CHAPTER I.

[Every attempt has been made to replicate the original book as printed.

Some typographical errors have been corrected. A list follows the etext.

No attempt has been made to correct or normalize the French orthography

of the printed book.

The images have been moved from the middle of paragraphs to the closest

paragraph break for ease of reading. (etext transcriber’s note)]

RAMBLES IN NORMANDY

_WORKS OF FRANCIS MILTOUN_

_The following, each 1 vol., library 12mo, cloth, gilt top, profusely

illustrated. Net, $2.00; postpaid, $2.16_

_Rambles in Normandy_ _Rambles in Brittany_ _The Cathedrals and Churches

of the Rhine_

_The following, each 1 vol., library 12mo, cloth, gilt top, profusely

illustrated. Postpaid, $2.50_

_The Cathedrals of Northern France_ _The Cathedrals of Southern France_

_L. C. PAGE & COMPANY New England Building, Boston, Mass._

[Illustration: _Mont St. Michel_

(_See page 385_)]

Rambles

in

NORMANDY

BY FRANCIS MILTOUN

_With Many Illustrations_

BY BLANCHE MCMANUS

[Illustration: colophon]

BOSTON

L. C. PAGE & COMPANY

1906

_Copyright, 1905_

BY L. C. PAGE & COMPANY

(INCORPORATED)

_All rights reserved_

Published October, 1905

_COLONIAL PRESS

Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co.

Boston, U.S.A._

APOLOGIA

The following pages are not intended to be a record of all the historic

and picturesque features of the ancient province of Normandy. The most

that is claimed is that they are the record of a series of ramblings in

and off the beaten tourist track, with the addition of a few facts of

history and romance, which could not well be ignored.

The scheme of the book as set forth in the table of contents will

explain this plan far better than any author’s apology; and will also

explain why a more ample guide-book treatment is not given to the cities

and large towns such as Rouen, the ancient Norman capital; Caen, the

capital of Lower Normandy; and Dieppe, and Evreux. All this, and more,

with much information of a varying nature from that set forth herein, is

given by Joanne, Baedeker, and the local guide-books, which in France

are unusually numerous and trustworthy.

These rambles, of the author and artist, extending over some years of

wanderings and residence within the province, are, then, merely the

record of personal experiences, of no very venturesome or exciting

nature, combined with those half-hidden facts which only come to one

through an intimate acquaintance.

To this has been added a certain amount of practical travel-talk, which,

for some inexplicable reason, seems to have been omitted from the

guide-books; and a series of appendices, maps, and plans, which should

furnish the stay-at-home and the traveller alike with those facts of

relative importance in connection with a favoured land often not at hand

or readily accessible. Nor is there any attempt at exhaustiveness. On

the contrary, the matter has been condensed as much as possible.

The illustrations are not so much a complete pictorial survey of this

delightful part of old France, as an effort to depict the varying moods

and characteristics which will best show its contrast to the other

provinces; always with an eye to the picturesque and pleasing aspect of

a landscape, a detail of architecture, or the quaint dress and customs

of the people.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

PART I.

I. INTRODUCTORY 3

II. THE ROADS OF FRANCE 20

III. THE FORESTS OF FRANCE 38

IV. A TRAVEL CHAPTER 49

PART II.

I. THE PROVINCE AND ITS PEOPLE 73

II. NORMAN INDUSTRIES 101

III. MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE 113

IV. THE CHÂTEAUX OF OTHER DAYS 136

V. SOME TYPES OF NORMAN ARCHITECTURE 150

PART III.

I. THE SEINE VALLEY--PREAMBLE 157

II. THE SEINE BELOW ROUEN 171

III. THE SEINE FROM ROUEN TO PONT DE L’ARCHE 203

IV. THE SEINE FROM PONT DE L’ARCHE TO LA

ROCHE-GUYON 229

V. IN THE VALLEY OF THE EURE 262

VI. THE PAYS DE CAUX 286

VII. THE COAST WESTWARD OF THE SEINE 314

VIII. THE COTENTIN 361

IX. THE NORMAN COUNTRY-SIDE 393

APPENDICES 427

INDEX 443

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

MONT ST. MICHEL (_See page 385_) _Frontispiece_

A DILIGENCE 21

ROAD PLACQUES, TOURING CLUB DE FRANCE 28

ROAD SIGNS IN FRANCE 30

A BERLINE DE POSTE 33

EXPLANATION OF THE MAPS OF THE ETAT MAJOR 36

LYONS-LE-FORÊT facing 44

CHAPELLE STE. CATHERINE 47

MAP OF NORMANDY facing 48

A WOMAN OF NORMANDY facing 84

HARVEST-TIME IN NORMANDY facing 104

NORMAN HORSES facing 106

RAISING THE SUGAR-BEET 111

A NORMAN FARMHOUSE facing 128

A PEASANT’S CART 134

DONJON OF ARQUES (DIAGRAM) 138

CHÂTEAU GAILLARD, LES ANDELYS facing 138

ANCIENT MANOR D’ARGOUGES 146

AN INN BY THE SEINE facing 158

CAPE DE LA HÈVE 173

TOWBOATS ON THE SEINE 181

QUAY OF CAUDEBEC-EN-CAUX facing 184

JUMIÈGES facing 188

THE ARMS OF AGNES SOREL 189

A ROUEN CAFÉ 199

ROUEN FROM BON SECOURS facing 210

SOME SEINE SKETCHES 214

PONT DE L’ARCHE facing 222

ANCIENT PLAN OF CHÂTEAU GAILLARD 239

THE SEINE AT PETIT ANDELYS facing 240

COLLEGIATE CHURCH, ECOUIS facing 244

GISORS facing 246

A SEINE HAMLET 249

THE TWO CHÂTEAUX OF LA ROCHE-GUYON facing 260

HÔTEL DU GRAND CERF, LOUVIERS facing 264

GARENNES facing 272

SONG OF THE PAYS DE CAUX (MUSIC) 287

A PIGEON-HOUSE 289

THE HARBOUR OF FÉCAMP facing 294

THE CLIFFS OF YPORT facing 296

TRÉPORT facing 304

A CAUCHOISE OF YVETÔT 312

HONFLEUR facing 318

IN THE CIDER-APPLE COUNTRY 323

A NORMAN CIDER-PRESS facing 326

DIVES-SUR-MER facing 334

TOWER OF GENS D’ARMES 338

CLOISTER OF THE CAPUCIN CONVENT, CAEN facing 340

TINCHEBRAY 343

WALLED FARM 346

PORT-EN-BESSIN 348

OLD WOODEN HOUSES, LISIEUX facing 350

CHÂTEAU OF FALAISE (PLAN) 351

DONJON OF FALAISE facing 352

STREET UNDER THE CHURCH OF THE TRINITY, FALAISE 356

A COTENTINE facing 360

MILLET’S HOME, GRUCHY 365

THE ROCK OF GRANVILLE facing 380

BAY OF MONT ST. MICHEL (MAP) 384

MONT ST. MICHEL IN 1657 385

PORTE DU ROI, MONT ST. MICHEL facing 386

CLOCK TOWER, VIRE 392

IN THE CHURCH OF STE. FOY, CONCHES facing 400

RUGLES 403

THE APIARY OF LA TRAPPE facing 408

CHÂTEAU D’ALENÇON 413

ARGENTAN 416

MARKET-PLACE, NEUBOURG 417

ABBEY OF BEC-HELLOUIN 420

INTERIOR OF ABBEY OF BERNAY 424

THE PROVINCES OF FRANCE (MAP) 427

ITINERARY OF NORMANDY, I. (MAP) 433

ITINERARY OF NORMANDY, II. (MAP) 434

PROFILE MAP OF NORMANDY 435

THE COAST OF NORMANDY (MAP) 436

NATURAL CURIOSITIES OF NORMANDY (MAP) 437

ARCHITECTURAL CURIOSITIES OF NORMANDY (MAP) 438

ROAD MAP, NORMANDY COAST 439

ROAD MAP, THE SEINE VALLEY 440

ROAD MAP, ACROSS NORMANDY 441

PART I.

