Sixty Miles from England
It was quite an irony that I finished reading Simona's account of the English expat community in Dieppe on the day the UK voted to leave the EU. My family were essentially economic migrants (why are the British always 'expat' and other nationalities 'migrant'?) choosing to live in France until the financial regulations no longer worked to their benefit. I feel sad that such communities, which clearly enriched 19th century Dieppe as much as they enrich our country today, may soon be purely consigned to historical accounts such as this.
But back to the book... Sixty Miles from England chronicles the town I feel i have come to know well through Pigtails and Pernod - Dieppe. It describes the relationship between the English and the small Normandy town, the contribution of the community to its growing prosperity, to the building of its railway, to its tourist trade and to the its population. From the first commercial sailings from Brighton that brought the early English visitors to the town, we learn how the regularity of a channel crossing allowed the growth of the tourist trade, economic prosperity (English workers building the railway connecting Dieppe with Paris) and the establishment of the English community.
Simona's account of the Normandy town begins in 1814, with the arrival of two painters (it seems Dieppe has long held an attraction for artists) Benjamin Robert Haydon and David Wilkie, sailing from Brighton less than a month after Napoleon's abdication. France had been 'forbidden territory, the French people a source of mingled desire and dread' during their youth and their trip was seen as a daring adventure. The contrast between the Brighton, a smart and elegant seaside resort even then, and the 'dark, old, snuffy' Dieppe peopled, or so it seemed, by women (most men away working in the fishing trade in Newfoundland). These fishwives were nothing like the women they kept company with in England - 'half-undressed...legs exposed to the calf...battered witchlike gossips'. They didn't stay in the town long,
A Dieppoise servant 'The women of the Pays de Caux...is a peculiar mixture of sweetness and obstinacy'
The tourist trade soon began to flourish, however, with a regular stream of British painters, antiquarians and sightseers. The descriptions of the hours-long sea crossing, then the need to sit outside the harbour for yet hours more until the tide was sufficiently high, make me very relieved for the ease of modern travel. Dieppe soon became more than just a route through to Paris and other, more fashionable French towns, and itself become a destination. The Casino, which featured so prominently in Pigtails, opened to the public in its first incarnation in 1822 (there remains a Casino to this day; rebuilt again or possibly several times since the final version described in Pigtails with a continued decline in its beauty. It is now, quite frankly, ugly, judging by the photographs online) and visits from the great and good of English and French society cemented Dieppe's position as a tourist destination.
Simona continues to chronicle the town and the community throughout the next century, how the English changed from just short-term visitors to a permanent resident community, The trappings of daily life are described - the English church (or churches, and their underhand methods of gaining the biggest congregation), English schools, the position of vice Consul (and the campaign that it should be a paid position rather than carried out just for the love of the job). We also meet some surprising extras - one of the local schoolmistresses, Miss Shackleton, is the sister of polar explorer Ernest.
It could have been quite a dry read, but the descriptions and portrayals of the majors players in Dieppe's story saved it from this fate. They were real, rounded and funny. As I flicked through the book before starting to read it in earnest I thought these type of descriptions would be limited to the later stages of the book, when Simona would have been able to get personal reflection on the characters from her grandmother, Ginny, who lived in Dieppe for so many years. But that wasn't the case; they were just as clearly drawn for those 100 years earlier. The Foreign Office and Dieppe archive papers at that time that Simona used as her main sources were clearly more honest, more gossipy and less driven by political discretion than today! Take the description of 'vain little bachelor' Charles Parker Rhodes, for example. In 1866 he makes his first appearance, desperate to ingratiate himself with the elderly Consul Featherstonhaugh, in the hope of getting the position himself on Featherstonhaugh's death or retirement.
“He uses inflated language and assumes to himself an importance in the workings of the consulate altogether absurd and unjustified”
The later chapters are filled with stories of the writers and artists that found Dieppe so attractive: Aubrey Beardsley, Oscar Wilde, Max Beerbohm, Edgar Degas and, of course, Walter Sickert. Feuds and friendships are explored, and eventually I find out a little more about my own family. My great-great-great Grandmother (the original Simona) makes an appearance, at the time living with her two unmarried daughters (Eliza and Lilias, Johnny's mother, who had died by the time Pigtails is set), with Ginny and Ginga and Simona's mother Phil, a child at the time, living nearby. We witness the the romance and marriage of Eliza and Frederick Fairbanks, at that time mostly interested in his music, and the arrival of Letty and Kathleen. For me, these were unsurprisingly the best chapters of the book, as they filled in some of the back story to Pigtails and my family history. A final family-related treat was spotting that the maps of Dieppe in the end papers were drawn by Ferdie, Simona's stepfather.
The next book I'll be reading is In the Absence of the Emperor; this is the book I've been dreading, as it is so far from what I would choose to read for pleasure. Sixty Miles from England has lessened that dread somewhat, as if Simona made this book entertaining by focusing on the people and personalities rather than just the historical facts, then maybe the next one won't be so heavy going!
One of the endpapers drawn by Ferdie Field, Simona's stepfather