by Susie Kelly
As the nobility turned the corner out of view, they were followed by rough peasants in animals skins; a juggler dressed all in black, throwing knives – the crowd gasped when one flew out of control and clattered to the ground; some plump bourgeoisie; yeomanry, and soldiers dragging canons.
A five-minute lull followed. It seemed to be all over, and again the crowd moved hesitantly. We were preparing to cycle away when a Dutch band, magnificent in black and scarlet, with cockaded helmets came into view followed by the Court of Roland – the mounted knights in chain mail and tunics, beating leopard-skin kettle drums and clashing cymbals. A brown bear glared at the crowd from a rustic cage towed by a team of five heavy horses, and an anxious lady ran down the street urging everybody to stand well back – the horses were dangerous, we may be crushed. Nobody cared; we all wanted to be as close as we could to the characters and creatures passing by. For those few moments we were all living in the Middle Ages.
“Well, that’s it. Time to go,” said Terry, putting away his camera. But, just as we thought we really had seen everything, who should appear but Marianne herself, symbol of the French Republic, leading the French postal services represented by a romantic old diligence of the Messageries Générales, followed by the Russian Czar’s Courier, a troika drawn by three superb white horses abreast and laden with heavy wooden trunks and boxes. Bringing up the rear were the riders and stagecoach of Wells Fargo.
From the world of entertainment came cheerful girls in taffeta dresses with leg-of-mutton sleeves and pert, ribboned hats; a music-hall singer went past on a float, singing one of my favourite old-time songs On n’a pas tous les jours vingt ans, a beautiful little story about a young Parisian seamstress celebrating her 20th birthday. She and her workmates are enjoying biscuits and a little drop of port in the workroom, when the boss gives the girls the day off work, and in fine spring weather they go out to a little place in the country, beside the river, to lunch, and later dance to a gramophone with their beaux. After all, says the chorus, it’s not every day that you’re twenty! It’s a special day that only comes once in your life, so you must make the most of it and enjoy it to the full. Sung nasally, to an accompanying accordion, it’s a French classic from the 1930s.
Glowing in a bright red sparkling suit, with his famous blonde hair, the mega-iconic Claude François – or rather an impersonator – glided past on a moving stage singing, inevitably, “Comme d’Habitude”– his legendary composition of unrequited love that would morph into “My Way” and become one of the greatest international hits of all time. He, poor man, met a premature and very horrid death when he decided to change a light bulb while standing in a bath. Don’t do that.
After a fleet of immaculately restored vintage cars came Charlie Chaplin, directing a film from a truck. Then Elvis in his bejewelled, skin-tight white suit waving to the crowd from an outrageously long American convertible. Finally, the very end, the very last celebrity, sitting high on the cream leather upholstery of a chauffeur-driven maroon 1970’s Rolls Royce Corniche, the beautiful, the adorable, the sexy, the one and only – Marilyn Monroe, with her glorious blonde hair, scarlet lipstick, wearing her famous white dress, displaying her famous cleavage, and seductively blowing kisses from behind a fan.
All afternoon the parade had travelled through the streets to continuous cheers and applause that could be heard far into the distance. It had been an unmissable event, faultlessly organised and a joy to witness the enthusiasm of both the participants and the spectators, and we were particularly impressed by the impeccable behaviour of the small children and horses for whom the crowds and the intense heat must have been a real ordeal.
Two hours later than intended we prepared to set off for our next destination, Dormans, twenty-five miles away by the shortest route. A small crowd had collected around my bike, and we asked them which direction we should take out of town to put us en route for Dormans. Faces lit up with glee.
“You’re going to Dormans? Tonight? Now?”
“Yes.”
Our new friends smiled knowingly at each other, and a little jingly bell went off in my head. What did they know that we didn’t? Had there been an outbreak of bubonic plague in Dormans? A nuclear strike? An earthquake? We hadn’t seen any news of the world outside our own for nearly a fortnight.
“Is there something bad in Dormans?” I asked.
Everybody laughed. “No – not at all! It’s just getting there that’s the problem!”
Had the road melted in the heat? Was it blocked by a dreadful accident?
“C’est la Montagne de Reims. It’s uphill all the way! Very hard!”
“Ah,” I replied confidently, “but I have my electric bike, and my husband has electric legs!”
They all laughed again, and somebody said: “I hope they last! Good luck.”
Everyone had a different idea as to which was the best route; they all spoke simultaneously and within a minute were arguing amongst themselves. A luxuriant, beautifully groomed grey moustache with a rotund gentleman attached to it called for order, and outlined his idea of the simplest route. The rest of the audience conferred briefly, nodding and murmuring, before agreeing with him, and reassuring us that we could rely upon his directions absolutely.
We all shook hands.
“Bon courage” they chorused. It translates in English as “Good luck – you’re going to need it!”
“Vive la France!” we called.