RAMBLES IN NORMANDY

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY

“One doubles his span of life,” says George Moore, “by knowing well a

country not his own.”

_Un pays aimé_ is a good friend, indeed, to whom one may turn in time of

strife, and none other than Normandy--unless it be Brittany--has proved

itself a more safe and pleasant land for travellers.

When one knows the country well he recognizes many things which it has

in common with England. Its architecture, for one thing, bears a marked

resemblance; for the Norman builders, who erected the magnificent

ecclesiastical edifices in the Seine valley during the middle ages,

were in no small way responsible for many similar works in England.

It is possible to carry the likeness still further, but the author is

not rash enough to do so. The above is doubtless sufficient to awaken

any spirit of contention which might otherwise be latent.

Some one has said that the genuine traveller must be a vagabond; and so

he must, at least to the extent of taking things as he finds them. He

may have other qualities which will endear him to the people with whom

he comes in contact; he may be an artist, an antiquarian, or a mere

singer of songs;--even if he be merely inquisitive, the typical Norman

peasant makes no objection.

One comes to know Normandy best through the real gateway of the Seine,

though not many distinguish between Lower Normandy and Upper Normandy.

Indeed, not every one knows where Normandy leaves off and Brittany

begins, or realizes even the confines of the ancient royal domain of the

kings of France.

Rouen, however, the capital of the ancient province, is, perhaps, better

known by casual travellers from England and America than any other city

in France, save Paris itself. This is as it should be; for no mediæval

city of Europe has more numerous or beautiful shrines left to tell the

story of its past than the Norman metropolis. Some will remember Rouen

as a vast storehouse of architectural treasures, others for its fried

sole and duckling _Rouennais_. _Le vin du pays_, _cidre_, or _calvados_

goes well with either.

How many Englishmen know that it is in the tongue of the ancient Normans

that the British sovereign is implored to approve or reject the laws of

his Parliament? This is beyond dispute, though it appears not to be

generally known; hence it is presumed that the land of the Conqueror is

not wholly an overtilled field for Anglo-Saxon tourists.

The formula for the approval of the laws promulgated by the British

Parliament to-day is: for the laws of finance, “_Le Roy remercie ses bon

sujets, accepte leur benevolence, et ainsi le veult_”; for laws of

general purport, “_Le Roy veult_”; for a law of local interest, “_Soit

fait comme il est desiré._” And finally, when the royal endorsement is

withheld, the formula is, “_Le Roy s’avisera._”

In the House of Commons, only within the last year (1905), the First

Lord of the Treasury rose to abolish this inexplicable usage, the

employment of a foreign tongue. Mr. Balfour replied with a refusal

based on historical tradition: “French was the language of state in

England by right of the Norman Conquest.” It was in 1706 that the House

of Lords forbade the use of French in parliamentary and judicial

debates. The only chief of state in England who used the English tongue

exclusively was Cromwell.

The full significance of the spirit of relationship between Normandy and

England to-day is admirably brought out in the expression of sentiment

which was advanced on the occasion of the Norman fêtes held at Rouen in

the summer of 1904, when the following address was despatched to King

Edward at Buckingham Palace by the society that had the fêtes in charge:

“TO HIS MAJESTY, EDWARD VII.:

“With the deepest joy the ‘Souvenir Normand’ respectfully begs your

Majesty to accept its greetings from the banks of the Seine, the

river whence your glorious ancestor, William, of the stock of

Viking Rollo, set out to found the great British Empire under

Norman kings. We thank Providence for the happy tokens of your

royal efforts to bring about an understanding between the two

Normandies, to secure the peace of the world through the Normans.

May God preserve your Majesty; may God grant long life and

prosperity to the King and Queen of England and to the English

Normandy.”

Normandy is by no means limited to the lower Seine valley, but for the

purposes of the journeys set forth herein it is the gateway by which one

enters. Normandy is the true land of the cider-apple, though there are

other places where, if it is not more abundant, it is of better quality,

or at least it has more of the taste of those little apples which grow

on trees hardly larger than scrub or sagebrush.

All so-called _cidre_ in Normandy is not cider; most of it is _boisson

Normande_. You buy it in little packets, at a comparatively small price,

and add water to suit the taste; only you don’t do it yourself--the

landlord of your hotel does it to suit his taste, or his ideas of good

business.

A little farther south, on the confines of the plain of Beauce, where

Normandy ended and the ancient royal domain began, you get another sort

of _vin du pays_.

“_Du cidre, ou du vin?_” says the _garçon_, or more likely it is a

_bonne_ in these parts. “_Du vin, s’il vous plait_,” you answer,

anxious to see what the new variety may be. When you get it, you find it

a peculiar concoction, resembling the wines of Touraine, Bordeaux,

Burgundy, or the Midi not a whit. Yet it is not _cidre_, though it well

might be from its look, and somewhat from its taste. “_C’est petit

cousin de la piquette et certainement cousin du cidre_,” volunteered an

amiable commercial traveller, in reply to a query.

A small boy was once asked by a patronizing elder what books he used in

studying geography and history, and he answered, curtly, “I use no

books, I go to places.” That boy was very fortunate.

If the traveller is looking for information and incidental pleasure, he

is in a class quite apart from the mere pleasure-seeker; and he ought,

if he would profit from his travels to the fullest extent, to be able to

increase his power of observation as he widens his horizon. He is often

unable to do so, and goes about deploring the absence of pie and

buttered toast.

With visitors to Normandy, the case is in no wise different, in spite of

the fact that the well-known roads from Havre or Dieppe to Paris, via

the Seine valley, are a little better known than any other part of

France.

There are still but two wholly unspoiled spots in all the Seine valley,

Les Andelys and La Roche-Guyon; and it is doubtful if they ever will

become spoiled by tourists within the lives of the present generation.

The railway has only recently come to Les Andelys, and the two pretty

little towns, with their stupendous Château Gaillard, are even now not

popular resorts, though the French, English, and American travellers are

coming yearly in increasing numbers, while La Roche-Guyon--a few miles

farther up the river--is even less well-known.

Mention is made of this simply because it serves to emphasize the fact

that all highroads are not well-worn roads, and that there is a wealth

of unlooked-for attraction to be gathered wherever one may roam.

Of the theorists who have attempted to class the Normans with the Danes,

the least said the better. To rank the Norman-French and the Dane

together, as the pioneers of feudalism, is to ignore the fact that it

was the Normans who were the real civilizers of Britain.

The fact stands boldly forth, however, that the ancestors of Norman

William, who afterward became England’s king, came direct and undiluted

from Scandinavia, while the Norman Frenchman of later times was a

distinct development of his own environment.

