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Updated: May 6, 2025
The notion of here reprinting my notes of Alsatian travel was suggested by a recent French work A travers l'Alsace en flanant, from the pen of M. Andre Hallays. This delightful writer had already published several volumes dealing with various French provinces, more especially from an archaeological point of view.
Let us hope, however, that some via media may be found, and that if not recovering its lost privilege, the passionately coveted French name, as a federal state Alsace and Lorraine may become independent and prosperous. For a comprehensive study of Alsace and its characteristics, alike social, artistic and intellectual, readers must go to M. Hallays' volume.
Throughout M. Hallays' volume he acknowledges the courtesy of German officials, a fact to which I had borne testimony when first journalizing my own experiences. Certain aspects of enforced Germanization can but afflict all outsiders. There is firstly that obtrusive militarism from which we cannot for a moment escape. Again, a no less false note strikes us in matters aesthetic.
Les Noellets of Rene Bazin, M. Maurice Barres' impassioned series, Les Bastions de l'Est, enjoy immense popularity, and within the last few months have appeared two volumes which fully confirm the views of their forerunners M. Hallays' impressions of many wayfarings and Apres quarante ans by M. Jules Claretie, the versatile, brilliant and much respected administrator-general of the Comedie Francaise.
I cannot undertake to particularize, I only note in my pages those instances that occur by the way. And the conviction that we are here penetrating a little world hitherto unknown to us, such novelty being revealed in every stroll and chat, lends extraordinary interest to our peregrination." It is especially an artistic Alsace that M. Hallays reveals to us.
Taste has been slowly developed, artistic culture is of no mushroom growth. Alsace formed the highroad between Italy and Flanders. In M. Hallays' words, already during the Renaissance, aesthetic Alsace blended the lessons of north and south, her genius was a product of good sense, experience and a feeling of proportion.
Had not Louis Bonaparte written the work entitled "Pauperism"? In the intimate circles of the Elysée Count Potocki was a Republican and Count d'Orsay was a Liberal; Louis Bonaparte said to Potocki, "I am a man of the Democracy," and to D'Orsay, "I am a man of Liberty." The Marquis du Hallays opposed the coup d'état, while the Marquise du Hallays was in its favor.
Intending tourists must take both M. Hallays' volume and Maurice Barres' Au Service d'Allemagne for recent accounts of this holiday resort. The splendid natural features remain intact. The way from Barr lies through prosperous villages, enriched by manufactories, yet abounding in pastoral graces.
The Marquise de Hallays is thirty-six years old, and looks her age. Fine eyes, not much hair, an ugly mouth, white skin, a shapely neck, charming arms, the prettiest little hands in the world, admirable shoulders. At present she is separated from M. de Hallays. She has had eight children, the first seven by her husband. She was married fifteen years ago.
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