So you're going to France! : And if I were going with you these are the things I'd invite you to do

Front matter

J |

Better than a Guidebook

$0 YOURE GOING TO FRANCE!

Preface

As this fourth book of our series goes to press, I am just back from another long sojourn in France, bringing with me the corrected proofs of this book and a greater-thanever ardor for France as a vacation ground. Whether one goes in search of scenic beauty or of sports, of ‘cures’ or of comforts, of stimulus or relaxation, nowhere on earth, that I know, can he find greater variety of pleasantness, of interest, and of pastime than he can find in France. And if there is any country where he can get more for his money, I am not acquainted with it.

I heard some complaints about costs; but they were nearly all ‘laid’ when those making them were asked to compare the prices they paid in France with those paid for a similar grade of article or service at’ home.

For instance: when I landed in New York I was charged, by the hotel I went to, $6.50 for transferring a steamer trunk and sundry pieces of hand baggage from a 14th Street pier to a hotel near the Grand Central. My taxi was a dollar more. In a Paris hotel of like grade, I might have - been charged as much as $2.50, but it would almost certainly have been less. A station bus for all luggage and three passengers would not have cost that much. A traveller who was charged one hundred and seventy-five francs for bringing a steamer trunk and some hand baggage to his hotel in Paris, would want redress from the War Department. I paid sixteen dollars for.a night’s lodging in two very small rooms — a double and a single — though it was August, and the hotel was half empty. Moreover, it is not a vill PREFACE de luxe hotel. When I paid ten dollars for far more luxurious quarters in the most expensive hotel on the Riviera (not in ‘high season’ but in a season much less ‘off’ than August in New York), I felt that it was a very ‘stiff’ price. I paid nearly eleven dollars that night in New York for a very scant and simple dinner for three, of a quality that seemed to us most inferior. For that amount of money the three of us could have dined royally at a place like Foyot’s, in Paris. Our usual check in a hotel reputed among the most expensive there, averaged for a dinner of three courses (and exquisite ones!) under seven dollars.

These may seem prosaic details wherewith to preface a book on a beautiful and storied land like France. But I, . who am in constant, daily contact with intending travellers, know how vital a part of planning trips abroad is played by the question of finance, and how many persons have got the idea that travel is very dear, now, because it is less cheap than it used to be. Nearly everybody who goes has a fixed time to stay, and has decided upon a certain amount of money as the most that his trip ought to cost him. His problem, then, is how to get the most and best of what he wants, for his determined expenditure of time and money; and to know the relative expensiveness of different countries, as well as their charms.

The tendency in much of the old-fashioned planning which I call ‘rubber-stamp’ stuff, wherein itineraries in Europe are almost as much alike as tacks in a package or matches in a box, is to keep people on railway trains for a great deal more time than the travellers suspect they are letting themselves in for; to concentrate on cities (although thousands of travellers love towns and villages and country far better) ; to overrate the average avidity for art museums and cathedrals, and include a surfeit of things too similar; and otherwise to make of European travel a rather terrible

PREFACE 1X ordeal — anything but restful and recreative for a fresh season’s work at home. And also a very costly ordeal.

This sort of thing is foisted upon thousands of travellers overseas, because the persons who ‘do the foisting’ don’t know what else there is to see; and if they did know (‘out of a book’ as many of them only know Europe) they would not know how to help the individual traveller select those places most likely to give him his heart’s desire.

It is my very great happiness that these little books have helped thousands of travellers to know, for themselves, what they want to see, and how to see it. I give direct, personal counsel to hundreds, who appeal to me, who are my clients; but the books reach tens of thousands whom I must counsel in these pages if I am to help them at all.

Everybody who goes abroad, goes to France; but probably ninety percent of them go only across France, to and from Paris. No one could love Paris more than I do; it isn’t humanly possible! But Paris is a very cosmopolitan city — the capital of the world! — and you must needs know it very well indeed to get into the essentially French phases of its varied life.

Of those comparatively few travellers who wander any further afield from Paris than on an excursion to Fontainebleau, most of them follow one or two beaten paths which are likewise covered by a procession of excursion cars. Not — until you have left the main-travelled char-d-banc routes in any country can you hope to know the real flavor of that country as it has seasoned the books you love best. Not until you go apart from an excursion, can you hope to be welcomed as a pilgrim and not as a ‘tripper.’

France is a perfect country for ‘exploration.’ Her treasures are infinitely varied, and inexhaustible; the more you wander among them, the more you want to wander, on and on. I cannot think of any kind of delight she does not offer x PREFACE

— except, perhaps, jungle-hunting or seal-fishing, or beachcombing.

