_AVRANCHES--MONT ST. MICHAEL._
There are some places in Europe which English people seem, with one
consent, to have made their own; they take possession of them,
peacefully enough it is true, but with a determination that the
inhabitants find it impossible to resist. Thus it is that
Avranches--owing principally, it may be, to its healthiness and
cheapness of living, and to the extreme beauty of its situation--has
become an English country town, with many of its peculiarities, and a
few, it must be added, of its rather unenviable characteristics.
The buildings at Avranches are not very remarkable. The cathedral has
been destroyed, and the houses are of the familiar French pattern; some
charmingly situated in pleasant gardens commanding the view over the
bay. The situation seems perfect. Built upon the extreme western
promontory of the long line of hills which extend from Domfront and the
forest of Audaine, with a view unsurpassed in extent towards the sea,
with environs of undulating hills and fruitful landscape; with woods and
streams (such as the traveller who has only passed through central
France could hardly imagine) we can scarcely picture to ourselves a more
favoured spot.
No district in Normandy (a resident assures us) affords a more agreeable
resting place than the hills of Avranches, excepting, perhaps, the
smiling environs of Mortain and Vire. Mortain is within easy distance,
as well as Mont St. Michael (which we have sketched from the terrace at
Avranches, at the beginning of this chapter), and Granville, also, on
the western shore of the Norman archipelago; to the extreme south is
seen the Bay of Cancale in Brittany, and the promontory of St. Malo; to
the north, the variegated landscape of the Cotentin--hills, valleys,
woods, villages, churches, and châteaux smiling in the sunshine,--the
air melodious with the song of the lark and innumerable nightingales.'
True as is this picture of the natural beauty of the position of
Avranches, we will add one or two facts (gathered lately on the spot)
which may be useful to intending emigrants from our shores. Within the
last few years house rent, though still cheap, has greatly increased;
and the prices of provisions, which used to be so abundant from
Granville and St. Malo, have risen, as they have, indeed, all over
France. The railway from Granville to Paris will only make matters
worse, and the resident will soon see the butter, eggs, and fowls, which
used to throng the market of Avranches, packed away in baskets for Paris
and London. The salmon and trout in the rivers, are already netted and
sold by the pound; and the larks sing no longer in the sky. Thus, like
Dinan, Tours and Pau, Avranches feels the weight of centralisation and
the effects of rapid communication with the capital; and will in a few
years be anything but a cheap place of residence.
However, from information gathered only yesterday, we learn that 'house
rent bears favourable comparison with many English provincial towns;
that servants' wages are not high, and that provisions are comparatively
cheap;' also that the climate is 'very cold sometimes in winter, but
more inclined to be damp; and that there is no good inn.'
Again,--'if any quiet family demands fine air, a lovely position, cheap
house-rent and servants, easy and cheerful society, regular church
services, and, above all, first-class education for boys, and good
governesses and masters for girls, it cannot do better than settle down
here.'
And again (from another point of view) that, 'after a year's residence
in Normandy, I can see but little economy in it compared with England,
and believe that sensible people would find far greater comfort, and but
little more expense, if resident in Wales, Ireland, or some of the
distant parts of our own country; if they would but make up their minds
to live with as few servants, and to see as little society as is the
custom abroad.'
These varying opinions are worth having, coming as they do from
residents, and giving us the latest information on the subject; but our
friend whom we have quoted last seems to put the case most fairly, when
he says, in so many words, 'English people had better live in their own
country, if they can.'
Life at Avranches is a strange contrast to Granville. In a few hours we
pass from the contemplation of fishermen's lives to a curious kind of
civilization--an exotic plant, which some might think was hardly worth
the transplanting. A little colony of English people have taken
possession of one of the finest and healthiest spots in Europe, and upon
this vantage ground have deposited, or reproduced as in a magic mirror,
much of the littleness and pettiness that is peculiar to an English
country town: they have brought insular prejudices and peculiarities,
and unpacked several of them at Avranches.
