Thursday, June 28, 1838

1838

June

Thursday 28

7 20/..

10 1/2

Rained all night and very rainy morning.  Fahrenheit 66° at 7 1/2 a.m. – Breakfast at 8 3/4 – Still rain and off.

In the rain from the Hotel de France (quite an auberge, but good eating and good beds – good sort of people and civil servants)

Barbezieux at 9 1/2 – Not one peep of the old castle we sketched with so much pleasure in 1830 – Too dark to see it last night – Turned into a barrack 2 or 3 years ago – Barbezieux as we drove off in the rain this morning seemed a poor little place, but in a fine, well wooded country – Corn, and Indian ditto, and vines, and potatoes – Have seen very little wheat –

The best (and some good) on the high ground just out of Barbezieux and fine (as before) Spanish Chestnut trees parkwise –

Reignac, little church, little village – Overheard the maitre de Poste observe of my carriage ‘Il y a bien peu de berlines à present’ – I do not remember to have seen one on the road all the way from Paris –

Changed horses in 3 minutes and off again at 10 3/4, at which time fair, having rained all the way – Never fair since 12 1/2 last night ?

At 11 (1/4 hour from Reignac), copse forest of very cut-leaved oak and some young firs, Pinus Maritima ?  La Graulle, a farm-house – Asleep to La Garde Montlieu (bourg) at 11 47/.. – Asleep again –

At Chiersac in 20 minutes.  Single house – Asked Ann to have noyau soon after setting out.  No, and her tone of voice was the sign for my saying no more.  I have never spoken since.  Dullish work.

Off from Chiersac at 12 20/.. – my Itinéraire mentions Lander – Rare nowadays – so far the ground is almost everywhere wood or in cultivation, generally green hedges along the roadsides –

Began to rain again soon after leaving Chiersac – At Cavignac, good village, at 1 21/.. 2 postes in 57 minutes in spite of the rain – Had dozed great part of the way –

Just out of Cavignac, nice fig tree against cottage end – 1st I have seen – Fine country – Our postillon (4th a la basque, our 3rd à la basque being from Chiersac) turned his blanket-cloak wrong side before, against the rain and thus kept himself dry –

At 2 35/.. drive through the tolerable little town of St. André de Cubzac (Itinéraire says 1,000 inhabitants) and at 2 53/.. Sabot and down into good village of Cubzac – Dordogne, muddy with the rain drained as the  Garonne at Bordeaux – 3 piers in the river with iron-work on them and about 30 arches this side and 27 or 28 on the other for a suspension bridge – Picturesque remain right, of old gateway between 2 round towers and large quarry of soft white sandstone, of which they seem to be building the bridge –

At the water’s edge at 3 – 4 fresh horses came in 10 minutes and embarked at 3 17/.. a sail astern, and 6 horses turning the wheel in the middle of our broad raft-like vessel worked us across in 13 minutes and we landed (drove out of the vessel as we drove in) at 3 1/2 –

Hedges and like England except for the vines, which here and all today (from Barbezieux), have seemed generally old plants – Old rugged stems perhaps a couple of feet? high from which spring the young shoots – Rye quite yellow and barley turning fast – Nowhere so forward as here – Hill-surrounded, wooded, fine, well-peopled, rich plane –

Carbon Blanc (good white village) at 4 – All the villages white when clean and new – from top of hill at 4 27/.., 1st view of the fine Garonne, and bridge and Bordeaux and its seven spires – Very fine view spite of the rain – Hillside on our left, in the descent, walled up with a bur-wall (not much burred) but having at about every 2 yards along the bottom loop-holes 3 or 4 inches wide and 2 feet long, capital to let the water off and therefore take off all strain from the wall –

Beautiful descent – beautifully rounded wooded hills and vineyards left and rich plane right – Then at 4 1/2, fine double avenue of youngish elms and poplars up to the river – Cross the magnificent bridge of 17 arches (500 feet long and 45 feet wide) at 4 3/4 and alight at the hotel de Rouen at 4 50/.. –

Very good humoured looking, civil maitresse d’hotel – 2 rooms on premier opening into each other – Looking into the court, small and glazed over like a conservatory – But our rooms must be 15 feet high – Too lofty to be close –

Dinner at 5 50/.. to 6 1/2 – I had had a bad headache ever since crossing the Dordogne and Ann said she had also a very bad headache – She would go out with me – Out from 7 to 8 55/.. – Sauntered to the Place Dauphine, theatre Français, Cathedral, and a very civil bookseller’s in Fossés du Chapeau Rouge, No. 17 – Bought Itinéraire des Pyrénées and inquired for Charpentier’s map – Not to be had without the work itself, and this not to be had in Bordeaux – To be sent for to Paris – The carriage would be per poste 1 sol per sheet, that is 1 sheet octavo =

8 leave or 16 pages, therefore the number of pages of the work/16 X 1 sol = the price of carriage to St. Sauveur Poste restante –

Except two or three times asking her to have noyau, I never spoke from Barbezieux to Bordeaux.  Spoke a little this evening, but she is terrible.  I never before knew the misery of solitude.  She is with me, and yet I have not a soul to speak to.  She is a human being at my elbow and I am alone.  Oh, that I was well rid of her.

Very rainy day, but fair from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.. Fahrenheit 66 1/2 at 10 10/.. p.m.

Had Josephine at 9 – Sat reading Itinéraire des Pyrénées till 10 p.m.

WYAS Finding Numbers SH:7/ML/E/21/0132 and SH:7/ML/E/21/0133