Everybody was questioned and thoroughly searched. Faraday had his hat removed by an official, and it was patted and prodded and inspected, and laid carefully on the deck. Then he was frisked, and his pockets and clothes inspected. He had to take off his shoes so that the officials could ensure there were no secret messages stuffed into them. He was found to be clean – they all were – and they were allowed to pass. But the letters they had written as they waited in the harbour were confiscated, and they were firmly told that they were not permitted to write home about their arrival and reception in France. If they were caught doing so, they risked arrest as spies.
The order was given to unload the party’s carriage and luggage, and
immediately the crew of Frenchmen pounced on them and conveyed them in every direction and by the most awkward and irregular means into the barge alongside, and this with such an appearance of hurry and bustle, such an air of business and importance and yet so ineffectually that sometimes nine or ten men would be round a thing of a hundred pounds weight, each most importantly employed, and yet the thing would remain immovable until the crew were urged by their officer or pushed by the cabin boy.14
Released of its cargo and passengers, the cartel sailed for home, and ‘with no pleasurable feeling’, Faraday watched it go. By now the loaded barge was stuck in the mud as the tide flowed out. So they waited some more, and as the evening drew on Faraday watched the same phosphorescence that he had seen out at sea becoming visible in the ebb tide, rising and falling in brightness, disappearing and reappearing. When the waters rose again they felt the barge creaking and shifting heavily, and beginning to make a quiet way upriver between high wooded banks in the moonlight. They landed at the town quay, took essential luggage with them, and were led on foot through filthy streets to the only hotel in Morlaix. They thought that this could not possibly be the place, as a horse wandered idly through the front door. But, yes, this was it – ‘one of the dirtiest pig-sties I ever saw … I sat down without consideration in a very hungry plight for supper. It was clean and with my appetite its quality was no object, and being also considerably fatigued I had no difficulty in going to sleep, though singularly accommodated.’15
After breakfast in the unspeakable hotel, they went down quickly to the Customs House where their belongings had been taken. They waited ‘patiently or otherwise for some time looking on our things but not daring to touch them. At last business commenced.’16
The local soldiery marched up and formed a ragged line on the edge of the quay. Then thirty or forty inhabitants of Morlaix tumbled chattering out of the town and down the steps to help unload the belongings of this exotic party that had just blown in – enemy English, civilian, finely dressed and seemingly immune from touch of the law. Banging, bumping and crashing, the crowd leapt into the barge, ‘seized some one thing, some another and conveyed them to the landing place above … destitute of all method and regularity. It seemed as if a parcel of thieves was scampering away with what was not their own.’17
The townsfolk had the greatest difficulty with the carriage. There were no cranes on the quay so they had to heave its bits up, chassis and cabin swaying dangerously amidst the muddle of willing hands. With the carriage waiting in pieces, all the travellers’ possessions were taken into the Customs House and laid out, with a soldier posted at every door. First the carriage was searched, ‘all the corners and crannies for what they could find and thumped over every part of [it] to discover hollow and secret places’.18 Then, ‘disappointed in their hopes of booty from the carriage’, they came inside and started on the luggage. ‘They seemed determined to make up for their loss here. Package after package was opened, roll after roll unfolded, each pair of stockings unwrapped and each article of apparel shaken.’19
Again they found nothing suspicious, but confiscated two or three dozen new cotton stockings for good measure. Davy, who had restrained himself for long enough, now lost patience. The stockings were theirs; they were marked with their names; they needed them for the journey. Perhaps threats followed, and if they had no effect, a bribe did the trick. ‘At last the business ended with everything in the possession of the rightful owners, and a gift to the officers for their polite attentions.’20
So the workforce got on with the business of reassembling the carriage. They had none of the proper tools, just brute force and glimmering common sense: ‘’tis true they made the job appear a mighty one, but they got through it, and after having exclaimed “levez, levez” for an hour or two everything was in a moveable state and horses being tied to, we proceeded in order to the Hotel’.21
If they had hoped to be on their way directly, they were disappointed. Just one more formality, messieurs, mesdames. The Governor of the town had to check with Paris, ‘to learn whether the government continues in the same mind as now, that they were in when they sent Sir H Davy his passport to England. If it does not we of course are prisoners.’22
It took another day for the good news to get back from Paris to Morlaix, and for the party to be cleared for onward travel. In the meantime Faraday had time to walk about.
I cannot refrain from calling this place the dirtiest and filthiest imaginable. The streets are paved from house to house with small sharp stones, no particular part being appropriated to foot passengers. The kennels are full of filth and generally close to the house. The places [squares] and corners are occupied by idle loiterers who clothed in dirt stand doing nothing.23
Horses, pigs (the strangest kind of pig, more like greyhounds, Faraday thought), poultry, human beings ‘or whatever has connection with the [hotel] or the stables and pigsties beyond’ passed indiscriminately through. This was the same everywhere in the town. Idlers, beggars and nondescripts hung about the fires in the hotel’s kitchens, chatting and getting in the way. There was an extraordinary mixture of luxury and squalor: ‘on the left of the passage is a dining room ornamented with gilded chairs, tables and frames, but with broken windows and stone floors … [and] if pigs do not go upstairs at least animals as dirty do’.24
The next morning the party got their permission to proceed. The postillion – ‘mostly a young, always a lively man’, Faraday generalised of the profession of hired local coachmen – gave a laugh and showed off his jackboots as he walked stiffly from the fireside to the horses to prepare for the journey. Faraday’s interest in high technical detail brings him to describe fully the appearance, purpose, weight (fourteen to twenty pounds a pair) and construction of the jackboot, the iron and leather leg armour that protected the postillion, who rode the near-side lead horse, from breaking his legs in an accident. The party climbed aboard the carriage to their allotted places, the postillion checked the trappings, clambered up to his saddle, fixed his jackboots into position and tucked in his coat. With a glance back at the driver, he cracked his whip, ‘a most tremendous weapon to dogs, pigs and little children. With a handle of about 30 inches, it has a thong of 6 or 8 feet in length, and it is constantly in a state of violent vibratory motion over the heads of the horses, giving rise to a rapid succession of stunning sounds.’25
There was Faraday, ever-ready with his observing eye, out in the air on top of the coach, and off they went with a lurch towards Paris. They had hoped to cover the ground like the wind, the whip-thong crackling over the heads of the horses. But the roads were potholed and rutted, and they were shaken about desperately. They may not have considered just how big France is. The distance between Morlaix and Paris is about the same as that between Land’s End and Dover, a major expedition by the standards of the day. One dark evening outside Rennes a horse stumbled and broke its traces. While they were waiting in the cold for the postillion to calm the animals and refix the harness, Faraday saw a glow-worm shining on the road. He had never seen one before,