The Sun.
London, England, 1863-09-10 00:00:00

Boulogne Nearly Fifty Years Ago.

Boulogne in 1815, iorty-eight well-sounded years
ago, was a most insignificant and unsavoury
fishing-village. The upper town, which is the
ancient and better one, was not very much different
ln
gstreets
from what it is now ; but the lower town consisted
chi€fly of the Grande Rue, de I'Ecu, the Rue tant
cohuhptlse, oiflls straggling
irregularlyig
Peed tent FaY
with
fishermen'se ' nd
a built, smutty without and smoky within. There
was then scarcely what could be called a harbour ;
a
there was no pier whatever. There was no cus-
tom-house, but a wretched shed, exposed to the
four winds of heaven, into which the few passen-
gers who arrived by sailing•boats were quickly
huddled to be gruffly examined. Boats then rarely
departed from Boulogne more than once a week,
and the day of departure was never certain. I
have known passage boats wait for passengers, or
for a wind, three or four days together—nay, occa-
sionally a week. Everybody then travelled by
way of Calais; and even at Calais, in winter -time,
the passengers were often not more than a dozen
and seldom above five and twenty. In the principal
port of debarkation in France you were then dragged
into the harbour by haggard old poissardes, har-
nessed with ropes to their work, who carried your
luggage to the hotels in wicker fish-baskets, sus-
pended from their half-broken backs. Boulogne,
like Calais, was then lighted by tallow candles, let
down by a cord and pulley from either side of the
street. In Calais, in those days, it was, with these
rude appliances, just like darkness visible; whereas
at Boulogne, on what is now called the Port, the
Quai de la Douane, the Rue tent Perd tant Paye,
you could not grope your way without a lantern.
There were in 1815 but three decent hotels in Bou-
logne—the Hotel d'Angleterre, in the Rue de l'Ecu ;
the Lion d'Or, in the same street ; and the Hotel de
France. Now there are, at least, twenty hotels,
great and small,of which a dozen are very tolerable
and four or five excellent. In the early days of
Which I speak, bedrooms at Boulogne were charged
one franc, thirty sous, and two francs a-night,
according to the size and floor in which you were
placed. Breakfasts, plain, with coffee and an egg
or two, were from twenty -five to thirty sous, and
dinner at the tables d'hote, with vial ordinaire, from
two francs, ten sous, to three francs. Now bedrooms
are two, three, four, and five francs, according to the
size and floor; breakfasts are two and three francs,
and four francs, and dinner at the tables d'hOte
from three and a half to four, five, and six francs.
Yet the accomodation is but a degree better, and
the cookery is by no means so good as it was eight-
and-forty, forty, or thirty years ago. There is not
the cream-ewer for a jug, and the pie-dish for a
basin in your bedroom, that existed in my youth.
The bedrooms, too, have now a strip of
carpet, in-
stead of being sanded and tiled, or wooded and
frette as the parquet in the olden time ; but the
bedding
and mattresses are no better (they were
then excellent) than after the Peace of Paris ; and
the silk
and damask curtains, where such exist, are
not so rich as their we
• • re in 1815. The class of English
Tainting Boulogne in the ten years from 1815 to 1825
was highly aristocratic,
though tant soft pets demi
rep in the feminine, and blackleg in the masculine
gender; but, though not so aristocratic and
fashionable now as in a past generation, the Eng-
lish sojourning at Boulognerespectablein than at any former
time. It is true there are still a few scores of Pro-
visional Committee-men left there, the remnant of
those of 1845 and 1846, and a few
St cores of black-
legs and lavanters, who
have
failed
o pay up their
losses at Tattersall's ; but what
70 or 80 black
sheep among an English population of 7,000
or
8,000, and a general population
of about 32,000 ?
The number of English at Boulogne,
after the peace
of 1815, scarcely amounted to 800, and I
doubt whether it amounted to 1,000 •
in 1823;
but then, among these eight hundred or a
thousand, full a twentieth were scions of the
peerage, being either honourables or titular
Iriah or Scotch peers. Now the peerage and
the scions of aristocracy are much less fast
livers than in the days of George 111. and George
IV., when there was scarcely a young man of rank
or fashion that did not gamble at the clubs, on the
turf, at cock-fights, or on the prize-ring. In the
moral character, therefore, though not in the rtln,
of its visitorkßoulogne has improved,