“Allez les rosbifs!” they shouted back.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
No More Champagne
“Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war.” Otto von Bismarck
“There’s no such thing as a crowded battlefield. Battlefields are lonely places.” Alfred M Gray
WE pedalled hard in the direction we thought the moustache had given us. After we’d been cycling for 20 minutes up an incline, and covered three miles, we had still seen no sign to Dormans. I pulled up and said to Terry: “Are you sure we’re going the right way?”
“Not really,” he answered. “I thought you had understood the route.”
“So did I, but I’m beginning to wonder.”
We went in to a filling station and asked the cashier if Dormans lay ahead of us.
No, we were going in the opposite direction, he said. We were several miles north-east of Reims, when we should be heading south-west. What we needed to do was to follow the road for about two and a half miles back the way we had come, and turn left at the junction signposted to Soissons. Then we’d see the signs to Dormans. “But,” he added cheerfully, “it’s a very hard ride. I’m a cyclist myself, and I can tell you it’s hard. It’s uphill all the way!” I had noticed that people always showed a gentle schadenfreude if they were able to advise that the road ahead was going to be particularly arduous. There was no malice in it, though; in fact we accepted it as a sign of camaraderie.
We backtracked until we found the Dormans sign, and started the most gruelling ride we had so far experienced. Maybe “proper” cyclists will scorn our efforts. Frequently, as we pushed and puffed up hills, scrawny people sped past effortlessly, on racing bikes with no appurtenances, yodelling or whirling their arms in the air. But as amateurs we thought we were making a fairly doughty stab at the challenge of cycling in this demanding part of the world with our heavy loads and in the intense heat.
I had imagined the Montagne de Reims as no more than a slight bump on an otherwise flat plain. But no, when you cycle upon and around it, it is worthy of its title. Like a stack of pancakes, the mountain is made up of layers of chalk, clay, silt and fossilised marine skeletons, formed 90 million years ago and left behind when the Paris basin subsided 70 million years later, when the seas that covered the area retreated. Beneath the plateau’s dense forests of pine and broad-leafed trees, the sides of the mountain are home to vineyards that benefit from sunshine and the porous soil that retains moisture and aids drainage.
For a moment the world went black. Maybe it was the thought or maybe my reserves really were all used up, because with a graceless sideways movement, I toppled off the bike onto the verge, having had just sufficient foresight to make sure I was near enough to do so, and not onto the melting tarmac.
Being almost stationary when I went over I was quite unhurt, despite landing on sunburnt grass that was stiff and spiky, the ground as hard as stone, and part of the handlebar digging into my ribs. It felt wonderful, euphoric, to be still, not to be pedalling. I felt I could curl up into a ball like a hedgehog and lie there for hours, quite happily. Terry had been some way ahead, and turning back to see me lying beside the road, ran back down. I called out: “I’m OK. I’m fine.”
We sat on the roadside trying to restore our energy, and once he had done so Terry cycled my machine up to the summit of the hill, then came back for his. I tottered slowly up the last few hundred yards to the cool and peaceful Italian cemetery on the crest of the Mont de Bligny.
Even on a brilliant day this is a mournful place with its sad cypress trees casting their shadows across a sea of more than 3,000 stark white crosses representing the Italians who had died here during the so-called Great War. Among them lie two of Garibaldi’s grandsons, members of the regiment that bears his name, who fought as volunteers with the French Foreign Legion until Italy officially entered the war as an ally of France, in 1915. On the opposite side of the road to the cemetery, like the backdrop for a tragic opera, is a poignant monument: a Roman road bordered by cypress trees, leading to a symbolic broken Roman column.
It was tempting to sit all night on this lonely hilltop in the sombre shade. Once more in the saddle we were soon flying downhill past the smaller British cemetery just outside the village of Chambrecy. Our speed generated a welcome cooling breeze that refreshed the spirit and drove us on to our destination, the slumbering little town of Dormans.
From here onwards through the Marne valley, for the most part the landscape would be remarkable for its battlefields rather than its vineyards.
The campsite at Dormans is beautifully situated on the banks of the Marne river, facing the town and looking up at the church, beside the bridge that for centuries has been a strategic site with a recurrent history of death and rebirth. The first wooden bridge was destroyed during the Wars of Religion to hinder the Protestant troops before the Battle of Dormans. The replacement was destroyed in 1918, rebuilt, destroyed in 1940, and replaced with a wooden passageway, until the current robust new suspension bridge was built in 1951.
As we arrived at the site, a couple of hours before the advertised closing time, the gardienne was locking up; she hesitated fractionally before driving away and leaving us to sort ourselves out. That meant that we didn’t have any access to electricity, and the battery of my bike was completely depleted after today’s efforts, so the indefatigable Terry went off to find a kind soul to recharge it.
The campsite was almost full to capacity, and amongst the camping cars and tents there were also many static caravans with built-on extensions, awnings and patios, flowery gardens, ponds and shrubs, stone animals and gnomes, owned by town dwellers who came here for weekends. A group of twenty weekend regulars were enjoying an al fresco supper together at a long trestle table.