Living in France, for the resident and for the traveller, is not cheap, in the sense that it used to be; but it is still enough less expensive than it is almost everywhere else, to attract and hold a very great many vacationists from other European countries. If these and other travellers knew more places to go to in France, they would find sojourn there far cheaper still.

The difficulty at present is that the foreigner in France concentrates too much. There is a certain kind of visitor who must be at Deauville in August and wouldn’t be ‘caught’ there in June or July or September. When Deau-: ville, which must make its year’s living in one month (not because it wishes to, but because that is the only time it can capture any business) charges him more than he thinks he ought to pay, he ‘hollers.’ But if he is abroad in January or February, he must, somehow or other, be packed into one of the short-season hotels of the Riviera, one of the superde-luxe palaces which are empty by April first (when the Riviera is at its loveliest) and boarded up by May first to stay so until December. He probably complains at the price he pays. But he could have the Riviera at the same time, in the same place, in equal or greater comfort, at a third the price, if he would choose a hotel which is not chosen by all the world’s biggest spenders; or he could even have that hotel at a fair price if he would go to it in April instead of January, February, or March.

When we stop competing with one another for the same hotel in the same spot, at the same moment, and then flocking off to start the competition elsewhere, there will be less ground even than there is now for talk of ‘high prices.’ If. the places where ‘inflation’ exists were the only desirable places to be, or if they were desirable only during a very

PREFACE XI brief season, it would be different. But France is full of delectable places. Most of them have superior hotel accommodations. If your fancy runs to de luxe hotels but your budget does not support them, you have only to choose, for your stay at them, a moment just before the high season is on, or just after it is over. You will miss the fashion parade, but you'll get everything else, and much of it better than you’d have it in the jam. And if hotels which are excellent but not ‘seasonal’ nor fashionable, content you, then you may go and come entirely at your wish, and pay less than you could reasonably expect to pay for such living in a world where everything has got unconscionably dear.

And here let me say something to those persons who seem to think that bathrooms are scarce in France. They are not! They are numerous, and surprisingly elegant. One scarcely finds a hotel room without up-to-date open plumbing and a plentiful supply of hot and cold running water. And rooms with private bathrooms are no longer hard to get, even in little provincial hotels where one could scarcely expect to find them.

Beds are almost without exception luxurious. Rooms are almost invariably scrupulously clean. Here and there one finds a ‘frowsy,’ ill-kept hotel; but they are the exception. Here and there one finds the food a discredit to this land of marvellous eating and drinking; but the average is very high, and the best is magnificent. The national association of hotel-keepers is under supremely earnest and intelligent direction, and much is being done to meet the wishes of France’s visitors. If you have any suggestions to make, I'll be glad to get them, and to lay them before the persons who may do most to get them acted upon.

A good many of the hotel men know me, and know what I am trying to do to shake travel out of a rut, to make it more indwidual, and to establish more personal contacts xil PREFACE between travellers abroad and the people they are visiting. Many of those hotel men are keenly interested in this effort. Talk to your hotel-manager, when you can. (There is every probability that he speaks English, if you do not speak French.) Frequently he is a mine of information on his vicinity — not on ‘the sights’ alone, but on the people, on their problems, on industry, and on other things which will greatly help you to comprehend the life about you as you journey. The head porter always has a lot of information, always speaks English, and it is his business to tell you things you want to know. But he seldom has five consecutive minutes to give any one patron, and he tends to become brief and conventionalized — necessarily so. Managers are often busy and can’t be seen for conversational purposes. But at least you can try, here and there. The manager who comes in contact with his guests and learns their viewpoint while giving in exchange for it his own, is developing a new type of hotel in France (and in Italy) and I heartily believe that he is making an important contribution toward that transformation of travel from ‘tripping’ into a fine humanistic art, which is so necessary not only to the individual traveller’s joy but to that increased understanding between nations which the diplomats can only talk about but you and I must ‘make come true.’

There is, I now realize, more of ‘the power of solidarity’ — of numbers and of like-mindedness — in ‘us’ (that is, in you and me) than in any other element travelling in Europe nowadays. What with your numerical strength (there are thousands of you always ‘on the wing’ over there).and your high intelligence, and your right-mindedness, I look to see you accomplish many desirable things, as the years go by. I pin more expectation to you than to the Geneva Conference!

