Mont Saint Michel and Chartres

(1904)

Preface

Some old Elizabethan play or poem contains the lines:--

. . . Who reads me, when I am ashes,
Is my son in wishes . . . . . . . .

The relationship, between reader and writer, of son and father, may
have existed in Queen Elizabeth's time, but is much too close to be
true for ours. The utmost that any writer could hope of his readers
now is that they should consent to regard themselves as nephews, and
even then he would expect only a more or less civil refusal from
most of them. Indeed, if he had reached a certain age, he would have
observed that nephews, as a social class, no longer read at all, and
that there is only one familiar instance recorded of a nephew who
read his uncle. The exception tends rather to support the rule,
since it needed a Macaulay to produce, and two volumes to record it.
Finally, the metre does not permit it. One may not say: "Who reads
me, when I am ashes, is my nephew in wishes."

The same objections do not apply to the word "niece." The change
restores the verse, and, to a very great degree, the fact. Nieces
have been known to read in early youth, and in some cases may have
read their uncles. The relationship, too, is convenient and easy,
capable of being anything or nothing, at the will of either party,
like a Mohammedan or Polynesian or American marriage. No valid
objection can be offered to this choice in the verse. Niece let it
be!

The following lines, then, are written for nieces, or for those who
are willing, for those, to be nieces in wish. For convenience of
travel in France, where hotels, in out-of-the-way places, are
sometimes wanting in space as well as luxury, the nieces shall count
as one only. As many more may come as like, but one niece is enough
for the uncle to talk to, and one niece is much more likely than two
to listen. One niece is also more likely than two to carry a kodak
and take interest in it, since she has nothing else, except her
uncle, to interest her, and instances occur when she takes interest
neither in the uncle nor in the journey. One cannot assume, even in
a niece, too emotional a nature, but one may assume a kodak.

The party, then, with such variations of detail as may suit its
tastes, has sailed from New York, let us say, early in June for an
entire summer in France. One pleasant June morning it has landed at
Cherbourg or Havre and takes the train across Normandy to Pontorson,
where, with the evening light, the tourists drive along the
chaussee, over the sands or through the tide, till they stop at
Madame Poulard's famous hotel within the Gate of the Mount.

The uncle talks:--

~

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