Terry set up the tent while I crumpled gratefully onto the cool grass, then we went to shower. Although the showers were primitive the water was hot and welcoming on weary bodies, and afterwards we sat in the balmy evening air listening to the noises of the night. We had noticed that the very last sound before darkness fell was always the song of a blackbird. The other birds gradually fizzled out, but the blackbird sang on, and it was to its beautiful notes that we fell asleep most nights.
It was a peaceful Monday morning in Dormans, a small town of 3,000 inhabitants whose largest employer is the manufacturer of the labels for the ubiquitous Vache Qui Rit (Laughing Cow) processed cheese. Chatting ladies stood in the sunshine with shopping baskets over their arms, while their menfolk sat at pavement tables reading L’Equipe or murmuring to each other over cups of coffee or little glasses of rouge. In the bar everybody smiled and wished us good day, and the lady who served our croissants in the bakery remarked that it was going to be another very hot day, and asked whether we planned to visit the memorial? I replied that we certainly did; we had heard a great deal about it.
“Ah yes. It makes you think. It really makes you think,” she said, handing over the croissants and a few coins in change.
A lady beside me nodded wisely: “Everybody should see the memorial. Then there wouldn’t be any more wars.”
The Tourist Office in Dormans is rather grandly situated in a handsome symmetrical château with a witches’ hat turret at each side, in a verdant park at the end of a sweeping tree-lined drive. While I went in to find out what I could about Dormans, Terry entertained himself watching the frogs leaping in the pond on the front lawn and trying to capture on film a snake lacing its way silently through the plants at the water’s edge.
We’ve visited a great number of tourist offices in France. Many have been helpful and have gone out of their way to give us information; some have been helpful within their limits; and one or two have been politely disinterested and have merely pointed to stacks of brochures in answer to requests for information. But I had never met a girl like the one in the Tourist Office of Dormans. She bubbled with enthusiasm. She was proud of Dormans and happy to talk about the town and its history for as long as I was happy to listen. I always find it such a pleasure to meet somebody who doesn’t just do their job, but loves it. She walked up and down the racks of brochures plucking out any that she thought would be of interest, and remembering a leaflet that was in a drawer somewhere. She searched until she found it, waving it triumphantly. Soon I had a healthy fistful of paper containing nearly all the information anybody could possibly want to know about the town.
Only one thing was missing: the royal captives had stopped there on their way back to Paris, but there was no mention in any of the leaflets or brochures of where they had stayed. I asked about this, and her face lit up.
“Yes! That’s right – they did come to Dormans, and they spent the night in a hotel here.”
“Is it possible to visit the hotel – to see where they actually stayed?”
She grimaced. “Unfortunately, it’s a private house now. But I can tell you,” she smiled, “that it is the house just up the road from the Post Office. At least you can see the outside.”
We went later to look at it, an unremarkable building bearing a very discreet plaque that reads:
‘Dans cet immeuble alors Hotel du Louvre le 21 Juin 1791 Louis XVI et la Famille Royale ont séjourné après leur arrestation à Varennes.’ [In this building, known at the time as the Hotel du Louvre, Louis XVI and the royal family stayed after their capture at Varennes.]
With the Royal family back in the hands of their captors, their lives came back into the public domain, and we were able to find more information about them and their ongoing trials.
After they had been chased out of Châlons their next stop was at Epernay, where they received a most hostile reception. The mayor told Louis that he should think himself lucky that the town had allowed a fugitive King entry. Marie-Thérèse, the thirteen-year-old daughter of Marie-Antoinette and Louis, remembered the occasion in her memoirs:
‘We reached Épernay at th
ree in the afternoon. It was there that my father ran the greatest danger of the whole journey. Imagine the courtyard of the hotel where we were to get out filled with angry people armed with pikes, who surrounded the carriage in such crowds that it could not enter the courtyard. We were therefore absolutely obliged to leave it outside and cross that courtyard on foot amid the hoots of these people who said openly they wished to kill us. Of all the awful moments I have known, this was one of those which struck me most, and the horrible impression of it will never leave me.
Entering the house at last, they made us eat a miserable meal. In spite of all the threats of the ferocious populace to massacre every one, they did not go farther and we started from Épernay about six in the evening.’
The weather then as now was very hot, and the marching mob stirred the dry roads into a dust bath. Inside their carriage the captives were tired, travel-stained and dishevelled. It must have been particularly frightening and physically hard on a little six-year-old boy who had been brought up in comfort.
Just to the east of Dormans the cavalcade’s progress was temporarily halted by the arrival of three members of the National Assembly, who had come to escort them back to Paris and ensure their safety. The three men squeezed themselves into the carriage, where the occupants found themselves jammed uncomfortably against each other. The Queen impressed the new arrivals by asking for a guarantee for the safety, not of herself and her family, but for the members of their retinue.
Louis had recorded in his diary events since their departure from Varennes as prisoners:
‘Wednesday 22, left Varennes at five or six in the morning, had déjeuner at Sainte-Menehould, arrive at ten in the evening at Châlons, supped there and slept at the old Intendant’s office.