It is well enough to claim that the English nobility is descended from

the Norman barons. At any rate it seems plausible, and one may well

agree with those who have said that no Upper House of Lords could ever

have been conceived by the Anglo-Saxons. History demonstrates the fact

that the idea of the English House of Lords, as an appointment by the

Crown, was of Norman conception, and alien to Anglo-Saxon tendencies.

It seems, perhaps, superfluous to reiterate these facts here, but they

are so commonly overlooked by the traveller in France that it is well to

recall that it was the Norman who governed Britain, and not members of

the Saxon hierarchy who afterward became kings of France.

It is with reason that the Norman speaks so fondly of Jersey, Guernsey,

and their sister isles. This is explained, of course, by the

geographers, and one should, perhaps, be charitable, and allow for the

spirit of patriotism, when the Frenchman calls the Channel Islands _Les

Iles Normandes_.

The people there are in many ways as French as French can be. Their laws

and their courts make use of the French tongue, and in most, if not

quite all, respects the common characteristics are French.

The Frenchman himself, too, is often very fond of them, in spite of

their alien allegiance. He calls them “_très curieusement pittoresques,

féodals, sauvages, en même temps que très civilisées, les Iles Normandes

sont un anachronisme, loyales à la couronne anglaise, mais avec une

autonomie une véritable paradoxe de l’histoire politique_.”

From this he generally goes on to say that “they are the Canada of

Europe, a province of France, which continues the life of the French

under the Protectorate of the English.”

The law of Jersey is that of the “_Coutume Normande_.” In Jersey the

King of England reigns not; he is Duc de Normandie; the magistrates

condemn or acquit “_en parler Normand_”; the code is Norman; the

administration Norman. To London the _habitant_ comes only as a

resident, as does a Maltese, or a Canadian.

The _Journal Officiel_ of Jersey is written in Norman. In it one reads

such announcements as follows:

“_A vendre, une vache, ainsi qu’une piano, les deux en bon état._”

Or again:

“_On demande une institutrice, et on céderait un vieux cheval, pour un

prix peu élevé._”

Throughout the islands the sentiment is decidedly republican, or if not

republican is at least Norman.

It is the English king who is duke, but it is the descendant of Rollon

who reigns.

All French _provinciaux_ are patriotic beyond belief to the outsider.

The Gascon is always a Gascon, and the Norman is always a Norman.

They were masterful folks, those early Normans and the Northmen before

them. Rollon, the first Duke of Rouen; Rurik, the first Czar of Russia;

Eric le Roux, the first colonizer of Iceland and Greenland; Leif

Ericson, the first discoverer of America and the colonizer of Vineland.

Of the Normans, Guillaume, son of Herleve, Robert le Diable, and Robert

Guiscard de Hauteville were kings of Sicily. Cabot of Jersey was the

discoverer of Canada, and Jean Cousin of Honfleur was the pilot of

Christopher Columbus. Binot Lipaulmier de Gonneville and Jean Denys were

the discoverers of Newfoundland, of Brazil, and of the Canaries; the

Chevalier de la Salle was the discoverer of the Mississippi; and

Champlain was the founder of Quebec.

Among other great discoverers and navigators are Jean de Bethencourt,

Jean Ango, Duquesne, Dumé, Tourville de Bricqueville, and Dumont

d’Urville.

In letters and art Normandy has held a proud position.

In poesy stand forth the names of Pierre Corneille and his brother

Thomas, Alain Chartier, Olivier Basselin, Jean Marot, Jean Bertand,

Malherbe,--sometimes called “the father of modern poetry,”--Segrais,

Malfiatre, Castel, Madeleine de Scudéry, Benserade, the Abbé de

Chaulieu, Bernardin St. Pierre, Casimir Delavigne, and his rival in

dramatic verse, Ancelot. The historians and savants, Fontenelle, Huét,

and Mezeray, St. Evremond, Dacier, and Burnouf, Armand Carrel, Octave

Feuillet, Louis Bouilhet, Gustave Flaubert, and Guy de Maupassant.

Among others of Normandy’s great names are: Fresnel, the inventor of the

lenticular lanterns for lighthouses, and Conté, the inventor of crayons

bearing his name.

Among the artists are Jouvenet, Restout, Nicolas Poussin, Gericault,

Millet, and Chaplin, and the sculptors, Anguier and Harivel-Durocher,

the composers, Boïeldieu and Auber, and the actor Melingue.

A great man in industry and statesmanship was Richard Waddington, while

still greater and more ancient names, famed in history, round off the

list: William the Conqueror, the Minister Le Tellier, Maréchal de

Coigny, Charlotte Corday, Le Brun, the Duc de Plaisance, and Dupont de

l’Eure.

Canada was discovered and colonized by the Norman fishermen, sailors,

carpenters, and masons of the fleet of Champlain from Honfleur, Dieppe,

and Havre.

The regard which the Norman has for things American has generally been

overlooked. But one need not go so far as to say, as has been done by

Norman writers, that the present cosmopolitan population of America is

made up mostly of the Scotch, the Irish, and the Normans of England and

France--the descendants of the people whom William and his sixty

thousand companions organized in social order.

M. Hector Fabre has said that, while all the colonists of New

France--actually Canada--were not Normans, it was a curious phenomenon

that all the children born in Canada were Norman.

The St. Lawrence, which the French still call the Saint Laurent, is to

them as Norman as the Mississippi or the Seine, and it is reasonable to

presume that they still regard North America as _“La Normandie

Transatlantique.”_

All this is with some justification, if we go back as far as the

Northmen, as the good people of Boston, in America, well know, for it is

they who have supplanted the Genoese admiral by Leif, the son of Eric,

and have even erected a statue to him.

With all this, then, in view, may the writer be pardoned for presuming

that Normandy is not a worn-out touring-ground, nor one of which there

is nothing new to tell. The author wishes to repeat, however, that no

more has been attempted herein than to gather together such romantic and

historical facts as have readily suggested themselves to him and to the

artist, who have each of them lived many months in the very heart of

that old province between Paris and the sea.

Normandy is in many respects the ideal of a delightful tour for those

who would not go further afield, or who wish to know still more of those

conventional touring-grounds of which, truth to tell, but little is

known by those tourists personally conducted in droves, who do a

watering-place in the morning, take their lunch at some riverside

shrine, and get to a cathedral town in time to nibble at its masterpiece

before the hour of opening, which in Normandy, Rouen in particular, is

early.

The great rhomboid which bounds the France of to-day, enclosed, before

the Revolution, thirty-three great provinces, of which, save Guyenne,

Gascogne, Languedoc, and Bretagne, Normandy was the largest, and

certainly the most potently strenuous in the life of the times.

Surrounded by Picardy, the _Ile de France_ (the _domaine-royal_ of the

Capets), by Maine, and Bretagne, and bordered on the north by La Manche,

it was only joined to France by confiscation by Philippe-Auguste, from

Jean Sans-Terre, some two hundred or more years after the advent of the

third race of kings.

To-day it forms the Department of the Lower Seine, Eure, Le Calvados, La

Manche, and a part of L’Orne.

Normandy was once doubtless a land of the Celts, who gradually withdrew

to Bretagne. In time it became a part of Roman Gaul. The part once known

as Neustria was ceded by Charles the Simple in 911 to the Norman

descendants of Rollon, from whom it took its new name, Normandy.

