Something to Declare: Essays on France and French Culture by Julian Barnes Page B

same result in almost all the monuments of the period, especially where the Spanish-Netherlands influence has added a last touch of profusion”), and seals it with a memorable metaphor: “Expiring Gothic changed its outline as often as the dying dolphin is supposed to change his colours—every ornament suggests a convulsion in stone.” And whereas James moves lightly on to lunch, Wharton moves seriously on to a comparison with the mourning sculptures on the tomb of Jean-sans-Peur in Dijon, which she values highly (and which James had found of “limited interest”). A leery mind might hazard that despite her true reverence for James, she is out to pull architectural rank; while also ensuring that her freshness of tone impresses him—and us—with her modernity.
    James occasionally made fond mock of Edith Wharton's travel-fever, portraying her as a bossy bird of prey swooping down on the more sedentary and bearing them off “on india-rubber wings.” But they were clearly excellent and devoted compagnons de voyage. James reported that on the motor-flight he had “almost the time of my life,” and looking back he gave out gratified exhalations. “Ah, the lovely rivers and the inveterately glorious grub.” “Ah, the good food and good manners and good looks everywhere!” For her part, Edith Wharton declared that “Never was there a more admirable travelling companion, more ready to enjoy and unready to find fault—never bored, never disappointed, and never (need I say?) missing any of the little fine touches of sensation that enrich the moments of the really good traveller.” No sooner had they got back to Paris than she whisked him away for another brief flight. And in April 1908 James responded enthusiastically to the idea of meeting in Amiens with the suggestion of “a little tournée, under motor-goggles, in Normandy.” He had a specific and powerful destination in mind: “& oh, will you take me to Croisset, by Rouen, as a pendant to Nohant?” It would indeed have been a fitting pendant—first Sand's house, then the vestiges of Flaubert's—but the plan fell victim to the complications of Wharton's emotional life.
    One final motor trip should, however, be mentioned. Shortly after the publication of A Motor-Flight Through France the two novelists were driving from Rye to Windsor when James suggested making a detour to Box Hill to visit the aged George Meredith. Wharton was at first unwilling, as she judged herself unlikely to shine in such impromptu circumstances; then she agreed to the route-change but insisted upon staying in the car at Box Hill. Determinedly, James overcame her objections and took her with him into the house. Meredith, terminally ill, deeply deaf, and “stat-uesquely enthroned in a Bath chair,” had great difficulty cracking the identity of this unknown woman who had turned up unexpectedly with Henry James. It was, she later recalled, “a laborious busi ness, and agonizing to me, as the room rang again and again with my unintelligible name.” Eventually, Meredith twigged; whereupon he picked up the book lying open at his elbow, and held it out with a smile. “I read the title, and the blood rushed over me like fire. It was my own Motor-Flight Through France, then lately published; and he had not known I was to be brought to see him, and he had actually been reading my book when I came in!”

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Tour de France 2000

    “To the memory of Tom Simpson, Olympic medallist, World champion, British sporting ambassador, died 13th July (Tour de France 1967)”
    In early July, as the first Tour de France of the new millennium meandered joustingly down the flat western side of the country, I visited a small cycling museum in the mid-Wales spa town of Llan-drindod Wells. Halfway round this testament to curatorial obsession, among the velocipedes and the 1896 Crypto Front Wheel Drivers, the passionate arrangements of cable clips and repair-outfit tins, there is a small display window