Christmas short story
Humiliation
The Spectator's short story for the holidays
What is the essential nature of the Dordogne? It rises in the Massif Central and flows west to join the Garonne near Bordeaux. The vegetation is northern; the light and air recall more southern climes. Travelling this meandering cusp of northern and southern Europe is a true delight, and surprises await the enterprising motorist at every turn.
The next morning I rose early and caught the local bus to Brive, where the sheepish desk-clerk had told me there was a good bookshop. There I bought three different guidebooks, all in French, that dealt with the Dordogne department. I had an abominable lunch (people forget how easy it is to eat badly in France) and caught the bus back to Ste. Radegonde. I read my guidebooks on the way, plotting my course from Ste. Radegonde down the Dordogne river to Bordeaux. What need of a noisy and noisome motor car, several nights in dreary provincial hotels, the bother of going up byways to seek out allegedly charming villages? These paths have been trod before — send your imagination, Hill, on your behalf, steered by your French guide-books. Stay in your mean room, enjoy your apéritif at the Riche and your simple, hearty meals in the Couderc, have your fee and expenses cabled to the post office. You deserve a paid holiday. If the English Motorist is that tight-fisted, what more can it expect?
From the arid, rugged high causses and sombre gorges the river descends and civilisation begins as it starts to wind through flat water meadows, walnut orchards and dense woods. Its character changes as we enter the Périgord Noir, so called because of the truffles found there, those knobbled, dark, delectable parasites — not to everyone’s taste, so muskily redolent of the earth — that grow on the roots of sturdy oaks.
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