Do we overdraw the picture? Hear one more resident, who thus tersely,
and rather pathetically, puts his grievances to us, _viva voce_:--
'We quiet English people,' he says, 'generally dine early, because it is
considered economical--_which it is not!_
'We live exclusively and stiffly, because it is considered proper and
necessary--_which it is not!_
'We go to the expense and trouble of bringing out our families, because
living is supposed to be cheaper than in England--_which practically it
is not!_
'We believe that our children will be well educated, and pick up French
for nothing--_which they do not!_'--&c, &c.
An amusing book might be written about English society in French towns;
no one indeed knows who has not tried it, with what little society-props
such coteries as those at Avranches, Pau, &c., are kept up. It varies,
of course, every year, and in each place every year; but when we were
last at Avranches, 'society' was the watchword, we might almost say the
war cry; and we had to declare our colours as if we lived in the days of
the Wars of the Roses.
The old inhabitants are, of course, 'rather particular,' and, to tell
the truth, are sometimes rather afraid of each other. They are apt to
eye with considerable caution any new arrival; the 'new arrival' is
disposed to be equally select, and so they live together and apart,
after the true English model; and indulging sometimes, it must be added,
in considerable speculation about their new neighbours' business.
'Why were they proud--because red-lined accounts
Were richer than the songs of Grecian years?
Why were they proud--again we ask, aloud,
Why in the name of glory were they proud?'
And so on; but what we might say of Avranches would apply to nearly
every little English colony abroad. There are two sides to the picture,
and there is a good, pleasant side to the English society at Avranches;
there is also great necessity to be 'particular,' however much we may
laugh. English people who come to reside abroad are not, as a rule, very
good representatives of their nation; neither they nor their children
seem to flourish on a foreign soil, they differ in their character as
much as transplanted trees; they have more affinity with the poplars and
elms of France than with the sturdy oaks of England.[27]
Let us not be thought to disparage Avranches; if it is our lot to live
here we may enjoy life well; and if we are not deterred by the dull and
'weedy' aspect of some of the old chateaux, we may also make some
pleasant friends amongst the French families in the neighbourhood.
In summer time we may almost live out of doors, and ramble about in the
fields and sketch, as we should do in England; the air is fresh and
bracing, and the sea breeze comes gratefully on the west wind. We may
stroll through shady lanes and between hedgerows, and we shall hear the
familiar sound of bells, and see through the trees a church tower, such
as the following (which is indeed the common type throughout Normandy);
but here the similarity to England ceases, for we may enter the building
at any hour, and find peasant women at prayers.
[Illustration]
And we may see sometimes a party of English girls from a French school,
with their drawing master; sketching from nature and making minute
studies of the brandies of trees. They are seated on a hill-side, and
there is a charming pastoral scene before them,--wood and water,
pasture-land and cattle grazing,--women with white caps, and little
white houses peeping through the trees.
But the trees that they are studying are small and characterless
compared with our own, they are scattered about the landscape, or set in
trim lines along the roads: our fair artists had better be in England
for this work. There is none of the mass and grandeur here that we see
in our forest trees, none of the suggestive groups with which we are so
familiar, even in the parks of London, planted 'by accident' (as we are
apt to call it), but standing together with clear purpose of protection
and support,--the strong-limbed facing the north and stretching out
their protecting arms, the weaker towering above them in the centre of
the square; whilst those to the south spread a deep shade almost to the
ground. French trees are under an Imperial necessity to form into line;
the groves at Fontainbleau are as straight as the Fifth Avenue at New
York. There are no studies of trees in all Normandy like the royal oaks
of Windsor, there is nothing to compare in grandeur with the stems of
the Burnham beeches, set in a carpet of ferns; and nothing equal in
effect to the massing of the blue pines--with their bronzed stems
against an evening sky--in Woburn Park in Bedfordshire. We may bring
some pretty studies from Avranches and from the country round, but we
should not come to France to draw trees.
