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La Vieille France as Object of Bourgeois Desire
into the countryside, along dusty roads and through unknown territory, the Touring
Club delegate represented him or herself as something of an explorer, searching
for the deepest sources of French national identity. 55 In these terms, the voyage to
the provinces was one which unfolded not simply in space, but in time as well, as
an encounter with the full depth and enduring weight of the French past. If the
tourist industry cast tourism in the provinces as a trip back in time, into la vieille
France, it was nevertheless a trip in which one never lost one’s bearings. For
tourism presented a past which always existed in a relationship of continuity with
the present. One tourist’s account of a voyage in the north of France characterized
the journey as an encounter with the past, albeit one which brought into relief
France’s modernity. The traveler is led, by his guide, to the essential regional
attractions, through “a bunch of small towns, of villages, of tiny bourgs,” stopping
before “churches, occupied château, feudal ruins,” and searching for the “originality”
of what he was seeing. 56 As he moves about in the area, he is most struck by
the juxtaposition of a rich local past and an industrial present, the two coexisting
in a surprising harmony. A present of “magnificent constructions and immense
factories” sat comfortably alongside old belfries, and the histoire émotionante of
the old pays. 57
The harmony this tourist finds “surprising” would have seemed less so to tourist
organizers. For his description corroborates what was an essential French national
myth, one which decisively informed the latter’s representations of regional
landscapes, cultures, and histories: the myth of a past which was uniquely present,
of a passé proche (a close past), in a country in which tradition and modernity
always existed in comfortable continuity. Even at its most “other,” the regional
past was always presented as essentially continuous with a modern, and always
implicitly national present. One guide, for example, characterized the history of
Picardy as one in which the region consistently “defended its invaded soil,” served
the glory of the great French monarchy, contributed to the formation of the French
language and, finally, “proved [its] most ardent patriotism when patriotism
absorbed all other sentiments, just as the nation absorbed all the old provinces . . .
the bravery so characteristic of the Picardians has never served any cause other
than the national one.” 58 This is, to put it mildly, a rather stylised version of the
past, though an exemplary one in its insistence that a more or less continuous
French nationhood expressed itself even in regional difference. The characterization
of these Picardians as a “race,” and a fiercely proud one, always repelling
outside incursions, could easily be conflated to a national feature, as could other
regional depictions which made of regional distinctiveness a point of identification.
It was at their most different that these regions testified most compellingly to
the strength of the French national principle. This is certainly one inflection of the
myth of “la France éternelle,” of the deep and ancient (indeed even prehistoric)
roots of the French nation, and the inevitability of French nationhood irrespective
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