HONFLEUR--NEW AND OLD.
The stillness of the park trees, as we passed beneath them, was like
the silence that comes after a blessing. The sun, flooding the
landscape with a deluge of light, lost something of its effulgence, by
contrast with the fulness of the priest's rich nature. This fair world
of beauty that lay the other side of the terrace wall, beneath which
our luncheon was spread, was fair and lovely still--but how unimportant
the landscape seemed compared to the varied scenery of the curé's
soul-lit character! Of all kinds of nature, human nature is assuredly
the best; it is at least the most perdurably interesting. When we tire
of it, when we weary of our fellow-man and turn the blasé cheek on the
fresh pillow of mother-earth, how quickly is the pillow deserted once
the mental frame is rested or renewed! The history of all human
relations has the same ending--we all of us only fall out of love with
man to fall as swiftly in again.
The remainder of the afternoon passed with the rapidity common to all
phases of enchantment.
How could one eat seriously, with vulgar, gluttonous hunger, of a feast
spread on the parapet of a terrace-wall? The white foam of napkins, the
mosaic of the _patties_, the white breasts of chicken, the salads in
their bath of dew--these spoke the language of a lost cause. For there
was an open-air concert going on in full swing, and the performance was
one that made the act of eating seem as gross as the munching of apples
at an oratorio--the music being, indeed, of a highly refined order of
perfection. One's ears needed to be highly attuned to hear the pricking
of the locusts in the leaves; even the breeze kept uncommonly still,
that the brushing of the humming-birds' and bees' wings against the
flower-petals might be the more distinctly heard.
I never knew which one of the party it was that decided we were to see
the day out and the night in; that we were to dine at the Cheval Blanc,
on the Honfleur quays, instead of sedately breaking bread at the Mère
Mouchard's. Even our steed needed very little urging to see the
advantages of such a scheme. Henri alone wore a grim air of
disapproval. His aspect was an epitome of rigid protest. As he took his
seat in the cart, he held the sword between his legs with the air of
one burning with a pent-up anguish of protest. His eye gloomed on the
day; his head was held aloft, reared on a column of bristling vertebra,
and on his brow was written the sign of mutiny.
"Henri--you think we should go back; you think going on to Honfleur a
mistake?"
"Madame has said it"--Henri was a fatalist--in his speech, at least, he
lived up to his creed. "Honfleur is far--Monsieur Renard has not the
good digestion when he is tired--he suffers. _Il passe des nuits
d'angoisse. Il souffre des fatigues de l'estomac. Il se fatigue
aujourd'hui!_" This, with an air of stern conviction, was accompanied
by a glance at his master in which compassion was not the most obvious
note to be read. He went on, remorselessly:
"And, as madame knows, the work but begins for me when we are at home.
There are the costumes to be dusted and put away, the paintbrushes to
clean, the dishes and lunch-basket to be attended to. As madame says,
monsieur is sometimes lacking in consideration. _Mais, que voulez-vous?
le génie, c'est fait comme ça._"
Madame had not expressed the feeblest echo of a criticism on the
composition of the genius in front; but the short dialogue had helped,
perceptibly, to lift the weight of Henri's gloom; he was beginning to
accept the fate of the day with a philosopher's phlegm. Already he had
readjusted a little difficulty between his feet and the lunch basket,
making his religious care of the latter compatible with the open sin of
improved personal comfort.
Meanwhile the two on the front seat were a thousand miles away. Neither
we, nor the day, nor the beauty of the drive had power to woo their
glances from coming back to the focal point of interest they had found
in each other. They were beginning to talk, not about each other but of
themselves--the danger-signal of all tête-à-tête adventures.
When two young people have got into the personal-pronoun stage of human
intercourse, there is but one thing left for the unfortunate third in
the party to do. Yes, now that I think of it, there are two roles to be
played. The usual conception of the part is to turn marplot--to spoil
and ruin the others' dialogue--to put an end to it, if possible, by
legitimate or illegitimate means; a very successful way, I have
observed, of prolonging, as a rule, such a duet indefinitely. The more
enlightened actor in any such little human comedy, if he be gifted with
insight, will collapse into the wings, and let the two young idiots
have the whole stage to themselves. As like as not they'll weary of the
play, and of themselves, if left alone. No harm will come of all the
sentimental strutting and the romantic attitudinizing, other than
viewing the scene, later, in perspective, as a rather amusing bit of
emotional farce.