The Dukes of Normandy became, after the conquest, Kings of England, and

in 1154 the Counts of Anjou and of Maine inherited, through Henry

Plantagenet, the throne of England, thus giving that country a line of

Angevine kings.

This strong-growing power of the Norman dukes was broken by

Philippe-Auguste, who conquered Normandy in 1204.

During the Hundred Years’ War the English many times invaded Normandy,

but were finally driven out by the redoubtable Duguesclin.

Henry V. invaded France and took Harfleur in 1415, occupying all of the

north and northwest of France. Charles VII. victoriously entered Rouen,

and at Formigny again achieved the conquest of Normandy by the French.

Louis XI. ceded Normandy to his brother.

Many ancient _fiefs_ were contained in this great province, but the

Comté d’Evreux, Comté d’Alençon, Comté d’Eu, and the Duché de Penthièvre

were united definitely with the kingdom in 1789.

Previous to 1789 the ancient military government of the province was

divided into Rouen, Caen, and Alençon.

By its reconstruction into departments the province lost two

bishoprics, which were not reestablished by the Concordat, Lisieux and

Avranches; and the latter lost, as well, nearly all vestiges of its

former beautiful cathedral, before which Henry II. of England expiated

his crime of the murder of Becket.

The Land of the Conqueror, trod by some of the greatest men the world

has known in mediæval and modern times, has not, even now, in spite of

its associations and accessibility, become a world-worn resort.

Students of art, architecture, and history, and a few tourists from

London, who demand a change of scene in a near-by foreign land, reach

its shores between Whitsun and the August Bank Holiday; but, popular

supposition to the contrary, the traffic receipts of the steamship and

railway companies do not indicate anything like a generous patronage of

this ideal land for a present-day sentimental journey.

Normandy stands to-day as it stood in the middle ages, with many

memorials and reminiscences of its feudal pomp and glory, with here and

there a monument to Rollon, William the Conqueror, or Richard the

Lion-hearted.

As it was three centuries or more ago, teeming with many a monument,

cathedral, abbey, fortress, and château, so Normandy is to-day, except

for the ruin wrought by the bloody hand of revolution. In spirit

Normandy is still mediæval, and here and there are evidences of the even

more ancient Roman or Celtic remains.

History gives the facts, and the guide-books conventional information.

The most that the present work attempts is to recount the results of

more or less intimate acquaintance with the land and its people, now and

again bringing to light certain matters not to be met with in a briefer

sojourn.

CHAPTER II.

THE ROADS OF FRANCE

One of the joys of France to-day, as indeed it ever has been, is travel

by road. The rail has its advantages, but it also has its disadvantages,

whereas the most luxurious traveller by road, even if he be snugly

tucked away in a sixty-horse royal Mercédes, is nothing more than an

itinerant vagabond, and France is the land above all others for the

sport.

As an industry to be developed and fostered, France early recognized the

automobile as a new world-force, and the powers that be were convinced

that the way should be smoothed for those who would, with the poet

Henley, sing the song of speed.

With their inheritance of magnificent roadways, this was not difficult;

for the French and mine host--or his French counterpart, who is really a

more up-to-date individual than he is usually given the credit of

being--rose gallantly to the occasion as soon as they saw the return of

that trade which had grown beautifully less since the passing of the

_malle-poste_ and the _diligence_.

The paternalism of the French government is a wonderful thing. It not

only stands sponsor for the preservation and restoration of historical

monuments,--great churches, châteaux, and the like,--but takes a genial

interest in automobilism as well.

[Illustration: DILIGENCE]

Hills have been levelled and dangerous corners straightened, level

crossings abolished or better guarded; and, where possible, the dread

_caniveaux_--or water-gullies--which cross the roadway here and there

have been filled up. More than all else, the execrable paved road, for

which France has been noted, is fast being done away with. It is perhaps

worth mentioning that the chief magistrate himself is not an

automobilist; which places him in practically a unique position among

the rulers of Europe.

At Bayeux, at Caen, at Lisieux, and at Evreux, in Normandy, one is on

that great national roadway which runs from Paris to Cherbourg through

the heart of the old province. This great roadway is numbered XIII. by

the government, which considers its highways a national property, and is

typical of all others of its class throughout France.

The military roads of France are famous, and automobilists and some

others know their real value as a factor in the prosperity of a nation.

It is not as it was in 1689, when Madame de Sévigné wrote that it took

three days to travel from Paris to Rouen. Now one does it, in an

automobile, in three hours.

From Pont Audemer she wrote a few days later to Madame de Grignan: “We

slept yesterday at Rouen, a dozen leagues away.” Continuing, she said:

“I have seen the most beautiful country in all the world; I have seen

all the charms of the beautiful Seine, and the most agreeable prairies

in the world.... I had known nothing of Normandy before.... I was too

young to appreciate.”

Certainly this is quite true of Normandy, now as then, and to travel by

road will demonstrate it beyond doubt.

The roads in France were, for several centuries after the decline and

fall of the Roman power, in a very dilapidated state, as the result of

simple neglect. Louis XIV., in the latter part of the seventeenth

century, made some good roads in the vicinity of Paris; but it was not

until the end of the eighteenth century (1775) that the real work of

road-making throughout the country began. It was in the time of Napoleon

I. that most of the great national roads, which run through the country

in various directions, were constructed. These roads were made largely

for military purposes, and connect the chief towns and the French

frontiers with Paris.

Besides the leading roads, there are also many other roads varying in

degrees of importance, classed as follows:

(1) _Routes Nationales._ Constructed and maintained by the national

government.

(2) _Routes Départmentales._ Constructed and maintained by the several

departments at national expense.

(3) _Chemins Vicinaux de Grande Communication._ Passing through and

connecting two or more communities, maintained and served by them, aided

by government grant.

(4) _Chemins Vicinaux de Moyenne Communication_. Similar to Class III.,

but of less importance, and maintained at the cost of the people, but

controlled by the department.

(5) _Chemins de Petite Communication._ Of still less importance,

maintained by the communities separately under the supervision of

government engineers.

(6) _Chemins Ruraux._ Roads of the least importance, and wholly

controlled and maintained by the people without any interference from

the government officials.

The art of road-building in France is only excelled by that of the

Romans, and they unfortunately lived before the days of high-speed

traffic and rubber-shod wheels.

The great national roads, usually tree-bordered, average but three in

one hundred grade, the departmental roads four in one hundred, and the

_Chemins de Grande Communication_ five in one hundred. In all except

very hilly districts, where of course there are deviations, this is the

rule.

Napoleon’s idea was that these national highways were essentially a

military means of communication, and as such they were laid out with a

certain regularity and uniformity. Formerly they were largely paved with

stone blocks. Who, among those who have travelled extensively by road

in France, does not know the execrable pavements of the populated

neighbourhoods through which these highways run? To-day these are

largely disappearing. The roads in France suffer more from drought than

from wet. They dry quickly after rain, and, in order to shade and

protect the surface from the dry heat of summer, the planting of trees

on the sides of the roads has been largely adopted. As showing the

importance that has been attached to this matter, royal decrees were

formerly passed, determining the manner of planting, the kind of trees

to be used, and the penalties to be imposed on those who injured them.

Most of the roads of France, even the national roads, cross the railways

on the level instead of over bridges. There are gate-keepers and gates

for the protection of the public. At many of them the signalling is of a

very primitive kind, and yet there are few accidents.

