In Troubadour-Land: A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc

A vanished world of wandering awaits in this 1891 travelogue, where a Victorian gentleman drifts through sun-bleached Provence and Languedoc with nothing but curiosity and a pen. S. Baring-Gould begins not in France but in plague-tinged Rome, fleeing flooding and typhoid, carried southward by a publisher's nudge and his own restless spirit. Through Florence he passes, encountering a colorful German Jew who dispenses wisdom on local drinking culture and customs, watching Easter celebrations unfold in the streets. Then into the south of France he goes, where troubadour legends still cling to the landscape and Roman ruins rise from the earth. This is travel as it once was: slow, discursive, full of eccentric characters and accidental discoveries. For readers who dream of a Europe that has largely vanished, where a gentleman could wander for months with no fixed plan, this book is a time machine.