Besides being in the very height of the spring fashion, in the matter
of the sentiments, these two were also busily treading, at just this
particular moment, the most alluring of all the paths leading to what
may be termed the outlying territorial domain of the emotions; they
were wandering through the land called Mutual Discovery. Now, this, I
have always held, is among the most delectable of all the roads of
life; for it may lead one--anywhere or nowhere.
Therefore it was from a purely generous impulse that I continued to
look at the view. The surroundings were, in truth, in conspiracy with
the sentimentalists on the front seat; the extreme beauty of the road
would have made any but sentimental egotists oblivious to all else. The
road was a continuation of the one we had followed in the morning's
drive. Again, all the greenness of field and grass was braided,
inextricably, into the blue of river and ocean. Above, as before, in
that earlier morning drive, towered the giant aisles of the beaches and
elms. Through those aisles the radiant Normandy landscape flowed again,
as music from rich organ-piped throats flows through cathedral arches.
Out yonder, on the Seine's wide mouth, the boats were balancing
themselves, as if they also were half divided between a doubt and a
longing; a freshening spurt of breeze filled their flapping sails, and
away they sped, skipping through the waters with all the gayety which
comes with the vigor of fresh resolutions. The light that fell over the
land and waters was dazzling, and yet of an astonishing limpidity; only
a sun about to drop and end his reign could be at once so brilliant and
so tender--the diffused light had the sparkle of gold made soft by
usage. Wherever the eye roved, it was fed as on a banquet of light and
color. Nothing could be more exquisite, for depth of green swimming in
a bath of shadow, than the meadows curled beneath the cliffs; nothing
more tempting, to the painter's brush, than the arabesque of blossoms
netted across the sky; and would you have the living eye of nature,
bristling with animation, alive with winged sails, and steeped in the
very soul of yellow sunshine, look out over the great sheet of the
waters, and steep the senses in such a breadth of aqueous splendor as
one sees only in one or two of the rare shows of earth.
Then, all at once, all too soon, the great picture seemed to shrink;
the quivering pulsation of light and color gave way to staid,
commonplace gardens. Instead of hawthorn hedges there was the stench of
river smells--we were driving over cobble-paved streets and beneath
rows of crooked, crumbling houses. A group of noisy street urchins
greeted us in derision. And then we had no doubt whatsoever that we
were already in Honfleur town.
"Honfleur is an evil-smelling place," I remarked.
"Oh, well, after all, the smells of antiquity are a part of the show;
we should refuse to believe in ancientness, all of us, I fancy, if
mustiness wasn't served along with it."
"How can any town have such a stench with all this river and water and
verdure to sweeten it?" I asked, with a woman's belief in the morality
of environment--a belief much cherished by wives and mothers, I have
noticed.
"Wait till you see the inhabitants--they'll enlighten you--the hags and
the nautical gentlemen along the basins and quays. They've discovered
the secret that if cleanliness is next to godliness, dirt and the devil
are likewise near neighbors. Awful set--those Honfleur sailors The
Havre and Seine people call them Chinamen, they are so unlike the rest
of France and Frenchmen."
"Why are they so unlike?" asked Charm.
"They're so low down, so hideously wicked; they're like the old houses,
a rotten, worm-eaten set--you'll see."
Charm stopped him then, with a gesture. She stopped the horse also; she
brought the whole establishment to a standstill; and then she nodded
her head briskly forward. We were in the midst of the Honfleur
streets--streets that were running away from a wide open space, in all
possible directions. In the centre of the square rose a curious, an
altogether astonishing structure. It was a tower, a belfry doubtless, a
house, a shop, and a warehouse, all in one; such a picturesque medley,
in fact, as only modern irreverence, in its lawless disregard of
original purpose and design, can produce. The low-timbered sub-base of
the structure was pierced by a lovely doorway with sculptured lintel,
and also with two impertinent modern windows, flaunting muslin
curtains, and coquettishly attired with rows of flowering carnations.
Beneath these windows was a shop. Above the whole rose, in beautiful
symmetrical lines, a wooden belfry, tapering from a square tower into a
delicately modelled spire. To complete and accentuate the note of the
picturesque, the superstructure was held in its place by rude modern
beams, propping the tower with a naive disregard of decorative
embellishment. We knew it at once as the quaint and famous Belfry of
St. Catherine.
