I highly recommend Our Hearts Were Young and Gay by Cornelia Otis Skinner and Emily Kimbrough. I am nearly finished with it, and I have enjoyed it immensely. Skinner and Kimbrough travelled to Europe at the age of 19 during the 1920s, and they penned this travel narrative, which was a bestseller in 1942. At one point they were in Rouen looking for suitable lodgings:
"We had acquired the address through my mother (Cornelia Otis Skinner is the narrator). Mother was a joiner. She would join any organization of which her friends were presidents or committee members, provided of course, the dues weren't excessive. Once having joined, she seldom did much about her affiliations, and dear knows never dreamt of going to any meetings, but she kept on joining others because, she'd explain, she thought they might prove useful sometime and besides such nice women belonged to them. One of her enthusiasms was an instructive little endeavor known as 'The Ladies Rest Tour Association.' Its purpose was to provide lists of comfortable but inexpensive and, of course, highly respectable lodgings for ladies traveling alone and unprotected through Europe. It publishes a monthly pamphlet which contained sprightly articles penned by certain of the itinerant members, telling about the cosy inn one of them had found in Avignon, recommending a highly intellectual pension in Perugia, or putting fellow travelers on the trail of a Swiss tea room where the coffee was 'just like home.' There was also issued a general European lodging list for the use of members only, they being supposedly on their honor not to pass the information along to any outsider (one of the aims of the society was to 'keep Europe unspoiled'). Mother had culled the address of a Rouen boarding house out of this invaluable pamphlet and had sent it to us. She may have written it down wrong, or the Ladies' Rest Tour publication may have been guilty of a misprint, but it was clear someone had blundered, for the hostelry proved to be one which had very little to do with 'rest' and Lord knows nothing remotely to do with 'ladies'. As surely as we were that our mothers would have called us 'nincompoops', that house was one which our mothers also would have called of 'ill repute'.
We rang the bell and after a time the door was opened a crack by a frowsy maid who didn't seem to want to let us in. But we smiled and said, Bon soir and blandly asked to see La Madame (meaning 'landlady'). The maid looked slightly astonished and walked off, returning in a second with the landlady, who looked even more astonished. She was awfully dressy and luridly made up, hardly the type one would associate with the Ladies' Rest Tour and the elderly New England gentlewomen who supported it. We told her we'd like a room for the night, a seemingly simple demand but one which obviously increased her astonishment, for she stepped back in a blank manner and gave no reply. I was afraid she thought that two girls arriving alone and on foot might detract from the gentility of her pension, so, to establish our respectability, I told her that her house had been recommended to us as just the place for deux jeunes filles. She murmured a faint Ah? and beckoning to us to follow, led us down a hall. It was lined on either side with smallish rooms, rather elaborately decorated. Some of the doors were open, and we caught glimpses of the other guests who seemed quite surprised to see us and we were indeed surprised to see them. They all appeared to be in evening dresses. This was certainly unusual, but we concluded they must all be waiting to go out to a dinner-party. It never occurred to us that we weren't exactly in keeping with the ton of the place, I, in my Buster Brown panama and Emily in her pepper and salt tweeds.
Madame led us up several flights of stairs and allotted us a modest room quite removed from the more elaborate ones below. she explained we'd be more tranquille there. Then, in a faint, far-away voice, she asked how we happened to come to her place. We told her we'd read all about it in a book published by the American society. She hadn't said much up to now, but this item of information caused her to lose all power of articulation, for she opened and closed her mouth several times but nothing came forth. Finally, with a wan, Camille-like wave of the hand, she backed out of the room and closed the door. Her behavior had been very odd, but with our faith in the Ladies' Rest Tour ever bright, we dismissed her as being a 'character'.
We washed, went out and found a quiet near-by restaurant where we dined. We were less shy about going into restaurants than we'd been in London, possibly because there were no other places in which to eat. Then we returned to our snug abode. The frowsy maid, still looking astonished, admitted us, and we went down the long hall, tiptoeing because the doors were all closed now, and we didn't want to disturb anybody. We could hear the sound of laughter and music coming from a back room but we felt too tired to join the fun, so we climbed the flights of stairs and went to bed. We were very comfortable but I couldn't help thinking that this was an eccentric sort of pension, and Emily remarked that it lacked that 'homey' quality of the one in St. Valery.
Once in the night we woke with a start. People were walking in the corridor outside, and we could hear a man's voice and someone tried the handle of the door. Then we heard Madame speaking sharply to whoever it was and evidently she pulled him away. We thought it very nice and motherly of her to be up watching out for her boarders, but just in case we might be disturbed again we did take the precaution of pushing the bureau against the door. After which we slept the sleep of babes.
The following morning, bright and eager as daisies, we rose, packed and asked for the bill. Madame told us it was not her custom to make out a formal account but she named a sum which was most reasonable, and as we paid it we told her what a pleasant sojourn we had had there and how we'd most assuredly recommend her establishment to all our friends. Her eyes glazed over a bit at that, and faintly she asked us if we'd have the bonte to give her the name of the American Societe which had informed us about her. She would like, she said, to write to them. We gave her the name and address of the Ladies' Rest Tour Association, and left her to start what, we trust, proved to be an interesting and illuminating correspondence."