we crossed, after all other vegetation ceased, the aconite plant grew, showing nature had provided there a remedy for the disease which the severity of the climate developed in man. My Irish friend, living far from the sea, had a passion for all fish but pike, which he detested, and which was daily served to us wherever we went; finally, reaching Berlin, he insisted on having sea fish. It was promised us, but, lo and behold! when dinner was served, in came the pike, with the apology that no other fish could then be had in the city. After dinner we went to the opera, and there, in the ballet (superbly done as it was), were at least one hundred pike dancing on the stage, which so upset my friend that he seized his hat in a rage and left the house.
WINTER IN PAU.
CHAPTER VI.
Winter in Pau—I Hire a Perfect Villa for $800 a year—Luxury at Small Cost—I Learn How to Give Dinners—Fraternizing with the Bordeaux Wine Merchants—The Judge’s Wild Scheme—I Get Him up a Dinner—General Bosquet—The Pau Hunt—The Frenchmen Wear Beautiful Pink Coats but their Horses Wont Jump—Only the General Took the Ditch.
After you have been a little while in Europe you are seized with a desire to have a house of your own, to enjoy home comforts. Your loss of individuality comes over you. In Paris you feel particularly lost, and as this feeling increased on me I resolved to go to Pau, take a house, and winter there. The Duchess of Hamilton had abandoned the idea of passing the winter in Pau, so that many lovely residences were seeking tenants. For eight hundred dollars a year I hired a beautiful villa, looking on the Pyrénées, directly opposite the Pic du Midi d’Ossau, with lovely grounds filled with camelia bushes, and I then felt that I had all a man could desire—a perfect home made to one’s hand, a climate where the wind never blows hard enough, even in winter, to stir a leaf on the trees, the best cooks in the world, and where people appeared to live but to eat well and sleep. A country of beautiful women; the peasantry a mixture of Spanish and French blood; the climate so soft and genial as to take away all harshness or roughness from their faces—rich Titian-like women, with fine coloring and superb figures—what more could man desire? I was, I may say, a pioneer American there.
A member of a distinguished New York family, who had been our Secretary of Legation at Madrid, had preceded me; he had a lovely English wife, was the master of the hounds, and gave me a cordial reception. I lived there two winters, with a luxury I have never since enjoyed, and literally for nothing, comparing one’s expenses there to living in New York. The desire to entertain took possession of me and I gratified it; such dinners and such wines! I ran down to Bordeaux, made friends with all the wine fraternity there, tasted and criticised, and wormed myself into the good graces of the owners of those enormous Bordeaux caves, learned there for the first time what claret was, and how impossible it was to drink out of Bordeaux, what a Bordeaux connoisseur would call a perfect wine. There I learned how to give dinners; to esteem and value the Coq de Bruyère of the Pyrénées and the Pie de Mars (squab Magpie).
Pau was filled with sick English people. I was one of the few sound men physically in the place. I dashed into society with a vim. My Louisiana friend, the Judge, followed me there, and I had my hands full in establishing him socially. Shrewd, and immensely clever, he came to me one day and said, “My friend, I am going to make a name for myself in this place; wait and you will see.” Some little distance from Pau, there was a large tract of worthless land, utterly valueless, called Les Landes. Shepherds on stilts tended a few sheep on it. The judge at once had an interview with the Prêfet of the Basses Pyrénées (an officer similar to the governor of one of our States), and assured him of the feasibility of reclaiming all this land and making fine cotton fields of it. This scheme, wonderful to relate, was seized upon with avidity by the Prêfet, and my friend, the Judge, was asked to submit his views. This was all he wanted. Of course he never perfected his plans for such work. The Prêfet, however, was at once his friend and admirer, and he was made the distinguished and sought-after stranger of that winter. He then came to me to get up a dinner for him, to be given to his newly acquired friend, which he charged me to make the most brilliant and superb dinner ever given in that place. I well remember his order to the florist; “Furnish me for my table such a display of flowers as you would provide for your Emperor; spare no expense.” I telegraphed to Paris and exhausted all my resources to give him what he wished. When his guests were all assembled in his salon, my friend could not remember who was to take in who to dinner; so with great coolness he walked over to me, and to distract the attention of his assembled guests, said, in a loud voice, “Your horses, I am told, have run away, upset your carriage, and killed the coachman.” Instantly the French people sprang up, exclaiming, “What! what is it! is it possible!” while the Judge, in a low voice, whispered, “Tell me quick who is to take in Madame J., and who goes in with Count B.?” I told him, when he quietly said, “All made up, my boy, let them believe it.” The dinner was a success, such a success that I resolved to give a ball myself on the arrival from Paris of one of our New York merchant princes, to whom I was much indebted.
The French papers gave a glowing account of this ball, and I was fairly launched into the French society of the Basses Pyrénées. It is hard to convince an old business man, who has had large experience and amassed a fortune, that any one can do anything in his line better than himself. Therefore, when I gave my merchant prince exquisite Bordeaux wines that I knew were incomparable, and extolled them, he quietly replied:
“Why, my young friend, these wines are all from the house of Barton & Guestier. Now, you must know, that the house of Johnson can alone furnish what I class as the best clarets. I have for forty years been in correspondence with that house, and will guarantee to produce here in Pau, from them, clarets and sauternes better than any your house of Barton & Guestier can send you.” I took him up at once, and the wager was a fine dinner of twenty covers. All I had to do was to write the above statement to Mr. Guestier, who at once sent me his own butler to serve the wines, and sent with him a “Haut Brion” and a Chateau Latour of 1848. As he termed it, mise en bouteille tout à fait speciale hors de ligne, whose smoothness, bouquet, and flavor surpassed anything I had ever dreamt of tasting. My merchant prince with his Johnson wines was beaten out of sight, and so mortified was he that the day after the dinner he sent me as a present all the wines Johnson had sent him.
The hunt was then really the feature of Pau life, for those who could not follow in the saddle would, after attending the meet, take to the roads and see the best of the run. General Bosquet, returning then to Pau, his native city, was fêted by both French and English. He had so distinguished himself in the Crimean War that all regarded him as a great hero. The English particularly wanted to express their admiration of him, so they asked him to appear with his friends at the next Meet, and follow in the hunt, promising him rare sport and a good run after a bagged fox. To do him honor, the French, to a man, ordered new hunting suits, all of them turned out in “pink,” and being in force made indeed a great show.
My Irish doctor was by my side, in great good humor, and a wicked twinkle in his eye. Turning to me he said:
“You will soon see some fun; not one of these Frenchmen can take that jump; it is a rasper. Not a man of them will clear that bank and ditch.”
I smiled at this, and felt that to the end of time it would always be English against French. It was cruel; but men should not pretend to ride after hounds when they cannot take the jumps.
“Look at those chaps,” he said, “in spotless pink; not a man among them who can jump a horse to any purpose.”
They were the nobility of the Basses Pyrénées, a splendid, gallant set of fellows; all prepared “to do or die.” The master of the hounds raised his hat, the fox was turned out of the bag; he was given ten minutes’ law; then the huntsman with his pack dashed away, clearing both bank and ditch. It was the severest jump they could find in any part of that