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Patrick Young
Remoteness and Availability
Though this picturesque formula of representation rendered regional otherness
more identifiable and available to bourgeois consumers, that availability was
always a qualified one. This is evident even in the picturesque village motif
described above: instantly recognizable as an iconic representation of rural France,
and composed of certain obligatory visual features, the picturesque village also
suggests a sort of inwardness and resistance. Whether in tourist posters, or in
postcards from the period, these villages are usually represented as turned in upon
themselves, the houses almost a “rampart” against the outside world. 46 The
consumer appropriation of these images of locality was premised upon the
guarantee of their (at least partial) remove, upon preserving some notion of
unattainability or resistance to easy possession. This dynamic was essential to
tourist representation of locality, and indeed to tourist representation as a whole;
for insisting upon varying degrees of accessibility was necessary to maintaining
hierarchies of tourist experience, and thus of cultural value and social distinction.
It is in the Touring Club’s literary representations of the provinces, and of travel
to them, that this dynamic expresses itself most clearly. After the Sites and
Monuments collection, the Club’s preferred medium for representing the provinces
was the traveler’s account, published in the pages of the Revue Mensuelle. From
the early 1890s, the TCF published accounts of members’ excursions – usually
those performed on bicycle at the beginning, though later those on foot and in auto
as well – detailing conditions encountered and attractions viewed, and dwelling
on the technical details of roads, transport and hotels. By the turn of the century,
these accounts were becoming more elaborate, appearing in series in the Revue
Mensuelle, under the headings of “One Voyage a Month” and “La France Inconnue,”
and aiming at rendering a more or less systematic coverage of the lesserknown
areas of the country, from the perspective of the informed tourist-viewer.
As such, they forged something of a middle course between an earlier tradition
of literary travel writing grounded in reflection and personal response, and the
rational-bureaucratic and consumerist orientation of the modern tourist guidebook.
47 The areas visited were often not yet fully, or even partially, outfitted for
tourism, but were assumed to possess qualities which might potentially make them
attractions for significant numbers of tourists. The narratives therefore unfold as
explorations, as encounters with the unknown but ultimately very profoundly
knowable. “La France inconnue” always offers a sort of resistance – whether it is
a historic remoteness, a paucity of hotels or navigable roadways, inclement
weather (though, interestingly, never a suspicion of outsiders) – but one which
gradually breaks down before the dogged efforts of the TCF traveler. The honest
accounting of local conditions was, of course, essential to the work of improvement,
calling attention to necessary changes; but it also was offered as part of the
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