As we were about to turn away to descend the high street, a Norman
maiden, with close-capped face, leaned over the carnations to look down
upon us.
"That's the daughter of the bell-ringer, doubtless. Economical idea
that," Renard remarked, taking his cap off to the smiling eyes.
"Economical?"
"Yes, can't you see? Bell-ringer sends pretty daughter to window, just
before vespers or service, and she rings in the worshippers; no need to
make the bells ring."
"What nonsense!"--but we laughed as flatteringly as if his speech had
been a genuine coin of wit.
A turn down the street, and the famous Honfleur of the wharves and
floating docks lay before us. About us, all at once, was the roar and
hubbub of an extraordinary bustle and excitement; all the life of the
town, apparently, was centred upon the quays. The latter were swarming
with a tattered, ragged, bare-footed, bare-legged assemblage of old
women, of gamins, and sailors. The collection, as a collection, was one
gifted with the talent of making itself heard. Everyone appeared to be
shrieking, or yelling, or crying aloud, if only to keep the others in
voice. Sailors lying on the flat parapets shouted hoarsely to their
fellows in the rigging of the ships that lay tossing in the docks;
fishermen's families tossed their farewells above the hubbub to the
captain-fathers launching their fishing-smacks; one shrieking infant
was being passed, gayly, from the poop of a distant deck, across the
closely lying shipping, to the quay's steps, to be hushed by the
generous opening of a peasant mother's bodice. One could hear the
straining of cordage, the creak of masts, the flap of the sails, all
the noises peculiar to shipping riding at anchor. The shriek of
steam-whistles broke out, ever and anon, above all the din and uproar.
Along the quay steps and the wharves there were constantly forming and
re-forming groups of wretched, tattered human beings; of men with
bloated faces and a dull, sodden look, strikingly in contrast with the
vivacity common among French people. Even the children and women had a
depraved, shameless appearance, as if vice had robbed them of the last
vestige of hope and ambition. Along the parapet a half-dozen drunkards
sprawled, asleep or dozing. At the legs of one a child was pulling,
crying:
"_Viens--mère t'battra, elle est soûle aussi._"
The sailors out yonder, busy in the rigging, and the men on the decks
of the smart brigs and steamships, whistled and shouted and sang, as
indifferent to this picture of human misery and degradation as if they
had no kinship with it.
As a frame to the picture, Honfleur town lay beneath the crown of its
hills; on the tops and sides of the latter, villa after villa shot
through the trees, a curve of roof-line, with rows of daintily draped
windows. At the right, close to the wharves, below the wooded heights,
there loomed out a quaint and curious gateway flanked by two
watchtowers, grim reminders of the Honfleur of the great days. And
above and about the whole, encompassing villa-crowded hills and closely
packed streets, and the forest of masts trembling against the sky,
there lay a heaven of spring and summer.
Renard had driven briskly up to a low, rambling facade parallel with
the quays. It was the "Cheval Blanc." A crowd assembled on the instant,
as if appearing according to command.
"_Allons--n'encombrez pas ces dames!_" cried a very smart individual,
in striking contrast to the down at-heel air of the hotel--a personage
who took high-handed possession of us and our traps. "Will _ces dames_
desire a salon--there is _un vrai petit bijou_ empty just now,"
murmured a voice in a purring soprano, through the iron opening of the
cashier's desk.
Another voice was crying out to us, as we wound our way upward in
pursuit of the jewel of a salon. "And the widow, _La Veuve_, shall she
be dry or sweet?"
When we entered the low dining-room, a little later, we found that the
artist as well as the epicure has been in active conspiracy to make the
dinner complete; the choice of the table proclaimed one accomplished in
massing effects. The table was parallel with the low window, and
through the latter was such a picture as one travels hundreds of miles
to look upon, only to miss seeing it, as a rule. There was a great
breadth of sky through the windows; against the sky rose the mastheads;
and some red and brown sails curtained the space, bringing into relief
the gray line of the sad-faced old houses fringing the shoreline.
