Should the traveller be tempted to take a day’s trip down the coast to Boulogne he will find a quarter of the population to be English. The town is within eight hours of London, Murray says, and has become ‘one of the chief British colonies abroad; and, by a singular reciprocity, on the very spot whence Napoleon proposed the invasion of our shores, his intended victims have quietly taken possession and settled themselves down. The town is enriched by English money; warmed, lighted, and smoked by English coal; English signs and advertisements decorate every other shop door, inn, tavern, and lodging house; and almost every third person you meet is either a countryman or speaking our language; while the outskirts of the town are enlivened by villas and country houses, somewhat in the style and taste of those on the opposite side of the Channel. There are at least 120 boarding schools for youth of both sexes, many of them under English managers.’
Thackeray in Vanity Fair gives a further view of English travellers on the Continent, those among them who have ‘swindled in all the capitals of Europe. The respect in those happy days of 1817–18 was very great for the wealth and honour of Britons. They had not then learned, as I am told, to haggle for bargains with the pertinacity which now distinguishes them. The great cities of Europe had not been as yet open to the enterprise of our rascals. And whereas there is now hardly a town of France or Italy in which you shall not see some noble countryman of our own, with that happy swagger and insolence of demeanour which we carry everywhere, swindling inn-landlords, passing fictitious cheques upon credulous bankers, robbing coachmakers of their carriages, goldsmiths of their trinkets, easy travellers of their money at cards — even libraries of their books: thirty years ago you needed but to be a Milor Anglais, travelling in a private carriage, and credit was at your hand wherever you chose to seek it, and gentlemen, instead of cheating, were cheated.’
If our traveller at Calais was already regretting his departure from home the pier jutting out from the shore gave an occasional view of the white cliffs of England. This must have been a tantalizing sight to those who were also exiles, ‘fugitives from creditors, or compelled from other causes,’ hints Murray, ‘to leave their homes: a numerous class both here and at Boulogne. There are many of our countrymen besides, who reside merely for the purpose of economising; so that the place is half Anglicised, and our language generally spoken.’
Murray also mentions the local fishermen and their wives, who dress in picturesque costume and occupy their own quarter of the town, where the streets, ‘are draped with nets hung out from the fronts of the houses to dry, and in dress and manners they are distinct from the rest of the inhabitants, speaking a peculiar patois, and rarely intermarrying with the other townsfolk. They are an industrious and very hardworking race, especially the women, and very religious: the perils and vicissitudes of their hard life reminding them more nearly than other classes of their dependence on Providence.’
According to Baedeker, the men’s wives are called matelottes, and ‘exercise unlimited sway on shore, whilst the sea is the undisputed domain of their husbands’.
During a pause in his solitary walk along the seafront, or while sitting in the dining room of his hotel over a long half-English meal, our traveller may ponder on the remarks in his handbook concerning accommodation in the rest of France. He will not be reassured, for Murray tells him that: ‘On the whole, the inns of France are very inferior to those of Germany and Switzerland, in the want of general comfort, and above all of cleanliness — their greatest drawback. There is an exception to this, however, in the bed and table linen. Even the filthy cabaret, whose kitchen and salon are scarcely endurable to look at, commonly affords napkins and table-cloths clean, though coarse and rough, and beds with unsullied sheets and white draperies, together with well-stuffed mattresses and pillows, which put German cribs and feather-beds to shame.’
Presumably referring to the toilet facilities, he goes on: ‘Many of the most important essentials, on the other hand, are utterly disregarded, and evince a state of grossness and barbarism hardly to be expected in a civilised country; the provisions for personal ablution are very defective: the washing of floors, whether of timber or tile, seems unknown. In the better hotels, indeed, the floors are polished as tables are in England, with brushes attached to the feet instead of the hands; but in most cases they are black with the accumulated filth of years, a little water being sprinkled on them from time to time to lay the dust and increase the dark crust of dirt.’
Murray divides French hotels into two classes: ‘Those which make some pretension to study English tastes and habits (and a few of them have some claim to be considered comfortable), and being frequented by Englishmen, are very exorbitant in their charges.’ Then: ‘Those in remote situations, not yet corrupted to exorbitance by the English and their couriers; where the traveller who can conform with the customs of the country is treated fairly, and charged no higher than a Frenchman.’
The traveller is advised to bargain for a room on arrival at an inn, though he is told to be careful because doing so can ‘sometimes lead the landlord to suppose that you are going to beat him down, and he may therefore name a higher price than he is willing to take, and thus you may cause the exorbitance which you intend to prevent.’
French hotels are nevertheless compared favourably to those in Germany, since they will ‘furnish at almost any hour of the day, at 10 minutes or ¼ hour’s notice, a well-dressed dinner of 8 or 10 dishes, at a cost not greatly exceeding that of the table-d’hôte. In remote places and small inns, never order dinner at a higher price than 3 francs: the people have only the same food to present, even if they charged 10 francs. A capital dinner is usually furnished at 4 fr. a-head; but the traveller who goes post in his own carriage will probably be charged 6, unless he specifies the price beforehand.’
It was usual to dine at a common table in French inns, but Murray says they are ‘rarely resorted to by the most respectable townspeople, or by ladies, as in Germany. The majority of the company almost invariably consists of commercial travellers but of a stamp very inferior to those of the same class in England, who swarm in all the inns, and are consequently the most important personages. Without denying that there are exceptions among these gentry, it is impossible to have sojourned in France for any time without the conviction that a more selfish, depraved, and vulgar, if not brutal, set does not exist, and gentlemen will take good care not to encourage their approaches, and to keep a distance from them. They commonly sit down to table with their hats on, and scramble for the dishes, so that the stranger who is not on the alert is likely to fare very ill; and if females be present, not only do not pay them that attention which is customary in all civilised countries at a dinner-table, and used at one time to distinguish the French, but, as Mrs. Trollope remarks, constantly “use language which no Englishman would dream of uttering in their presence,” evincing an utter want of all sense of propriety and decency. English ladies, therefore, will be cautious of presenting themselves at a French table-d’hôte, except in first-rate hotels, where English guests form a considerable part of the company, and at well-frequented watering-places.’