Visit to Paris

Few boys can have packed more new experiences into the first week of the Easter holiday than the thirty-one boys who went to Paris. They were across the Channel before many of their friends at school had reached their homes; and when they returned a week later they felt they had been away for months, and their minds were filled with memories of France. Most had never been abroad before, while some did not even know their London. Yet the boy who stepped round the corner at Victoria for his first glimpse of the Underground was soon at home in the Paris Metro; and he was better acquainted with Notre Dame than with Westminster Abbey.

The programme was a strenuous one, as the diary of the visit will show.

TUESDAY, 5TH APRIL. Excitement at the very start. An urgent call from British Railways brings the party rushing to the station; it had been booked on an earlier train than expected. All goes well. since the train leaves late; but there is another change of plan at Victoria. There are strikes at Dieppe and we are diverted via Folkestone-Boulogne. We are initiated into the vicissitudes of foreign travel and are no longer surprised when "Boulogne" turns out to be Calais Maritime.

After some delay we find our arrival is not unexpected and the journey to Paris proceeds smoothly. We notice the strangeness of the landscape, the many derelict factories, and the want of paint. Some boys try to calculate the speed of the train with watch and map. Mr. Le Tocq points out the abundance of mistletoe on the trees. (Mr. Craven, ignorant townsman, had taken it for crows' nests.)

We arrive at our hotel in the evening, eat a welcome meal, and settle down for the night. The journey has taken about 17 hours.

WEDNESDAY. In the morning by Metro to the Eiffel Tower for a general view of Paris. In the afternoon we explore the Ile de la Cite, the Sainte-Chapelle and Notre Dame. We climb the towers and see the huge bell, "Marie Therese". It is still swung by human agency, by men driving four great pedals while clinging perilously to a horizontal bar. Cinema in the evening.

THURSDAY. To the Louvre. All too brief a visit for many of the boys. Some prefer the copy of "Mona Lisa" to the original. One youngster thinks she "looks as though she has just pulled a fast one". We are joined at lunch by Oldroyd's pen-friend from Rouen, with his father and brother. In the afternoon to the 'Manufacture des Gobelins to see the craftsmen at work on their looms, making Gobelins, Beauvais. and La Savonnerie tapestries. They weave about a square metre of this beautiful work in the course of a year.

FRIDAY. An excursion by coach to Fontainebleau provides a welcome rest for tired feet. We pass the aerodrome at Orly, and

the artists' studios at Barbizon, and are shown the spot where "The Angelus" was painted. Then to a beauty-spot in the forest, the Chaos d' Aspremont, where most boys would be content to remain for the rest of the day chasing lizards among the rocks. We visit the magnificent Palace after lunch, admire the Gobelins tapestries in their proper setting, then sit in the sun watching the huge carp in the pond. To the cinema in the evening, where we hear the Marx brothers wisecracking in French !

SATURDAY. We devote the morning to shopping. In the afternoon a strenuous round of visits : the Pantheon, the Jardin du Luxembourg, and Les Invalides.

SUNDAY. Holy Communion at the Embassy Church, filled to overflowing. A hasty breakfast in a nearby cafe before keeping our appointment at the Chamber of Deputies at 10 a.m. We are shown the Chamber, the Lobbies, the study and apartments of the Speaker. A very interesting visit, and the boys fire questions at the guide. We spend the afternoon in the Bois de Boulogne. Some go rowing on the lake.

MONDAY. By coach to Versailles via the Renault works, Sevres, and the racing stud of M. Boussac. We visit the Palace, admire the formal French gardens, but have no time to see the Trianon. We spend the afternoon down the river in a "bateau-mouche". A cinema show again in the evening.

TUESDAY. We return home via Dieppe-Newhaven. A very rough crossing amid unforgettable scenes of misery. Mr. Le Tocq and Wheatley are flung headlong by a breaking wave, and several passengers are injured. We are glad to disembark and pursue our way home. We arrive in York in the small hours of the morning.

So we spent our eight days' holiday. And any time during that period you might have seen us moving along the boulevards, Mr. Craven up in front with his map, Mr. Le Tocq's tall figure serenely dominating the main body, and those active sheepdogs, Osborne and Cobham, barking at the heels of the laggards behind. It was, on the whole, a manageable flock. The sensible behaviour of all the party and the sense of responsibility of the older members helped the visit to run very smoothly.

The party, however, was particularly indebted to Mr. Le Tocq, whose careful staff work and wise guidance assured from the beginning the success of the holiday. We were fortunate, too, in finding a comfortable hotel and an excellent restaurant, with an understanding and good-humoured "garcon".

Besides providing an enjoyable holiday, the visit was of undoubted educational value. 'Some were eager to air their French, while others were perhaps rather slow to do so. But all were bound to make some additions to their "passive", if not to their "active", vocabulary. And 36

then to absorb the sights and sounds of a foreign city, to break the ice of insularity and take one's first steps in foreign travel is always an education in itself. One boy is reported to have said he had discovered that monitors are, after all, human. Perhaps that alone was worth going all the way to Paris to learn.

Below we give some brief impressions by boys who were of the party.

FONTAINEBLEAU

We set off on our trip to Fontainebleau at 10 o'clock on a beautiful morning. Our first stop was at the little village of Barbizon. The guide, who had travelled with us in the 'bus, informed us, in tones reminiscent of Mr. Max Bacon, that this was the birthplace of the famous Barbizon school of painters. We visited the little grocer's shop where such artists as Corot, Rousseau, and Millet had decorated, with their paintings, even the panels on the cupboard doors.

We moved on through the vast Forest of Fontainebleau, and after lunching in the town, went to visit the Palace. Of all the many beautiful buildings we had visited, none could compare with its magnificence and its splendour.

It is, of course, in an excellent state of preservation, and everything is lavish to an extreme. We were fortunate in having a guide with an amazing wealth of knowledge about the Palace, and as we passed from room to room, it was astonishing to listen to his flow of information on everything from clocks to carpets.

Each room in the huge palace is devoted to some particular royal personage, and is richly decorated with the various furnishings of his or her period. In addition, the monograms of the owners of the room are to be found worked into the motifs on the woodwork, carpets, and tapestries.

Every room has the air of being lived in, and, indeed, it would have caused little surprise had, say, Napoleon been sitting at the Abdication Table surrounded by his generals.

I cannot use adequate superlatives to describe the magnificent furnishings and their craftsmanship. The colouring of the beautiful hand-worked tapestries and carpets would put Hollywood's "glorious technicolor" in the shade. Every ceiling is different, and is always a little more magnificent than the last. Each is devoted to one of the Roman deities and is accordingly decorated with symbolic paintings. The woodwork is some of the finest of its kind, and serves as yet another proof that the craftsmanship in this age of mass production can never even compare with that of our predecessors.

I shall always treasure the memory of that day, when I travelled back through the centuries to the lavishness that was, and is, the Palace of Fontainebleau.

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D. J. HILTON.