T. E. Lawrence to his family

Cordes, near Albi

Sunday [9 August]

In the end I took 4 photos. one of which is meant to be pretty (the only one so far this tour: all the others are of technical points in architecture). I will not write anything more of Carcassonne. It is as impossible to describe it as it would be to illustrate it: I have some 40 photos. which will prove what I say. I got your p.c.'s there, a letter from Father and a p.c. from the Broads, all well there evidently, but bathing is not for that climate: it is for this: convinced I am.

From Carcassonne I rode to Toulouse, through torrents of rain, coming down not in mere stair-rods, but in scaffold-poles: all the roads were an inch deep in a few minutes, the vines and other crops are a total loss; the fruit had doubled in price, everything is flooded, or rather was. They certainly can teach us something in the way of thunder-storms, though the local papers refer to it as a storm of unparalleled violence, a never to be forgotten deluge. I was drenched in a minute (it lasted 30) and dried in an hour, for the sun came out afterwards with burning force, and the wind was furiously against. It took me just seven hours to reach Toulouse (70 miles). Toulouse is a horrid modern manufacturing town, with only one old church, but that a beauty. I fancy I sent you a card of it from Rabastens, where I slept. As it is in the Department of Tarn, which is "ultima Thule" to the Gauls, I don't know if it will ever arrive.

Next day (yesterday) I rode to Albi, where the Cathedral disappointed me, inside: the sculptures of which I had heard so much were Renaissance, and certainly second class: there were however yards and yards of them; 'tis wonderful they managed to do so many. The whole place is covered with paintings, (Italian xv. Cent.) and is generally tawdry. Outside it is marvellous, and reminded me much of a beer-barrel, or a huge series of beer-barrels, piled round a blanc-mange mould. It is all of rose-coloured brick, and one of the most strikingly original buildings extant. I shall never forget the enormous swollen bulk of the apse, rising quite suddenly out of the little market square. The people, even the houses near it, looked infinitesimal, like a colony of ants. The architecture round Toulouse is most peculiar, all of red brick, which looks queer to our eyes, though the brick in half a dozen centuries takes on a most exquisite tint. There are never pillars or arches in the naves: they are vaulted in one spring, and are really only huge halls. They are then plastered and painted. Windows are almost lacking, and even the smallest is shuttered and heavily stained to keep out the sunlight. In the dwelling houses they never open the shutters, and the doorways are closed all day by a curtain. Everything shuts up between 11.30 and 2.30, at that time I pass through village after village without meeting a soul. I have however forgotten what a mosquito bites like, since I left the marshes of the coast. Aigues-Mortes is celebrated for the ague in the winter: it is such that no decent people will live there after September: for miles the country is covered with stagnant swamps, so that not even the little black wild oxen (which they hunt on horseback) can exist. At the same time there are swarms of strange animals, flamingos, bustards, even the so-called ibis: of this latter I roused two. They come to France for the summer, and return to Egypt for the winter.

This place Cordes is the most picturesque town I have come across in my travels. It lies in Tarn , which is a district cut off from the rest of France, by dialect, geographically, ethnologically, and even climatically. The people are utterly unlike French, and cannot speak it. (I can't make head or tail of the patois, and a Frenchman can only understand a little: it takes 3 years to learn, my French landlord told me). The country is one of rolling hills, and poplar filled valleys, with fearful gorges where the Tarn goes through the mountains. A boat can descend most of it, if the boatman knows the rocks, and they say it is one of the wildest trips in the world. The cliffs (often 400-700 feet high) in places approach within 60 feet at the top (there are even natural bridges) and the river at the bottom tears along at 8 miles in the hour; in semidarkness. This sort of thing, with waterfalls and rapids, extends for 60 miles. The villages (no towns) are of course all lighted by electric light, though generally smaller than Begbroke. Hotels only exist occasionally, and at each I am the only guest; (apparently I have to bear the whole expenses of the house as well: I am ruined in pocket and in health too if this continues); the food is weird and wonderful, (omelette aux pommes de terre yesterday and other articles unspecified and indescribable), the bread tastes like... can you imagine leather soaked in brine, and then boiled till soft: with iron crust, and a flavour like a brandy-snap? It takes me a considerable mental and physical effort to "degust" a mouthful: milk has not been heard of lately, butter has a smell like cream cheese, but a taste like Gruyère, (thank goodness for the Roquefort, 'tis the district, and its strength would make palatable (or indiscoverable) a cesspool), and in fact a dinner for me is like an expedition into Spain, Naples, the North and Antarctic regions, Central Australia, Japan etc.: one never had such thrills, such nerve-shattering expectation and such galvanic shocks for 3 francs before: let anyone feeling dull or blasé come to a Tarnais Hotel for a week: there is no fruit, the water tastes highly suspicious, and there is nothing else but wine: I was feeling desperate (soda water is unheard of), when I met, first a plantation of melons, and second a pastry shop, bristling with choux à la crême. Still such diet has its disadvantages, on the scores of price and wholesomeness. I hope to be out of the department tomorrow. My water-drinking is the subject of general amazement, by the way, far beyond what I had thought possible: the hotel people after I have asked for it bring me everything else they have in the place first, and I heard last night the servants talking to the people next door, telling them there was an Englishman there with a strange hat, who drank water, and liked it better than wine! The neighbours flatly told them it was a blague, humbug, and the patron had to be called upon to convince them. People never seem to have thought of water as a drink, they regard it much as we would regard oil or a hair-wash: useful, certainly, but for cookery, or for cleaning: nothing else. Certainly the Tarn is a district to be revisited, but on foot: it is too hilly for cycling. You may wonder what it was that brought me here: 'twas partly the learning it was the most backward district in Western Europe, and partly because of its picturesqueness. I wish you could get an idea of this place Cordes: I have not talent to give one. Imagine a valley, formed by the space between four ranges of hills: in the middle of this place a hill, about as steep as Mont-St. Michel, and a matter of 400 feet high. Cover this with houses, all over, and you have a fair idea of the general view. The house-roofs are almost flat, and of red semicircular tiles:-

