoresque’ still had its primary sense: related to painting or worthy of being painted.
37. Place of birth / death: Paris, 189 / 367; Provinces, 296 / 128; French colonies, 9 / 3; other countries, 26 / 22.
38. These figures refer to the Seine département, though, by 1880, some towns in neighbouring départements could be considered suburbs of Paris.
39.These schools could be private or public. The dominant role of the Catholic Church was reinforced by the Falloux law of 1850. Primary schools for girls were made obligatory in 1867. The Jules Ferry laws of 1881–82 introduced free, compulsory, secular education for boys and girls from six to thirteen.
40. Relatively poor, that is. In the mid-1880s, a teacher like M. Blondel earned about 1,200 francs a year; women teachers earned half as much as men. The average daily wage of a worker in the Paris region was about seven francs. A single Parisian on a week’s holiday to a spa town in the Auvergne might spend the following (in francs): second-class return train ticket: thirty-five; room and board: fifty; excursions, donkey hire, tips, etc.: twenty; refreshments and souvenirs: thirty; one map: two; five postcards and stamps: one. Total: 138 francs.
The Discovery of France
‘A dazzling, startling exploration of a rural France few tourists ever knew’
YOU REALLY MUST READ in the Sunday Times
‘Certain books strain the patience of those close to you. How many times can you demand: “Look at this! Can you imagine? Did you know that?” without actually handing over the volume? This is such a book . . . It’s not so much a cool linear account as a mosaic, like the patchwork pays of France herself
Mail on Sunday
‘An exhilarating account of how the geographical entity that has become “France” emerged . . . With gloriously apposite facts and an abundance of quirky anecdotes and thumbnail sketches of people, places and customs, Robb, on brilliant form, takes us on a stunning journey through the historical landscape of France . . . He has written an unstuffy, fascinating and very superior historical guidebook for the unhurried traveller: altogether a book to savour’
Independent
‘Elegant, entertaining and occasionally brilliant . . . As this book powerfully demonstrates, French history is nothing if not built on paradox and contradiction. Most importantly, Robb reminds us why France still matters’
Observer
‘This splendid history of France mixes the rambling charm of a traveller with a scholar’s rigorous research . . . At once history, psychogeography, itinerary and cabinet of curiosities, The Discovery of France is an astute sociological catalogue of France’s changing idea of itself . . . It’s [also] an extraordinary journey of discovery that will delight even the most indolent armchair traveller’
Daily Telegraph
‘Few foreigners have immersed themselves in France as deeply as Graham Robb . . . The reader is left hoping that Robb will hop back on his bike to explain how this rediscovered France evolved into the country it is today’
Financial Times
‘This book is an elegy to what has disappeared, a retrospective exploration of that lost world. But the British love affair with France makes this particular story special, and Robb, from his two-wheeled vantage point, has made a dazzling and moving contribution to a long tradition’
Sunday Times
‘Robb’s great achievement is that of marrying the imaginative journeys he took through the archive with those in the bracing actuality and slipstream of outdoor life. The result is a multi-dimensional, detailed exploration of how the disparateness of a nation moved towards coherence . . . This book is worth having not just as a travelogue or a guide-book, but primarily as the record of a journey that is twisting and subcutaneous. It is scholarly and abundantly accessible, making France all the more accessible in its wake’
Scotsman
‘Robb is full of such fascinating facts . . . there’s any amount of treasure to be found here.’ Book of the Week,
Evening Standard
‘Robb travelled fourteen thousand miles on a bicycle around France and spent four years in the library to prepare the groundwork for the magnificent achievement that is The Discovery of France . . . A gently mesmerising, always brilliant exposition, and a vibrant biography of a forgotten France . . . Robb is always erudite. He is regularly insightful. He writes with authority leavened by a sly wit. But he has the eye for the phrase or fact that can illuminate a previously hidden truth. The whole of these accumulated facts, witty observations and genuinely intellectual insights is a book of unfolding marvel’
Herald
‘An astute sociological catalogue, and an extraordinary journey of discovery’
Irish Independent
‘Rid your mind of the idea - suggested by the ordinary title - that this is an ordinary book’
Literary Review
‘Before leaving their mountain villages, nineteenth-century pedlars would load up with as many as 23,222 items. Their baskets were, as Graham Robb says, “masterpieces of packing”. So is his new book, which bulges with tasty and thought-provoking facts . . .