The greatest ‘liability’ I see to good-will on earth and to the development of travel as a fine art and a high delight, is

PREFACE xill the ill-prepared traveller trying to digest ‘a dose of sights’ and comprehending nothing at all of the people he’s living among.

I believe that We (not Lindy’s ‘We,’ but our ‘We’!) are accomplishing some things which should make us happy, and are going to accomplish many more. And of course it is no whit less true in travel than in any other thing in life, that those who concern themselves not only with what they’re getting but with what they’re giving, get the most!

Wherever you make yourself felt as a person (a friendly person) and not as a mere tourist, I’m sure you are not only doubling your own pleasure, but making things pleasanter for others who come after you. Certainly in France your out-reaching friendliness will seldom (if ever) meet with anything but a prompt manifestation of the same spirit.

I hope with all my heart that this little book (although it has had to exclude so much that I would have loved to in- - clude in it) may serve to lead you on many happy adventures.

Some day, when ‘we’ have become a closer corporation (we’re a big enough one, now!) I hope to have our own headquarters in Paris and our representatives everywhere. But that means more than paying rent! It means training and maintaining an organization to do the ‘so-different’ thing, as we do it at Chicago and in New York. And that ° will take time, as well as money.

Meanwhile, I must avail myself (for your service) of the best existing organization which is small enough to give close, personal attention, large enough to have strong connections through Europe, old enough to have demonstrated its ability and reliability, and not old enough to have grown stereotyped in its methods.

I use, for those clients who come to me or write to me when their plans are a-making, any one of a score of foreign xIV PREFACE services which seems to me best to meet their requirements. But to choose one from amongst them to which I might direct you who need service over there, is not easy.

It isn’t reasonable to expect that in a big office where you may cash your checks, ship your trunk, and buy a ticket to Versailles, you could also get the individualized: attention and the first-hand, intimate information that an office cangive which serves few clients on larger orders. Nor is it reasonable to expect that a man who can help you select just those parts of the Pyrénées that will give you most satisfaction in the time you have to spend there, should be available to tell you how long it takes to go to Fontainebleau, which any office-boy could tell you.

I’d do all my ‘small shopping’ in what might be called the ‘department stores’ of travel. Most of the big ones are good, though they tend to be crowded — to make you wait a long time and get a hurried service when your turn comes. When you want counsel on a tour (motor or rail) planned for you to meet your special tastes and purposes and take care of all your needs en route, seek it at the office of Fraser- McLean, Elysée Building, 56 rue du Faubourg St.- Honoré (a little west of rue Royale); or, call the office, tell what you want, and it may be that one of the staff can go to see you. Always, if you say, ‘I am a Clara Laughlin reader,’ it will greatly simplify and facilitate matters for you. For they are accustomed to executing my orders, and have much of my information on file. Moreover, they must keep some record of what they do for my readers, so I may know how satisfactory this arrangement is for you. If it doesn’t give you what you want, we must try to do it some other way.

I have tried to think what could be done to facilitate the labors of those who prefer to make all their own hotel reservations after they get to Europe and as they journey

PREFACE XV along. The writing of letters is certainly a burden to the traveller. Sometimes he writes too few details when requesting reservations. Sometimes he scatters his details through a letter so they are hard to pick out.

To save labor and make things easy for the traveller and for the hotel proprietor or clerk (who may not read English handwriting too readily), I have prepared and printed some cards whereon you need only check off your requirements (one minute’s work) and write your name and arrival-date. These are for any and all hotels, whichever you may choose; you write in the hotel name, and your own. A dozen or a score of these cards will be supplied you, gratis, from my Chicago or New York office, and will take up little or no room in your purse or portfolio.

All I ask of you is that in using them you regard a hotel reservation for which you have applied as a sort of contract between you and the hotel, to the extent that if you cannot use it, you will cancel it by letter or otherwise as far in advance of the time specified as is possible, and if you are delayed in your schedule, you will promptly let the manager know. A great deal of difficulty arises out of reservations being carelessly treated by the persons who asked for them. Those who do this make travel harder for themselves and for others who come after them.

I believe this simple device will save travellers a great - deal of labor and of annoyance; and that if it is used, in the main, by responsible, considerate persons, who keep their word and ‘play fair,’ it will come — in time — to be a real help in securing for its users something of the same respect and assurance of good treatment which is accorded now to those whose reservations are made by a travel agency of prestige and perfect credit.

A request for a dozen or a score of these cards will bring them to you, gratis.

CurcaGco, August 20, 1927 Or Tete a.

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