The history of the roads of France is the history of the nation since

the conquest of ancient Gaul by the legions of Cæsar.

The _Voie Auguste_ was the first, and bound Lyons with Italy by the _Col

du Petit St. Bernard_, which to-day is actually National Road No. 90.

Agrippa made Lyons the centre of four great diverging roads; the first

by the valley of the Rhine and the Meuse; the second by Autun to the

port of Genosiacum, to-day Boulogne-sur-mer; the third by Auvergne

toward Bordeaux; and the fourth by the valley of the Rhône to Aix and

Marseilles.

From the decadence of the Western Empire and the invasion of the

Barbarians, these fine roads were practically abandoned. Many good

bridges were destroyed, and the work of road-building ceased completely,

the people finding their way about by mere trails.

With the advent of Christianity in Gaul there was a partial renaissance

of these Roman roads, thanks to great fairs and pilgrimages. The

monastic orders became in a way the parents and protectors of bridges

and roads, with St. Bénèzet at their head, who in the twelfth century

constructed the wonderful Pont d’Avignon, which still stands.

The general system of the present-day national roads follows largely the

old Roman means of communication, as well as those traced by nature,

along the banks of rivers and on the flanks of mountains and in the

valleys lying between. The great national roads of France form a class

by themselves, independent of the departmental and communal roads. They

approximate forty thousand kilometres, and run at a tangent from the

capital itself and between the chief cities of the eighty odd

departments which make up modern France.

In general, the designation of the road, its number, and classification

are indicated on the kilometre marks with which every important road in

France is marked.

The national roads, having their origin at Paris, have their distances

marked from Notre Dame, and certain of the secondary cities are taken

for the point of departure of other great roads.

A ministerial decree, put forth in 1853, decided that the national roads

should have their distances marked from their entrance into each

department, a regulation which has been followed nearly everywhere,

except that distances are still reckoned from Paris on most of the great

highroads of Normandy and Brittany.

Guide-posts are placed at all important cross-roads and _pattes-d’oie_

(a goose-foot, literally).

An iron plaque, painted white and blue, beside the road, shows without

any possibility of mistake the commune in which it is situated, the

next important place in either direction, and frequently the next town

of considerable proportions, even though it may be half a hundred

kilometres distant.

[Illustration: _Road Plaques_

_Touring Club de France_]

French roads are indeed wonderfully well marked; and these little blue

and white plaques, put up by the roadside or fastened on the wall of

some dwelling at the entrance or the exit of a village or town, must

number hundreds of thousands.

In these days of fast-rushing automobiles a demand has sprung up for a

more striking and legible series of special sign-boards along certain

roads, in order that he who runs may read. And so the Touring Club of

France, on the great road which runs from Paris through Normandy, to

Havre and Dieppe, for instance, has erected a series of large-lettered

and abbreviated sign-boards, which are all that could be desired.

Besides these, there are other enigmatical symbols and signs erected by

paternal societies of road users which will strike a stranger dumb with

conjecture as to what they may mean.

They are all essentially practical, however, as the following tableau

will show. It is very important indeed for an automobilist or other road

user to know that a railway-gate (like enough to be shut) awaits him

around a sharp curve, or that a steep hill is hidden just behind a bank

of trees.

[Illustration: Descente rapide. Montée. Passage à niveau.

Virage à droite. Virage à gauche. Mauvais pavé.

Virage avec montée. Virage avec descente. Rails en saillie sur route.

Dos d’âne. Caniveau. Passage en dessous.

Croisement dangereux. Descente sinueuse avec mauvais virages. Village.

_Road Signs_

_in France_]

Still another class of signs met with by road users in France is most

helpful. They, too, shoot out a warning which one may read as he

rushes by at high speed; printed in great staring letters, one, two, or

three words which one dare not, if he values his life, ignore.

Truly one who goes astray or contravenes any law of the road in France

has only himself to blame.

The chief national roads crossing Normandy are as follows:

No. 192 { Paris to Havre, by the right bank of the

and { Seine, passing Poissy, Melun, La Roche-Guyon,

“ 14. { Les Andelys, and Rouen.

“ 190. {Paris to Rouen and Honfleur, by the left

“ 182. { bank of the Seine.

“ 180. {

“ 13. Paris to Cherbourg, via Evreux and Caen.

“ 26. Paris to Fécamp by Yvetot.

“ 14. Paris to Dieppe.

“ 14, _bis._ Paris to Tréport.

“ 155. Paris to St. Malo, via Mayenne.

“ 24, _bis._ Paris to Granville by Verneuil.

“ 13 {

and { Paris to Coutances by Bayeux and St. Lô.

“ 172. {

“ 10. {

“ 12. {

“ 24. { Paris to Vannes, via Ploërmel.

“ 166. {

“ 10. {

“ 12. { Paris to Quimper, via Rennes and Lorient.

“ 24. {

“ 165. {

“ 10. { Paris to Brest, via Versailles, Alençon,

“ 12. { Laval, Rennes, and St. Brieuc.

“ 10. { Paris to Nantes and Paimbœuf, via Versailles,

“ 23. { Chartres, Le Mans, Angers, and

{ Nantes.

After the fall of the Roman Empire the magnificent roadways which

threaded Gaul in every direction all but disappeared, and for a time the

horse was employed only with the saddle, the more or less indolent

nobles travelling mostly by vehicles drawn by oxen.

By the middle ages the horse had come to be admired as a noble animal by

virtue of his usefulness in war; but the routes of communication were

hardly more than simple tracks and by no means replaced the great

rivers, which Pascal had called “_ces chemins qui marchent_.” Indeed the

“_coches d’eau_” had not entirely disappeared from the waterways of

France until 1830.

The first carriages at all approaching the modern fashion were imported

from Italy in the sixteenth century, doubtless by the Medicis. In 1550

there were three, only, in Paris, but under Louis XIV. the roads became

more carefully guarded and increased greatly in number.

The great _carrosses_ and _calèches_ of the early days were ponderous

affairs, a _calèche_ known as a _litière_, the precursor of the modern

sleeping-car, it would seem, having a weight of 2,500 kilos.

The following lines well describe it:

“C’est un embarras étrange,

Qu’un grand carrosse dans la fange,

C’est presque un village roulant....”

[Illustration: BERLINE _de_ POSTE.]

Under Louis XV. the _carrosse_ became lighter and the chaise on two

wheels came in. Then followed _cabriolets_, _berlines_, and the

_poste-chaise_, and finally the _malle-poste_ and the _diligence_.

The most familiar of all, to those of a few generations ago, and to

readers of travel literature, is the _diligence_.

These great carriages apparently had a most respectable lease of life,

many having been in service for a great many years. To-day they have

mostly disappeared, and in Normandy and Brittany practically exist not

at all, so far as the tourist traveller is concerned, though once and

again they may be useful on a cross-country road in order to connect

with the railroad.

It was only as late as 1760, however, that a public service of these

diligences was established. At that time the coaches left Paris on

stated days and travelled with unwonted regularity. The diligence to

Rennes, in the heart of Bretagne, was timed for four days’ travelling,

and five days was employed for the journey to the old Breton capital of

Nantes, on the Loire.

These great carriages, commonly known as “Royales,” were hung on springs

and drawn by eight horses. They did not travel as quickly as the

_malle-poste_, but their rates were somewhat less, and they performed

the common service before the advent of steam and the rail.