But there are studies which we may make near Avranches, and of scenes
that we shall not meet with in England. If we descend the hill and walk
a few miles in the direction of Granville, we may see by the roadside
the remnants of several wayside 'stations' of very early date. Let us
sit down by the roadside to sketch one of these (A.D. 1066), and depict
for the reader, almost with the accuracy of a photograph, its grotesque
proportions. It stands on a bank, in a prominent position, by the
roadside; a rude contrast to the surrounding scenery. Presently there
comes up an old cantonnier in a blouse and heavy sabots, who has just
returned from mending the roads; he takes off his cap, crosses himself
devoutly, and kneels down to pray. The sun shines upon the cross and
upon the kneeling figure; the soft wind plays about them, the bank is
lovely with wild flowers; there are purple hills beyond, and a company
of white clouds careering through space. But the old man sees nothing
but the cross, he has no eyes for the beauty of landscape, no ear for
the music of the birds or the voices of nature; he sees nothing but the
image of his Saviour, he kneels as he knelt in childhood before the
cross, he clasps his worn hands, and prays, with many repetitions,
words which evidently bring comfort to his soul. In a few minutes the
old man rises and puts on his cap, with a brass plate on it with the
number of his canton, produces a little can of soup and bread and sits
down on the bank to breakfast; ending by unrolling a morsel of tobacco
from a crumpled paper, putting it into his mouth and going fast asleep.
[Illustration]
Many more such scenes we could record, but they are more fitted for the
pencil than the pen; the artist can easily fill his sketch-book without
going far from Avranches.
But as autumn advances our thoughts are naturally turned more towards
'le sport;' and if we are fortunate enough to be on visiting terms with
the owners of the neighbouring châteaux, we may be present at some
interesting scenes that will remind us of pictures in the galleries at
Versailles.
'With good books, a good rod, and a double gun, one could never weary
of a residence at Avranches,' says an enthusiastic settler who has found
out the right corners in the trout-streams, and, possibly, the denizens
of the neighbouring woods. The truth, however, is that in spite of the
beautifully wooded country round, and the rivers that wind so
picturesquely beneath us; in spite of its unexampled situation and its
glorious view, Avranches is scarcely the spot for a sportsman to select
for a residence.
In the season there are numerous sportsmen, both English and French, and
occasionally a very fair bag may be made; but game not being preserved
systematically, the supply is variable, and accounts of sport naturally
differ very widely. We can only say that it is poor work after our
English covers, and that we know some residents at Avranches who prefer
making excursions into Brittany for a week's shooting. Trout may be
caught in tolerable abundance, and salmon of good weight are still to
be found in the rivers, but they are diminishing fast, being, as we
said, netted at night for the Paris market.[28]
It was in the shooting season of the year, when game had been unusually
scarce for the sportsman and provokingly plentiful to behold in the
market-place at Granville--when the last accounts we had of the success
of a party (who had been out for a week) was that they had bagged 'only
a few woodcocks, three partridges, and a hare or two'--that the
following clever sketch appeared in the newspapers. It was great fun,
especially amongst some of our French friends who were very fond of the
phrase 'chasse magnifique,' and resented the story as a terrible libel.
An enthusiastic French marquis offered one of our countrymen, whom he
met in Paris, a few days' shooting, in short, a 'chasse magnifique.' He
accepted and went the next day; 'the journey was seven hours by railway,
but to the true sportsman this was nothing.' The morning after his
arrival he was attended by the marquis's keeper, who, in answer to X.'s
enquiries, thus mapped out the day's sport:--
'Pour commencer, monsieur, nous chasserons dans les vignes de M. le
Marquis, où à cette saison nous trouverons certainement des
grives (thrushes).' 'Et après?' says X. 'Eh bien! après, nous
passerons une petite heure sur la grande plaine, où, sans doute,
nous trouverons une masse d'alouettes (larks). En suite je
montrerai à monsieur certaines poules d'eau (moorhens) que je
connais; fichtre! nous les attraperons. Il y a là-bas aussi, dans
le marais, un petit lac où, l'année passée, j'ai vu un canard, mais
un canard sauvage! Nous le chercherons; peut-être il y sera.'
