ID: 2625
Manuscript Diary of a Camping Trip in France in 1926
HARTLEY, A.W.
Category: Ephemera
Place/Publisher/Date:
London No Publisher.
Description:
Manuscript diary; contemporary white pictorial buckram lettered in black; 16 by 12.5 cm. Signed by A.W. Hartley on the title page. holiday in France in the summer of 1926. Starting from Paris, the
10th Finchley Scout Group heads to the Pyrenees for a series of mountain hikes, eventually reaching the Pics d'Enfer on the Spanish border: "no less than twenty lakes could be seen with water of a wonderful colour, and with ice floes on their surface." Upon their return to Paris, the troop visits "the grave of the Unknown Warrior," where they lay a wreath in memory of the French scouts killed in the Great War, and unknowingly commit a diplomatic faux pas, marching through the Arc de Triomphe while flying the Union Jack. (This was the first time since the Napoleonic era that a foreign flag had passed under the arch, with the exception of the German occupation.) The scouts ascend the Eiffel Tower and wander conspicuously around the nightclubs of Montmartre, with comic results: "We caused an immediate sensation. . . . We received a number of invitations out to dinner and on to a place called 'Le Rat Mort' (Dead Rat), all of which were politely declined in our best French." Visits to Versailles and Notre-Dame followed. "probably the best camp we have ever had." The text is illustrated with line drawings and a series of landscapes rendered in a sepia wash, and well as a panoramic water colour of the Pyrenees. There is also a cartoon of the scouts going to Montmartre in a
taxi. A lovely survival. Fine just a little toning to the end papers.
Price £750.00