There was nothing very luxurious or grand about them, but they were

majestic and picturesque, and they sometimes carried a load, including

passengers and luggage, of five thousand kilos.

Closely allied with roads is the general topography of a country as

shown by its maps.

No country has such a marvellous series of maps of its soil as has

France. The maps of the Minister of the Interior and the _Etat Major_

are wonders of the art, and no traveller in Normandy or Brittany, or

indeed any other part of France, should be without them. They are

obtainable at any bookseller’s in a large town, and the prices are

remarkably low; ranging from thirty centimes a sheet for the map of the

_Etat Major_, printed only in black, to eighty centimes a sheet for the

map of the Minister of the Interior, printed in colours.

The following conventional signs will show the extreme practicability of

the maps of the _Etat Major_, which are made on four different scales,

the most useful being that of 1-80,000. The maps of the Minister of the

Interior are made only on the scale of 1-100,000.

Now and then on these great highroads of France, of which those of

Normandy and Brittany are representative, one passes a headquarters or a

barracks of the _gendarmerie_, those servitors of the law, the national

police, an organization which grew up out of the men-at-arms or _gens

d’armes_ of Charles VII.

These great barracks are veritable monasteries, where the religion of

faithful duty to the public and the nation reigns supreme. One never

passes one of these impressive establishments without a full

appreciation of the motto of the knightly Bayard, so frequently graven

over their doors: “_Sans peur et sans reproche_.”

[Illustration: _Explanation of the Maps of the Etat Major_]

The Assembly, in 1790, first instituted this almost perfectly organized

police force, and Napoleon himself thought so highly of them that he

wrote to Berthier in 1812: “Take not the police with you, but conserve

them for the guarding of the country-side. Two or three hundred soldiers

are as nothing, but two or three hundred police will assure the

tranquillity and good order of the people at large.”

To-day, in times of peace, twenty-seven legions of police assure the

security of the country-side; an effective force of about twenty-five

thousand men and 725 officers, of whom a comparative few only are

mounted.

A colonel or a lieutenant-colonel is placed at the head of a legion, a

company being allotted to each department. The company is commanded by a

major; then comes the district, placed under the orders of a captain or

a lieutenant; the section, commanded by a junior officer; and finally a

squad with a non-commissioned officer or corporal at its head.

Independent of crime and its details, the police are responsible as well

for the maintenance of order in general.

The pay for all this, it is to be regretfully noted, is not at all

commensurate. An unmounted policeman receives but 2 _fr._ 81 _c._ per

day, and if he is mounted but 3 _fr._ 23 _c._ per day.

CHAPTER III.

THE FORESTS OF FRANCE

The forests of France are a source of never-ending interest and pride to

the Frenchman, of whatever station in life.

They are admirably preserved and cared for, and a paternal ministerial

department guards them as jealously as a fond mother guards her

children.

No cutting of trees is allowed, except according to a prescribed plan;

and, when a new road is cut through,--and those superlative roadways of

France run straight as the crow flies through many of the finest forest

tracts,--as likely as not an old one is replanted.

The process of replanting goes on from day to day, and one sees no

depleted forests of a former time, which are to-day a graveyard of bare

stumps.

If there is any regulation as to tree-planting in these great forests,

it would seem, to a casual observer, to be that where one tree has grown

before two are to be made grow in its place.

There is a popular regard among all travellers in France for

Fontainebleau, Versailles, and perhaps Chantilly, but there are other

tree-grown areas, quite as charming, little known to the general

traveller: Rambouillet, for instance, and Villers-Cotterets, of which

Dumas writes so graphically in “The Wolf Leader.”

Normandy has more than its share of these splendid forests, some of them

of great extent and charm. Indeed, the forest domain of Lyons, in Upper

Normandy, one of the most extensive in all France, is literally covered

with great beeches and oaks, surrounding small towns and hamlets, and an

occasional ruined château or abbey, which makes a sojourn within its

confines most enjoyable to all lovers of outdoor life.

Surrounding the old Norman capital of Rouen are five great tracts which

serve the inhabitants of that now great commercial city as a summer

playground greatly appreciated.

Game of various sorts still exists; deer in plenty, apparently, together

with smaller kinds; and now and then one will hear tales of bears, which

are, however, almost unbelievable.

In some regions--the forests of Louviers, for instance--the wild boar

still exists. The chase for the wild boar, with the huntsmen following

somewhat after the old custom (with a horn-blower, who is most

theatrical in his get-up, and his followers, armed with lances and pikes

in quite old-time fashion), is, as may be imagined, a most novel sight.

The forests of Roumare and Mauny, occupying the two peninsulas formed by

the winding Seine just below Rouen, are remarkable, and are like nothing

else except the other forests in France.

There are fine roadways crossing and recrossing in all directions,

beautifully graded, with overhanging oaks and beeches, and as well kept

as a city boulevard.

Deer are still abundant, and the whole impression which one receives is

that of a genuine wildwood, and not an artificial preserve.

In the picturesque forest of Roumare is hidden away the tiny village of

Genetey, which has for an attraction, besides its own delightful

situation, an ancient _Maison de Templiers_ of the thirteenth century, a

well of great depth, and a chapel to St. Gargon, of the sixteenth

century, built in wood, with some fine sculptures and paintings, which

was at one time a favourite place for pious pilgrims from Rouen.

Not far away is Henouville, with a sixteenth-century church, lighted by

five great windows of extraordinary proportions. The choir encloses the

remains of Legendre, the almoner of Louis XIII., who was curé of

Henouville, and whose fame as a horticulturist was as great as that

brought him by his official position.

The near-by Château du Belley and its domain is now turned into a farm.

La Fontaine, a hamlet situated directly on the Seine bank, is

overshadowed by a series of high rocks of most fantastic form, known as

the chair, or pulpit, of Gargantua.

The forest of La Londe, of 2,154 hectares, on the opposite bank of the

Seine from Rouen, is a remarkable tract of woodland, its oaks and

beeches quite reminiscent of Fontainebleau. The trees as a whole are the

most ancient and grand of those of any of the forests of Normandy. Two

which have been given names are known respectively as _Bel-Arsène_, a

magnificent beech of eleven great branches, planted in 1773, and the

_Chêne de la Côte Rôtie_, supposed to have the ripe old age of 450

years; and it looks its age.

The forest of Londe is what the French geographer would describe as

_pittoresque et accidentée_. It is all this would lead one to infer;

and, together with the forest of the Rouvray, exceeds any other in

Normandy, except the forest domain of Lyons.

At the crossing of the Grésil road is the _Chêne-à-la-Bosse_, having a

circumference of three and a half metres; and, near by, one sees the

_Hêtre-à-l’Image_, a great beech of fantastic form.

Amid a savage and entirely unspoiled grandeur is a series of caves and

grottoes, of themselves of no great interest, but delightfully

environed.

Near Elbeuf, on the edge of the forest of Londe, are the _Roches

d’Orival_, a series of rock-cut grottoes and caverns,--a little known

spot to the majority of travellers in the Seine valley. Practically the

formation begins at Elbeuf itself, onward toward Rouen, by the route

which follows the highroad to the Norman capital via _Grand Couronne_.