'But have you no partridges?' 'Des perdreaux! mais oui! je le crois
bien! (il demande si nous avons des perdreaux!) Il y en a, mais ils
sont difficiles. Nous en avions _quatre_, mais, le mois passé, M.
le Marquis en a tué un et sérieusement blessé un second. La pauvre
bête n'est pas encore guérie. Cela ne nous laisse que deux. Nous
les chasserons sans doute si monsieur le veut; _mais que feronsnous
l'année prochaine_? Si monsieur veut bien achever cette pauvre bête
blessée, ça peut s'arranger.'
'Well, but have you no covert shooting--no hares?'
'Les liévres? mais certainement, nous avons des liévres. Nous irons
dans la forêt, je prendrai mes chiens, et je vous montrerai de
belles lièvres. J'en ai trois--_Josephine, Alphonse_, et le vieux
_Adolphe_. Pour le moment Josephine est sacrée--elle est mère. Le
petit Alphonse s'est marié avec elle, comme ça il est un peu père
de famille; nous l'épargnerons, n'est-ce-pas, monsieur? Mais le
vieux Adolphe, nous le tuerons; c'est déjà temps; voilà cinq ans
que je le chasse!'
_MONT ST. MICHAEL._
From the terrace of the Jardin des Plantes, where we are never tired of
the view (although some residents complain that it becomes monotonous,
because they are too far from the sea to enjoy its variety), the grey
mount of St. Michael is ever before us, gleaming in the sunshine or
looming through the storm. In our little sketch we have given as
accurately as possible its appearance from Avranches on a summer's day
after rain;[29] but it should be seen when a storm passes over it, when
the same clouds that we have watched so often on summer nights, casting
deep shadows on the intervening plain--some silver-lined that may have
expressed hope, some black as midnight that might mean despair--come
over to us like messengers from the great rock, and take our little
promontory by storm. They come silently one by one, and gather round and
fold over us; then suddenly clap their hands and burst with such a
deluge of rain that it seems a matter for wonder that any little
creeping human things could survive the flood. And it does us good; we
are thoroughly drenched, our houses and gardens do not recover their
fair presence for weeks; our little prejudices and foibles are well
nigh washed out of us, and we are reminded of the dread reality of the
lives of our neighbours on the island, who form a much larger colony
than ourselves.[30]
'On no account omit a visit to Mont St. Michael,' say the guide-books,
and accordingly we charter a carriage on a summer's morning and are
driven in a few hours along a bad road, to the edge of the sands about a
mile from the mount--the same sands that we saw depicted in the Bayeux
tapestry, when William and Harold marched on Dinan. We choose a
favourable time of the tide, and approach the gates at the foot of the
mount dryshod.[31]
For a thousand years pilgrims have crossed these treacherous sands to
lay their offerings at the feet of the Archangel Michael; Norman dukes
and monks of the middle ages have paid their devotion at his shrine, and
troops of pilgrims in all ages, even to this day, when a party of
English school-girls come tripping across the bay, provided with a
passport and a fee, bent upon having the terrors of the prison-house
shewn to them as easily as the 'chamber of horrors' at Madame Tussaud's.
Before us, as we walk the last mile, the granite rock gradually becomes
a mountain surrounded by a wide plain of sand, covered with clustering
houses, towers, turrets, and fortifications, and surmounted by a Gothic
church nearly 400 feet above the sea. There is a little town upon the
rock, old, tumble-down, irregular, and picturesque, like Bastia in
Corsica--constructed by a hardy sea-faring people, who have built their
dwellings in the sides of this conical rock, like the sea-birds; and
there is a little inn called the _Lion d'or_, with windows built out
over the ramparts, from which we can see the shore.
