Genius loci Author:Vernon Lee Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: IN TOURAINE IN TOURAINE v I VIS a pleasure with quite a special flavour in it to feel myself back in the Loire country. This mitigated and rational south, ... more »with none of the real south's subtle appeals and imperious fascinations, is singularly accessible to the everyday heart and everyday fancy of northern people: Touraine, of judicious suavity, with its delicate lines of sunny hill, neither too low nor too steep; its cool, poplared rivers and fine grey stone, finely carved in copings and turrets; and that general powdering over with charming pale colours which makes its sunsets silvery instead of golden. This happy land grows nothing for the soul as such: neither forests of fir, nor tracts of heather, nor clumps of cypress; nothing that is not destined sooner or later for the table, as corn, vines, melons, and beautiful wall fruit;but it has, perhaps for this reason, to the very highest extent, that especially French genius for turning into a kind of poetry the peaceful sensual needs of life. The feeling of this stole over me yesterday when my friends of the Commanderie took me to see some people near Vouvray, in the mellow afternoon, along the big Loire, with yellow sands and yellowing coteaux embowering silvery slate roofs. We sat in an old-fashioned garden, terraced and flowery, above the great river; there were two charming courteous old men who did all the talking; and they gave us exquisite white wine, breadlike cake, and greengages all splitting with ripeness. It is impossible to speak adequately of Touraine, to recall its charm at all adequately (indeed, it was a true instinct which caused me to describe that charm by the word '' flavour ") without mentioning things to eat and drink. I confess to not thinking much about my dinner in other countries, save as o...« less