Travel Essays · Chapter
At Landrecies explained
The travelers arrive in Landrecies, where they unexpectedly become local celebrities.
What happens
The travelers arrive in Landrecies, where they unexpectedly become local celebrities. They are invited to sup with the Juge de Paix, enjoy a convivial evening of wine and conversation, and spend a restful day in the garrison town, reflecting on the fortifications, the drum, and the nature of heroism.
Themes in this chapter
Human Connection and Community
The travelers are warmly received by the Judge and other locals, enjoying a convivial supper that highlights the grace of French hospitality.
Art and the Artistic Life
The drum is mused upon as an instrument of noise and martial art, with a reflection on its ironic material and its power to stir heroism.
Characters to notice
- The Cigarette
Grows sleepy after the café and returns to the hotel; expounds the Poor Laws at the Judge's supper.
- The Arethusa
Also grows sleepy and returns to the hotel with the Cigarette.
- The Judge
The Juge de Paix who invites the travelers to supper; a bachelor with a collection of brass warming-pans.
Key passages
“The wine was excellent. When we made the Judge our compliments upon a bottle, 'I do not give it you as my worst,' said he. I wonder when Englishmen will learn these hospitable graces.”
The wine was superb, and when we praised a bottle, the Judge modestly replied that it wasn't his worst. The author muses that Englishmen could learn from such gracious hospitality.
Reflects on the charm of French hospitality and the art of making ordinary moments ornamental.
“Generally a man is never more uselessly employed than when he is at this trick of bastinadoing asses' hide. We know what effect it has in life, and how your dull ass will not mend his pace with beating. But in this state of mummy and melancholy survival of itself, when the hollow skin reverberates to the drummer's wrist, and each dub-a-dub goes direct to a man's heart, and puts madness there, and that disposition of the pulses which we, in our big way of talking, nickname Heroism”
Beating a donkey's hide is usually pointless, as donkeys don't speed up from blows. Yet when that same skin becomes a drum, its sound stirs the heart and inspires what we grandly call heroism.
A meditation on the ironic transformation of a donkey's skin from a tool of mundane punishment to a symbol of martial glory.