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The British visit France in countless numbers each year. According to a recent estimate they own half a million homes there. Yet – though the numbers now are unprecedented – they are following in the footsteps of generations of their countrymen. Some had gone to work, in the earlier days to establish textile mills and foundries, or to build railways. Many went for the fun, to Paris where ‘the social arts are carried to perfection’, where few cared how raffishly you behaved. And to Monte Carlo, Deauville and Biarritz – especially favoured by Edward VII – to gamble. They spent lavishly, revelling in the purchasing power of the pound, giving continued life to the old legend of the British as milords, one which despite contrary evidence survived well into the twentieth century. In fact, in the impoverished French provinces, a modest quantity of pounds went a long way, showed up well and permitted a standard of living which would have been out of the question in Britain. Other British immigrants, Beau Brummell at the start of the nineteenth century, Oscar Wilde at the end, are examples, fled Britain to escape creditors or social disgrace. Then there was the matter of health. The hope of a cure – often from tuberculosis – the need to escape the winter chills and fogs at home drove many to the spas in the Pyrenees around Pau, to Savoy, and to the South of France, where they formed (increasingly along with Americans) virtually self-contained communities, warmer and more picturesque versions of Cheltenham and Bournemouth. Naturally there were always those who enjoyed travelling for its own sake, perhaps, as in the case of John Ruskin, to savour the glories of French architecture, or of French cooking..
The revolutions in travelling brought about, one after the other, by steamships, railways, motoring, flying and the mass tourist market are a constant theme. Equally so are the relations between British and French, what they thought of each other, the contrasts in temperament and behaviour. Books, periodicals and newspapers, letters and journals, supply background. (Not least with descriptions by such as Dickens, Thackeray and Maugham.) For the relationship between the British communities and their neighbours the reports of British consuls are revealing and sometimes hilarious. Very important are French sources in terms of memoirs, departmental archives and studies by French historians.
The book follows a generally chronological pattern, ending with a study of the British in France now and a comparison of past and present.
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