The Discovery of France stands in the ancient and delightful line of compilations that cater to our “great liking to hear speak of strange things of diverse countries”, as one of Robb’s predecessors put it’
New Statesman
‘It is an astonishing, eccentric book that defies linear narrative to detour, circle back, swerve and dodge between the centuries. Robb carries the reader along on flawless prose, over France’s terra incognita, probing, discovering, and getting to know a country still deeply at odds with itself. There is information in this book to surprise even the most avid Francophile, and to delight anyone who is even vaguely thinking of boarding the new Eurostar’
The Times
‘It is beautifully written and truly eccentric, seeking out the obscure or forgotten parts of a nation that - Robb argues brilliantly - is still discovering itself
Times Literary Supplement
‘Graham Robb’s The Discovery of France . . . adds to his reputation as one of the greatest non-fiction writers in English’
Herald
‘As an alternative view of French history it is a fascinating diversion. Its real value lies in helping to explain why modern France remains a centrally directed society that has adopted big ideas and bloody ideals in order to create itself
Daily Mail
‘Robb’s history is excellent - his tour and his research have thrown up so much of great interest . . . So much to discover, so beautifully written and compiled’
Publishing News
‘Robb is a fascinating and hugely knowledgeable guide to a country that we only thought we knew’
London Review of Books
‘[Robb’s] shrewd observations, which he recounts with insightful humour, make this a fantastic resource for anyone interested in this wonderful country’
Good Book Guide
GRAHAM ROBB was born in Manchester in 1958 and is a
former Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. His highly acclaimed
biography Balzac was published in 1994, Victor Hugo (winner
of the Royal Society of Literature Heinemann Award and the
Whitbread Biography Award) in 1997, and Rimbaud (shortlisted
for the Samuel Johnson Prize) in 2000. All three biographies
were New York Times ‘Best Books of the Year’, and Robb
is also the author of Strangers: Homosexual Love in the
Nineteenth Century (2003). He lives in Oxford.
Also by Graham Robb in Picador
BALZAC
VICTOR HUGO
RIMBAUD
STRANGERS
Homosexual Love in the
Nineteenth Century
1. The ladies of Goust, a self-governing hamlet-republic in the Pyrenees, photographed by an American tourist in 1889: ‘They know of no taxes of any kind to pay; they always marry within the village, except where the patriarchs may grant a dispensation with an outsider.’ (Edwin Dix, A Midsummer Drive Through the Pyrenees.)
2. A cagot (the persecuted caste found in Brittany, Gascony and the Basque Country), at the foot of a column by the north wall of the church at Monein (Pyrénées-Atlantiques).
3. The menhir near Dol-de-Bretagne, at Champ Dolent (Field of Woe or Wailing – a local name for ‘abattoir’). Local legends associated the stone with Gargantua, the Devil, two warring brothers and Julius Caesar. Romantic scholars associated it with the Druids. The Church often ‘converted’ the stones by carving them into the shape of a cross or by inserting a crucifix.
4. A bear handler (orsalher) with his wife, baby, bear and baboon by a railway line in a Paris suburb. Most orsalhers and their bears came from the central Pyrenees. There was a school for performing bears at Ercé. When this postcard photograph was taken in the 1900s, the Pyrenean brown bear was on the verge of extinction. This one had probably been imported from Russia or the Balkans.
5. ‘Intérieur dans les Landes (lou pachedeuy)’. Oxen were a source of traction, fertilizer, warmth and company. ‘Pachedeuy’ was a mixture of hay and bran used as forage.
6. Chimney-sweeps on the banks of the Seine in central Paris. Photograph by Charles Nègre, c. 1851.
7. ‘A sombre desert where the cicada sings and the bird is silent, where all human habitation disappears’ (V. Hugo). Shepherds in the Landes, at La Mouleyre, near Commensacq, on one of the few surviving patches of the original Landes. The encroaching forest of oak and pine can just be seen on the horizon. A shepherd on stilts could travel at the speed of a trotting horse.
8. Road-building in the Oisans (French Alps), c. 1918. The first surfaced road to cross the region (by the Col du Lautaret) was completed in 1862. The slopes had already been cleared by soil erosion and avalanches. Most of these roads were built for the tourist trade by Italian workers.
