The following pages
were written for pastime in 1848, by a Highland gentleman resident
in Normandy, at the suggestion of an honoured friend, who named the
subjects of French Cookery, Fishing, Natural History, Farming,
Gardening, and Politics. It was suggested that ingenious foreign
devices and engines for ensnaring, growing, and gathering food, and
for making it eatable, might be so described as to benefit the poor
at home, whose single dish of potatoes might easily be varied at
small cost. It was argued that a good cheap dinner at home would
tempt a poor man from bad dear drink abroad, and that a poor
Scotchman’s wife might be taught to do that which poor wives do
elsewhere. And, as even salmon when raw, are nasty, while
well-cooked marrots, cuttle-fish, limpets, frogs, snails, and
maggots are eaten and relished, so instruction might be seasoned and
made agreeable with sketches from life in Normandy, such as it then
was.
The suggestions were taken, the papers were written and sent, and
they are now published, though both the author and his friend have
passed away, because it was their wish, and in the hope that the
object which they aimed at may be attained.
“There are as good
fish in the sea as ever came out of it,” and many a barren Scotch
strand might yield a good harvest, if men only knew how to reap it
and use it.
In Hope and Cross, and their conversations about France and the
French Revolution, it is easy to recognise the mind of the
experienced, liberal, clear-sighted politician, who knew the meaning
of political gratitude; who tolerated all forms of religious
worship, though he steadfastly adhered to his own, at home and
abroad; who could foresee that communism, disorder, and a French
republic, would lead to well-defined rights of property, stricter
order, and something like despotism; and who held that the rigid
system of protection, which placed a custom-house at the gate of
every petty town, levied dues on every basket of eggs, and even
planted sentries over sea water, to guard the salt monopoly, must
give way to more liberal measures. The empire and the tariff of our
day now prove the sagacity which predicted a change in the direction
of monarchy and free trade.
Those who knew the
writer need not be told his name. They will recognise the generosity
whose chief luxury was to give pleasure to others, and the chivalry
of the gentleman who was courteous to a bare-footed fisher-girl as
to the highest in the land.
Those who knew provincial France some fourteen years ago, will
recognise the country gentleman of old Norman and Breton type, who
has so much in common with his Norse and British relations. They
will know the warm, adventurous, hospitable, polite nature that
still delights in love and war, danger and hardship; in riding,
sailing, shooting, fishing, country life, good living, and good
fellowship; and which in the olden time made vikings and gallant
knights, hospitable chiefs, good soldiers and minstrels, of Norseman
and Norman, Celt and Saxon.
They will also recognise some characteristics of other classes.
If there be a shade of caricature, it is evenly applied to friend
and foreigner, and there is no gall in the ink. “ The Marquis ”
cooked a dinner; —but it was for his friends, and, if he ate his
full share, he earned it by wading for it like a man.
Men, and their manners and customs, are lightly sketched, but from
nature, and on the spot:—the habits of animals are described from
close observation by one who always delighted to watch them and
catch them, without caring much for their long book-names or for
learned theories.
The lithographs are copied from rough sketches made on the spot, and
if the volumes do no more, they may at least serve to amuse the
reader, and perhaps remind him of an old friend.
Edinburgh, December 1862.
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