Inside, the streets (two streets paved) are so steep that one can only maintain one's balance with great difficulty, and a strange horse cannot mount. Join these streets by narrow alleys of flights of broken, irregular stairs alternating with tiny squares of gravel about one house (say 20 feet long) each way. In places throw archways over the streets, or make them run under tunnels for 50 yards, put in 8 or 10 fortified gates of the xv. and xvi cents. and fairly complete town walls, built over and round with a tangled ram-shackle mass of hovels and ruined cottages. Let every other house be of stone, and of the xiv. cent, with charming Flamboyant windows of two lights, divided by exquisitely carved pillars and shapely capitals of a bunch of vine leaves or other naturalistic foliage. Half these windows are blocked up with a mass of broken tiles and mortar; over the others are worm-eaten shutters with splendid iron-work, and hinges of the Renaissance time. Between the windows are string courses, often carved with grotesques of animals with human heads, hunting scenes etc. The roofs project a couple of feet, with gargoyles grinning down into the middle of the tiny streets, only a matter of two yards wide. These houses are usually of three storeys, and are mixed up with modern houses (modern for Cordes that is), perhaps of the xvi century with transomed and mullioned windows, and square-headed or ogee doorways. The market hall is xiv, the church xv. cent. Some of the houses are in ruins, others tottering. There are only 3 straight ones in the town (these are now the Mairie), all the rest lean backwards and forwards, or are shored up by a stable, or buttress thrown across the streets to a similarly affected house: and so two sick men support each other. Some are of brick, plastered, or have been plastered, for it has usually fallen away, revealing blocked doors and windows, niches, and sculptured blocks built into the later work. All the wood-work is old and weather-warped, much of it quaintly carved, with all sorts of dilapidations. The streets are all grass-grown, and full of piles of dirt and rubbish: there are no drains, hardly even surface ones, but the sun quickly dries a little damp, and in winter the rains will carry all down to the bottom of the hill. Every wall is hung with grass and creepers, all the house windows are full of flowers, growing in rusty tin cans or earthenware jugs, broken and worn with use, and with half their brilliant glaze worn off. Each house has its little trellis of vines, and each is a subject or half a dozen for a painter. The colouring is simply unequalled. One could stay here for months, painting every day, supposing one escaped fevers or other trifles of that sort. A visit here is a glimpse back three centuries, to the time of hand-looms (weaving is the great industry here; wouldn't Mr. Binney like it!) and threshing floors. A roller drawn by oxen and a winnowing fan do the works in this respect. I could go on with the Tarn all night, but must stop now. All is going very well (fewer tyre troubles, 34 punctures to date however, in 1400 miles), and nothing wrong, except financially. I hope you are also enjoying yourself, though in a less strenuous manner: this has been a very hard, but a very instructive tour. I expect Will will have reached you when this gets there. Hope he got on well; As for the future, about Friday I should reach Castillon and Saintes a matter of 8 days later, but 'tis all a bad district for hills. From Saintes 8 days more or indeed a few less should put me in Loches, I expect it will be: Redon is improbable, since I don't suppose Scroggs will come. Write a p.c. to each place and hope for the best: I may possibly get there. For the present, ta-ta.

NED

By the way, I go from here to Najac, and so to Cahors: thence to Fumel, Montpazier, and down the river Lot to Castillon. From Castillon to Perigueux - Limoges, Angouleme, Saintes, Niort, Poitiers. This might be useful to you, if you can find a map.

When you [return] will you send timetables of boats from Granville and St. Malo from September 4th to the day you leave? Also fare.