On arriving at the island we pass under two ancient towers, and into
'the court of the Lion;' then to a third gate, with its towers and
battlements, and frowning portcullis; and we see, as we pass, the lion
(the insignia of the knights of Mont St. Michael) carved in stone, and
set into the wall. We are received in the ancient guard-room by a 'young
brother,' who has (shall it be repeated?) 'turned the guard-room into a
cheerful bazaar for the sale of photographs, ivory carvings and the
like.' We are on the threshold of the sanctuary, at the end of our
pilgrimage; we offer up no prayers, as of old, for safe deliverance from
peril, but we set to work at once, and 'invest in a pocketful of little
presents, which another brother (on business thoughts intent) packs for
us neatly in a pasteboard box.' We are shewn the apartments in the 'Tour
des Corbins,' with its grand staircase, called 'l'escalier des exils,'
and the crypt one hundred feet long, built by the monks in the eleventh
century; we see the great Gothic hall of the Knights of Mont St.
Michael, with its carved stone-work and lofty roof, supported by three
rows of pillars, beautiful in proportion, and grand in effect, although
the Revolution, as usual, has left us little but the bare walls; but, as
we look down upon it from a gallery, it is easy to picture the splendour
of a banquet of knights in the twelfth century, with the banners and
insignia of chivalry ranged upon the walls.[32] But it is now a silent
gloomy chamber, and the atmosphere is so close and the moral atmosphere
so heavy withal, that we are glad to leave it, and to ascend to another
story of this wonderful pile; through the beautiful Gothic cloisters,
and out upon the cathedral roof, where we suddenly emerge upon a view
more wonderful in its extent and flatness than anything, save that from
the cathedral tower of Chartres; before us an horizon of sea, behind us
the coast line, and the hills of Avranches; all around, a wide plain of
sand, and northward, in the far distance, the low dark lines of the
channel islands.
That 'Saint Michael's Mount has become a popular lion, and can only be
seen under the vexatious companionship of a guide and a party' is true
enough; nevertheless, we can stay at the inn on the island, and thus be
enabled to examine and make drawings of some of the most beautiful
thirteenth-century work in the cloisters that we shall meet with in
Normandy. These cloisters and open arcades (supported by upwards of two
hundred slender pillars) are carved and decorated with grotesque and
delicate ornament, the capitals to the pillars are richly foliated, and
the fringe that surrounds them has been well described as a 'wilderness
of vines and roses, and dragons, winged and crowned.'
Like the churches in Normandy, the architecture of these monastic
buildings is in nearly every style, from the simple romanesque of the
eleventh century to the rich _flamboyant_ of the fifteenth; and, like
many of the churches, its history dates from the time when the Druids
took possession of the island to the days when the storm of the
Revolution broke upon its shores.
The ordinary time for visiting the rock is when the tide is out, but we
have not seen Mont St. Michael to advantage until it is completely
surrounded by water, as it is during the spring tides; it is then that,
approached from the west, we may see it half-obscured by sea-foam, with
its turrets shining through the clouds, and the heavy Atlantic waves
booming against its foundations.
The little fishing population of Mont St. Michael, and the stories they
tell of the dangers of the quicksands, will while away the time in the
evening and reward us for staying; and we shall see such an exhibition
of hopeless _ennui_ on the part of the French officers in garrison as
will not soon be forgotten.
It would require a separate work to describe in detail all the buildings
on the rock;[33] (it takes a day to examine the fortifications and
dungeons alone); we have therefore only attempted to give the reader an
idea of its general aspect; of what M. Nodier, in his '_Annales
Romantiques_,' describes as 'l'effet poétique et religieux de la flèche
du Mont St. Michael;' and indeed we have hardly dared to picture to
ourselves the complete magnificence of the basilica of the Archangel, as
mariners who approached these shores must have seen it three hundred
years ago, with its lofty towers of sculptured stone; and the image of
its patron saint, turning towards the western sun a fiery cross of
gold.