And that d----d invalid Lieutenant!
Enough of war memories, and for the future the very last thing one
wishes to have to do with this simple, cheery, and, for all I can see,
honest people, is to fight them.
There are packets twice a day from Havre across the mouth of the Seine,
a seven miles’ run, to Honfleur, described in guide-books as a dirty
little town, utterly without interest. I can only say I have seldom been
in a place of its size, not the site of any great historic event, which
is better worth spending an afternoon in, and I should strongly advise
my typical Englishman to follow this route. In the first place, the
situation is beautiful. From the steep wooded heights above the town,
where are a chapel, much frequented by sailors, and some villas, there
are glorious views up the Seine, across to Havre, and out over the sea.
Then, in the town, there is the long street, which runs down to the
lighthouse, and which, I suppose, the guide-book people never visit, as
it is out of the way. It is certainly as picturesque a street as can
be found in Rouen, or any other French town I have ever seen--except
Troyes, by the way. The houses are not large, but there is scarcely one
of them which Prout would not be proud to ask to sit to him.
Then there is the church in the centre of the town by the market-place,
with the most eccentric of little spires. It seems, at an early period
of the Middle Ages, to have taken it into its clock--or whatever answers
to a spire’s head--that it would seer more of the world, and to have
succeeded in getting about thirty yards away from its nave. Here,
probably finding locomotion a tougher business than it reckoned on, it
has fallen asleep, and, while it slept, several small houses crept up
against its base and fell asleep also. And there it remains to this day,
looking down over the houses in which people live, and many apples and
pears are being sold, and crying, like the starling, “I can’t get out.”
There is a splendid straight avenue, stretching a mile and a half up the
Caen road, and a good little harbour full of English vessels, which
ply the egg and fruit trade, and over every third door in the sailors’
quarter you see “Cook-house” written up in large letters, for the
benefit of the British sailor.
The railway to Lisieux passes through a richly wooded, hilly country,
and then runs out into the great plain in which Caen lies. The city of
William the Conqueror is quite worthy of him, which is saying a good
deal. For, though one may not quite share Mr Carlyle’s enthusiasm for
“Wilhelmus Conquestor,” it must be confessed that he is, at least, one
of the three strongest men who have ruled in England, and that in the
long run he has done a stroke of good work for our nation. The church
of the Abbey _des Hommes_, which he began in 1066, and of which Lanfranc
was the first abbot, stands just as he left it, except the tops of two
towers at the west end, which were finished two centuries later. It is
a pure Norman church, 320 feet long, and 98 feet high in the nave and
transepts, and the simplest and grandest specimen of that noble style
I have ever seen. William’s grave is before the high altar, the spot
marked by a dark stone, and no king ever lay in more appropriate
sepulchre. The Huguenots rifled the grave and scattered his bones, but
his strong stern spirit seems to rest over the place. There is an old
building near the Abbey surmounted by a single solid pinnacle, under
which is a room which tradition says he occupied. It is now filled with
the wares of a joiner who lives below. Caen is increasing in a solid
manner in its outskirts, but seems less disturbed and altered by the
building mania than any of her sisters. There was an English population
of 4000 and upwards living here before 1848, but the English Consul
fairly frightened them away by assurances of his inability to protect
them (against what does not seem to have been settled) in that wild
time, and now there are not as many hundreds. One of the survivors is
the Commissionaire of the Hôtel d’Angleterre, West by name, a really
intelligent and serviceable man, well up to his work. It is scarcely
ever worth while to spend a franc on a commissionaire, but West is an
exception to the rule. His father was in the lace trade, which is active
in Caen, but his premises were burnt down some years since, and an
end put to his manufacture. West is now trying to revive the family
business, and one of his first steps was to get over a new lace machine,
and a man to work it, from England. It has not proved a good speculation
as yet, for no one else can manage the machine, and the Englishman
insists on being drunk half his time.
We left by one of the steamers which ply daily from Caen to Havre.
The run down the river is chiefly interesting from the quarries on its
banks. They are not the principal quarries, but are of very considerable
extent; and from the quantities of tip, heaped into moderate-sized
grass-covered hills by the river side, it is plain that they must have
been in work here for centuries. You see the stone in many places lying
like rich Cheddar cheese, and cut as regularly in flakes as a grocer
would cut his favourite cheeses. The stone is very soft when it comes
first from the quarries, but gains its great hardness and sharpness
after a short exposure. After passing the quarries we got between salt
marshes haunted by abundance of jack snipe, and so we passed out to sea.