"Couldn't have chosen better if we'd tried, could we? It's just the
right hour, and just the right kind of light. Those basins are
unendurable--sinks of iniquitous ugliness, unless the tide's in and
there's a sunset going on. Just look now! Who cares whether Honfleur
has been done to death by the tourist horde or not? and been painted
until one's art-stomach turns? I presume I ought to beg your pardon,
but I can't stand the abomination of modern repetitions; the hand-organ
business in art, I call it. But at this hour, at this time of the year,
before this rattle-trap of an inn is as packed with Baedeker
attachments as a Siberian prison is with Nihilists--to run out here and
look at these quays and basins, and old Honfleur lying here, beneath
her green cliffs--well, short of Cairo, I don't know any better bit of
color. Look out there, now! See those sails, dripping with color, and
that fellow up there, letting the sail down--there, splash it goes into
the water, I knew it would; now tell me where will you get better blues
or yellows or browns, with just the right purples in the shore line,
than you'll get here?"
Renard was fairly started; he had the bit of the born monologist
between his teeth; he stopped barely long enough to hear even an
echoing assent. We were quite content; we continued to sip our
champagne and to feast our eyes. Meanwhile Renard talked on.
"Guide-books--what's the use of guide-books? What do they teach you,
anyway? Open any one of the cursed clap-trap things. Yes, yes, I know I
oughtn't to use vigorous language."
"Do," bleated Charm, smiling sweetly up at him. "Do, it makes you seem
manly."
Even Renard had to take time to laugh.
"Thank you! I'm not above making use of any aids to create that
illusion. Well, as I was saying, what guide-book ever really helped
anyone to _see?_--that's what one travels for, I take it. Here, for
instance, Murray or Baedeker would give you this sort of thing:
'Honfleur, an ancient town, with pier, beaches, three floating docks,
and a good deal of trade in timber, cod, etc.; exports large quantities
of eggs to England.' Good heavens! it makes one boil! Do sane,
reasonable mortals travel three thousand miles to read ancient history
done up in modern binding, served up a la Murray, a la Baedeker?"
"Oh, you do them injustice, I think--the guides do go in for a little
more of the picturesque than that--"
"And how--how do they do it? This is the sort of thing they'll give
you: 'Church of St. Catherine is large and remarkable, entirely of
timber and plaster, the largest of its kind in France.' Ah! ha! that's
the picturesque with a vengeance. No, no, my friends, throw the
guide-books into the river, pitch them overboard through the port
holes, along with the flowers, and letters _to be read three days out_,
and the nasty novels people send you to make the crossing pleasant. And
when you travel, really travel, mind, never make a plan--just go--go
anywhere, whenever the impulse seizes you--and you may hope to get
there, in the right way, possibly."
Here Renard stopped to finish his glass, draining-the last drop of the
yellow liquid. Then he went on: "To travel! To start when an impulse
seizes one! To go--anywhere! Why not! It was for this, after all, that
all of us have come our three thousand miles." Perhaps it was the
restless tossing of the shipping out yonder in the basins that awoke an
answering impatience within, in response to Renard's outburst. Where
did they go, those ships, and, up beyond this mouth of the Seine, how
looked the shores, and what life lived itself out beneath the rustling
poplars? Is it the mission of all flowing water to create an unrest in
men's minds?
Meanwhile, though the talk was not done, the dinner was long since
eaten. We rose to take a glimpse of Honfleur and its famous old basin.
The quays and the floating docks, in front of which we had been dining,
are a part of the nineteenth century; the great ships ride in to them
from the sea. But here, in this inner quadrangular dock, beside which
we were soon standing, traced by Duquesne when Louis the Great
discovered the maritime importance of Honfleur, we found still
reminders of the old life. Here were the same old houses that, in the
seventeenth century, upright and brave in their brand new carvings, saw
the high-decked, picturesquely painted Spanish and Portuguese ships
ride in to dip their flag to the French fleur-de-lis. There are but few
of the old streets left to crowd about the shipping life that still
floats here, as in those bygone days of Honfleur pride;--when Havre was
but a yellow strip of sand; when the Honfleur merchants would have
laughed to scorn any prophet's cry of warning that one day that
sand-bar opposite, despised, disregarded, boasting only a chapel and a
tavern, would grow and grow, and would steal year by year and inch by
inch bustling Honfleur's traffic, till none was left.