At Port du Gravier, on the bank of the Seine, is a sixteenth-century

chapel cut in the rock, like its brethren or sisters at St. Adrien on

the opposite bank, and at Haute Isle, just above Vernon.

At _Roche-Foulon_ are numerous rock-caverns still inhabited, and at the

_Roche du Pignon_ begins a series of curiously weathered and crumbled

rocks, most weird and bizarre.

On a neighbouring hill are the ruins of Château Fouet, another of those

many riverside fortresses attributed to Richard Cœur de Lion.

The forest domain of Lyons is the finest beech-wood in all France, and

its 10,614 hectares (rather more than thirty thousand acres) was in the

middle ages the favourite hunting-ground of the Dukes of Normandy. It is

the most ample of all the forests of Normandy.

There are at least three trips which forest-lovers should take if they

come to the charming little woodland village of Lyons-le-Forêt. It will

take quite two days to cover them, and the general tourist may not have

sufficient time to spare. Still, if he is so inclined, and wants to know

what a really magnificent French forest is like to-day, before it has

become spoiled and overrun (as is Fontainebleau), this is the place to

enjoy it to the full.

The old Château of Lyons, and the tiny hamlets of Taisniers, Hogues,

Héron, and the feudal ruins of Malvoisine, are a great source of

pleasure to those who have become jaded with the rush of cities and

towns.

The château of the Marquis de Pommereu d’Aligré, in the valley of the

Héron, can be seen and visited, or rather the park may be (the park and

château together are only thrown open to the public on the _fête

patronale_--the first Sunday of September). Croissy-sur-Andelle is

another forest village, and the Val St. Pierre, a sort of dry river-bed

carpeted with a thick undergrowth, is quite as fine as anything of the

kind at Fontainebleau.

At Petit Val is a magnificent beech five and a half metres in

circumference, and supposed to be four hundred years old.

At Le Tronquay there is a great school, over whose entrance doorway one

reads on a plaque that it is--

“_Commemorative de la délivrance des paroissiens du Tronquay admis à

porter la fierté de St. Romain de Rouen, le 5 mai, jour de l’ascencion,

de l’anne 1644._”

At the end of a double row of great firs, lie the ruins of the Château

de Richbourg, built by Charles IX.

La Fenille is a small market-town, quite within the forest, where one

may get luncheon for the modest price of two francs, cider and coffee

included, if he wanders so far from Lyons-le-Forêt as this.

[Illustration: _Lyons-le-Forêt_]

Here there are the remains of some of the dungeons and the brick walls

of a château built by Philippe-le-Bel. The tiny church dates from

1293, and in the cemetery is a sculptured cross of the time of Henri IV.

In the canton of Catelier are found the most remarkable trees of the

whole forest. One great trunk alone, which was recently cut down, gave

over thirty _stères_ of wood; which means nothing as a mere statement,

but which looked, as it was piled by the roadside, to be a mass of

timber great enough to fill the hold of a ship.

At the source of the Levrière, a limpid forest stream, is the

manor-house of the Fontaine du Houx, of the sixteenth century, belonging

to a M. Hebert. If one is diplomatic he may get permission to enter to

view the bedroom of Agnes Sorel, that royal favourite of other days

whose reputation is a bit higher than those of some of her

contemporaries.

The doorkeeper will gladly accept a tip, so the visitor need have no

hesitancy in making the demand, though he will have to choose his words.

The old manor is a fine representative of a mediæval house, surrounded

by a great moat and garnished with a series of turrets. The chief

features, outside of the apartment in which slept the gentle Agnes, are

a fine staircase, a tower with a drawbridge over the moat, and, in the

vestibule, a fine tapestry from the Château de la Haie.

The Château de Fleury, at Fleury la Forêt, is a fine structure, dating

from 1645, and at Croix-Mesnil is the Château Louis XIII., which formed

the dwelling of the grand master of rivers and forests in that monarch’s

time.

By no means are these all of the interesting attractions of this great

national forest, but it ought to be sufficient to inspire the true

forest-lover to seek out other beauties for himself.

The road of the _Gros Chêne_, called also the “Chêne de la Londe,” and

“l’Homme Mort,” and aged perhaps four hundred years, leads to the

Carrefour des Quatre Cantons, near which is the Chapelle Ste. Catherine;

a famous place of pilgrimage where, according to popular belief, any

young girl who brings a bouquet to the shrine, and says a mass, is

assured of marrying within a year. After this there is another act of

devotion to be gone through--or is it a superstition in this case? She

must bring thither the pins from her marriage veil.

The Abbey of Mortemer, founded in 1134 by the monks of the order of

Citeux, is another architectural monument with a remarkably picturesque

woodland site. The living-rooms (seventeenth century) have been

restored, but the church, of three centuries before, is quite in a

ruinous condition, though a great open-ended transept remains, as well

as a fine rose window and some of the beautifully arched walls of the

old cloister.

[Illustration: _Chapelle Ste. Catherine_]

The Ferme des Fiefs, and the Château de Rosay, situated in a charming

park, where the Lieure falls in a series of tiny cascades, about

completes the list of the forest’s attractions; but its hidden beauties

and yet undiscovered charms are many.

Perhaps some day the forest domain of Lyons will have an artist colony,

or a number of them, such as are found in the encircling villages of the

forest of Fontainebleau, but at present there are none, though it is

belief of the writer that the aspect of nature unspoiled is far better

here than at the more popular Fontainebleau.

[Illustration: _Map of Normandy_]

CHAPTER IV.

A TRAVEL CHAPTER

To those upon whom has fallen the desire to travel amid historic sights

and scenes, no part of France offers so much that is so accessible, so

economically covered, or as interesting as the coasts and plains and

river valleys of Normandy.

If possible they should lay out their journey beforehand, and if time

presses make a tour that shall comprise some one distinct region only;

as the Seine valley from Havre to La Roche-Guyon; the coast from Tréport

to Caen, or even Granville, or Mont St. Michel; or following a line

which runs more inland from Rouen by Lisieux, Falaise, and the valley of

the Orne, to the famous Mont on the border of Brittany. They may indeed

combine this last with a little tour which should take in the north

Breton coast and even cross to the Channel Isles; but if it is the

Normandy coast or the Norman country-side of the Seine valley which they

desire to know fully, and if time be limited, they should confine

themselves to either one route or the other.

Normandy divides itself topographically into the three itineraries

mentioned: “The Coast,” “The Seine Valley,” and the “Inland Route.” They

may be combined readily enough, or they may be taken separately; but to

nibble a bit at one, a little at another, and still less at a third, and

then rush on to Paris and its distractions, or to some seaside place

where brass bands and a casino form the principal attractions, is not

the way to have an intimate, personal, and wholly delightful experience

of “la belle Normandie.”

A skeleton plan of each of these itineraries will be found, and further

details of a practical nature also, elsewhere in this book.

One’s expenses may be what they will. By rail, twelve to fifteen francs

a day will amply pay the bill, and by road, on bicycle or automobile,

they can be made to approximate as much or as little as one’s tastes

demand; nor will the quality of the accommodation and fare vary to an

appreciable degree in either case. Even the automobilist with his

sixty-horse Mercédes, while he may be suspected of being a millionaire

American or an English lord, will not necessarily be adjudged so, and

will be charged according to the tariff of the “Touring Club,” or other

organization of which he may be a member. If he demands superior

accommodation, a sitting-room as well as a bedroom, or a fire and a hot

bath, he will pay extra for that, as well as for the _vin supérieur_

which he may wish instead of the _ordinaire_ of the table d’hôte, or the

_café_ which he drinks after his meal.