9. A Vendée peasant dressed up as a royalist rebel. The caption explains that ‘Old Jean’ lives in a tumbledown cottage at Moulins near Châtillon (now Mauléon), with his indescribably chaotic collection of old clothes. ‘Old Jean is superstitious’ but ‘takes a philosophical view of the future. He is one of a kind and must be seen to be believed.’ The Chouan guerrillas had fought the republican government in the west of France in the days of this man’s great-great-grandfather.
10. ‘Types d’Auvergne. La Bourrée’. The bourrée was a lively dance from the Auvergne. It was sometimes fashionable, in less boisterous forms, in Paris. The Church associated it with pagan revelry. When this scene was staged, c. 1905, few people agile enough to dance it could remember the steps. The violinist and his sheet music have replaced the hurdy-gurdy man. The unidentified town in the valley is the spa of La Bourboule.
11. Shanty town in Belleville, in the eastern suburbs of Paris, previously an area of vineyards and quarries. Photograph by Charles Marville, c. 1865.
12. An assistant of the anthropologist Hippolyte Müller, founder of the Musée dauphinois in Grenoble, collecting ethnological artefacts in 1917. Müller cycled all over the region seeking out prehistoric sites to ‘connect the earliest inhabitants of a pays with those who live there now’. This photograph was taken in July 1917 at Le Coin (6,600 feet), one of the hamlets of Molines-en-Queyras in the Alps.
13. ‘Les Montagnes des Sevennes ou se retirent les Fanatiques de Languedoc’, 1703. The ‘Fanatics’ hiding in the Cévennes were Protestants persecuted after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Louis XIV’s order to turn the ‘fox tracks’ into highways suitable for cannon launched the biggest road-building programme since the Romans. This map (fifty miles across, west at the top) was used in the military ‘cleansing’ operation and also served as propaganda. ‘Mont Causse’ is the Causse Méjean. Robert Louis Stevenson’s route through the Cévennes in 1878 ran from the top right (Florac) to the centre (Saint-Jean-du-Gard). The road heading north-west from Nîmes follows the prehistoric Voie Regordane.
14. Jules Breton, The Song of the Lark, 1884. The girl holds a sickle of the kind that had been used since the time of the Gauls. The landscape, and a poem by Breton on the same subject, suggest a field near his native town of Courrières (Pas-de-Calais).
15. ‘Ex-voto, 22 July 1855.’ A votive offering hung in a chapel to thank John the Baptist for saving the victim of a cart accident. The setting is probably the Var in eastern Provence.
16. A boy, probably from the Alps, wearing leather shoes instead of clogs for long-distance walking, sells plaster statuettes in a Normandy village. The woman’s bonnet is typical of the Pays de Caux, though elaborate headdresses were already rare in 1833. The husband inspects a statuette of Napoleon I; the mother and children prefer the Virgin Mary. The shadowy figure behind the parrot on the right is probably the Wandering Jew. Painting by Joseph-Louis-Hippolyte Bellangé, 1833.
17. Cassini map of France, sheet 131, showing Toulon and the Îles d’Hyères, based on surveys carried out in 1778. The fishing port of Saint-Tropez is in the top right. Some travellers called Toulon ‘a northern colony’ because it was the only southern town where French was the majority language. When thi
s map was made, parts of the hinterland and its population were practically unknown.
18. ‘Le Passage du Mont Cenis’ in 1868, three years before the opening of the railway tunnel. During the Napoleonic Wars, this was the main route into Italy. Before the road was opened in 1810, the ascent from Savoy was half as long and twice as steep. Carriages were dismantled and loaded onto mules. Wealthy travellers went up in sedan chairs and descended on sledges. 17. Cassini map of France, sheet 131, showing Toulon and the Îles d’Hyères, based on surveys carried out in 1778. The fishing port of Saint-Tropez is in the top right. Some travellers called Toulon ‘a northern colony’ because it was the only southern town where French was the majority language. When this map was made, parts of the hinterland and its population were practically unknown.
19. Paul Delaroche, Napoleon crossing the Alps by the Great Saint Bernard Pass on 20 May 1800, with the help of a local guide. The pass was patrolled by the paramedical dogs of the hospice at the summit. The only surfaced track was the vestigial Roman road. Mules were the most reliable form of transport, not only in the mountains. Until the mid-nineteenth century, mules and mule-trains accounted for about two-thirds of all traffic on French roads.