In the old adventurous days, along with the Spanish ships came others,
French trading and fishing vessels, with the salty crustations of long
voyages on their hulls and masts. The wharves were alive then with
fish-wives, whom Evelyn will tell you wore "useful habits made of
goats' skin." The captains' daughters were in quaint Normandy costumes;
and the high-peaked coifs and the stiff woollen skirts, as well as the
goat-skin coats, trembled as the women darted hither and thither among
the sailors--whose high cries filled the air as they picked out mother
and wife. Then were bronzed beards buried in the deeply-wrinkled old
mères' faces, and young, strong arms clasped about maidens' waists. The
whole town rang with gayety and with the mad joy of reunion. On the
morrow, coiling its way up the steep hillsides, wound the long lines of
the grateful company, one composed chiefly of the crews of these
vessels happily come to port. The procession would mount up to the
little church of Notre Dame de Grâce perched on the hill overlooking
the harbor. Some even--so deep was their joy at deliverance from
shipwreck and so fervent their piety--crawled up, bare-footed, with
bared head, wives and children following, weeping for joy, as the rude
_ex-votos_ were laid by the sailors' trembling hands at the feet of the
Virgin Lady.
As reminders of this old life, what is left? Within the stone
quadrangle we found clustered a motley fleet of wrecks and
fishing-vessels; the nets, flung out to dry in the night air, hung like
shrouds from the mastheads; here and there a figure bestrode a deck, a
rough shape, that seemed endowed with a double gift of life, so still
and noiseless was the town. Around the silent dock, grouped in
mysterious medley and confusion, were tottering roof lines, projecting
eaves, narrow windows, all crazily tortured and out of shape. Here and
there, beneath the broad beams of support, a little interior, dimly
lighted, showed a knot of sailors gathered, drinking or lounging. Up
high beneath a chimney perilously overlooking a rude facade, a quaint
shape emerged, one as decrepit and forlorn of life and hope as the
decaying houses it overlooked. Silence, poverty, wretchedness, the
dregs of life, to this has Honfleur fallen. These old houses, in their
slow decay, hiding in their dark bosom the gaunt secrets of this
poverty and human misery, seemed to be dancing a dance of drunken
indifference. Some day the dance will end in a fall, and then the
Honfleur of the past will not even boast of a ghost, as reminder of its
days of splendor.
An artist quicker than anyone else, I think, can be trusted to take one
out of history and into the picturesque. Renard refused to see anything
but beauty in the decay about us; for him the houses were at just the
right drooping angle; the roof lines were delightful in their
irregularity; and the fluttering tremor of the nets, along the rigging,
was the very poetry of motion.
"We'll finish the evening on the pier," he exclaimed, suddenly; "the
moon will soon be up--we can sit it out there and see it begin to color
things."
The pier was more popular than the quaint old dock. It was crowded with
promenaders, who, doubtless, were taking a bite of the sea-air. Through
the dusk the tripping figures of gentlemen in white flannels and jaunty
caps brushed the provincial Honfleur swells. Some gentle English voices
told us some of the villa residents had come down to the pier, moved by
the beauty of the night. Groups of sailors, with tanned faces and
punctured ears hooped with gold rings, sat on the broad stone parapets,
talking unintelligible Breton _patois_. The pier ran far out, almost to
the Havre cliffs, it seemed to us, as we walked along in the dusk of
the young night. The sky was slowly losing its soft flame. A tender,
mellow half light was stealing over the waters, making the town a rich
mass of shade. Over the top of the low hills the moon shot out, a
large, globular mass of beaten gold. At first it was only a part and
portion of the universal lighting, of the still flushed sky, of the red
and crimson harbor lights, of the dim twinkling of lamps and candles in
the rude interiors along the shore. But slowly, triumphantly, the great
lamp swung up; it rose higher and higher into the soft summer sky, and
as it mounted, sky and earth began to pale and fade. Soon there was
only a silver world to look out upon--a wealth of quivering silver over
the breast of the waters, and a deeper, richer gray on cliffs and roof
tops. Out of this silver world came the sound of waters, lapping in
soft cadence against the pier; the rise and fall of sails, stirring in
the night wind; the tread of human footsteps moving in slow, measured
beat, in unison with the rhythm of the waters. Just when the stars were
scattering their gold on the bosom of the sea-river, a voice rang out,
a rich, full baritone. Quite near, two sailors were seated, with their
arms about each other's shoulders. They also were looking at the
moonlight, and one of them was singing to it:
"_Te souviens-tu, Marie,
De notre enfance aux champs?_
"_Te souviens-tu?
Le temps que je regrette
C'est le temps qui n'est plus._"
[Illustration: THE INN AT DIVES--GUILLAUME-LE-CONQUERANT]
DIVES: AN INN ON A HIGH-ROAD.