The old simile still holds good. The franc in France will usually

purchase the value of a shilling in England. There is not much

difference with respect to one shilling; but an appalling sum in a land

of cheap travel, when one has let a thousand of them pass through his

hands.

The leading hotels of the great towns and cities of Rouen, Havre, and

Cherbourg rise almost to the height of the charges of those of the

French capital itself; and those of Trouville-Deauville or Dieppe to

perhaps even higher proportions, if one requires the best accommodation.

The true peripatetic philosopher, however, will have naught to do with

these, but will seek out for himself--unless some one posts him

beforehand--such humble, though excellent inns as the “Trois Marchands,”

or the “Mouton d’Argent.”

These are the real hotels of the country, where one lives bountifully

for six to eight francs a day, and eats at the table d’hôte with an

informative commercial traveller, or a keenly mindful small landholder

of the country-side, who, if it is market-day, will as like as not be

dressed in a black blouse.

One criticism may justly be made of many of the hotels in Normandy,

though mostly this refers only to such tourist establishments as one

finds at Dieppe or Trouville. It is that the table wine is often charged

for at two francs a bottle, while it ought to be served without extra

charge, and is elsewhere in France. In many commercial hotels this is

not the custom, but too frequently it is so, and, considering that the

_hôteliers_ of Normandy buy their wine in a much more favourable market,

by reason of its cheap transport by sea, than their brethren of Lozère

or the Cantal, where wine is never thought of as an extra, it seems

somewhat of an imposition to one who knows his France well.

The beef and mutton of Normandy is of most excellent quality, coming

from fine animals who are only used if they are in the best condition.

This statement is made with a knowledge based upon some years’

residence, to allay the all too prevalent opinion that French meat is

of inferior quality, and is only palatable because well disguised in the

cooking. This is a fetish which ought long ago to have been burned. The

fish one gets in Normandy is always fresh and remarkably varied, as well

as the shell-fish (_crevettes_, meaning usually shrimp or prawns). The

oysters are of course famous, for no one ever heard of a Courseulles

bivalve which had typhoid tendencies.

The railway has proved a great civilizer in France, and everywhere is

found a system of communicating lines which are almost perfect.

The great artery of the Western Railroad reaches out through all

Normandy and Brittany, and its trunk lines to Dieppe, Havre, Cherbourg,

and Brest leave nothing to be desired in the way of appointments and

expedition.

The only objection, that the economical traveller can justify, is that

second and third class tickets are often not accepted for distances

under a hundred or a hundred and fifty kilometres; and, accordingly, he

is forced to wait the accommodation train, which, truth to tell, is not

even a little brother of the express-train. If it is any relation at

all, it is a stepchild merely.

At all events, the railway service throughout France is well

systematized and efficient, and Ruskin’s diatribe against railways in

general was most unholy. Lest it may have been forgotten, as many of his

ramblings have, and should be, it is repeated here. “Railways are to me

the loathsomest form of devilry now extant, animated and deliberate

earthquakes” (we know what he thought of bicycles, and we wonder with

fear what may have been his strictures on the automobile had he lived a

few years longer), “destructive of all wise, social habits and possible

natural beauty, carriages of damned souls on the ridges of their own

graves.” This, from a prophet and a seer, makes one thank Heaven the

tribe _was_ blind.

Travel by rail is a simple and convenient process in Normandy, as indeed

it is in all France. There is no missing of trains at lonesome

junctions, and the time-tables are admirably and lucidly planned.

In the larger towns all the stations have a bureau of information which

will smooth the way for the traveller if he will not take it upon

himself to consult that almost perfect series of railway time-tables

found in every café and hotel throughout France. He registers his

baggage and gets a receipt for it, like the “checks” of the American

railways, by paying two sous; or he may send it by express (not by

freight, for there is too little difference in price), or as

unaccompanied baggage, which will ensure its being forwarded by the

first passenger-train, and at a most reasonable charge.

The economical way of travelling in France, and Normandy in particular,

is third class; and the carriages, while bare and hard-seated, are

thoroughly warmed in winter, and are as clean as those of their kind

anywhere; perhaps more so than in England and America, where the stuffy

cushions harbour much dirt and other objectionable things.

Second class very nearly approaches the first class in point of price,

and is very nearly as luxurious; while first class itself carries with

it comparative exclusiveness at proportionately high charges.

More important, to the earnest and conscientious traveller, is the fact

that often, for short distances between near-by places, a convenient

train will be found not to carry third-class passengers; and to other

places, a little less widely separated, not even second class; although

third and second class passengers are carried by the same train for

longer distances. This is about the only inconvenience one suffers from

French railways, and makes necessary a careful survey of the

time-table, where the idiosyncrasies of individual trains are clearly

marked.

Excursion trains of whatever class are decidedly to be avoided. They

depart and return from Paris, Trouville, Dieppe, or some other popular

terminus at most inconveniently uncomfortable hours, and are invariably

overcrowded and not especially cheap.

The attractions of Normandy for the traveller are so many and varied

that it would be practically impossible to embrace them all in any one

itinerary without extending its limit of time beyond that at the

disposal of most travellers.

From Tréport, on the borders of Picardy, to Arromanches, near Bayeux, is

an almost uninterrupted line of little and big seashore towns whose

chief industry consists of catering to summer visitors.

From Arromanches to Mont St. Michel, the seaside resorts are not so

crowded, and are therefore the more enjoyable, unless one demands the

distractions of great hotels, golf-links, and tea-rooms.

In the Seine valley, beginning with La Roche-Guyon, on the borders of

the ancient royal domain, down to the mouth of the mighty river at

Havre, is one continuous panorama of delightful large and small towns,

not nearly so well known as one might suppose. Vernon with its

tree-bordered quays; Giverny, and its artists colony; Les Andelys with

their “saucy castle” built by Richard Cœur de Lion; Pont de l’Arche

with the florid Gothic church dedicated to Our Lady of the Arts; the

riverside resorts above Rouen; Elbeuf with its busy factories, but

picturesque and historic withal; Rouen, the ancient Norman capital; La

Bouille-Molineux; the great abbeys of Jumièges, St. Wandrille and St.

Georges de Boscherville; Caudebec-en-Caux; Lillebonne; Harfleur;

Honfleur, and Havre form a compelling array of sights and scenes which

are quite irresistible.

On the northeastern coast are Etretat, famed of artists of generations

ago; Fécamp with the associations of its ancient abbey; Dieppe; the

Petites Dalles; St. Valery-en-Caux; Eu with its château; and Tréport and

its attendant little seashore villages.

Inland, and southward, through the Pays-de-Caux, are Lyons-le-Forêt,

which, as its name bespeaks, is a little forest-surrounded town, quite

unworldly, and eight kilometres from a railway; Gournay;

Forges-les-Eaux, a decayed seaport town; Gisors; and the charming

little villages of the valleys of the Andelle and the Ept.

Follow up the Eure from its juncture with the Seine at the Pont de

l’Arche, and one enters quite another region, quite different from that

on the other side of the Seine.

The chief towns are Louviers, a busy cloth-manufacturing centre with an

art treasure of the first rank in its beautifully flamboyant church; and

Evreux with its bizarre cathedral, headquarters of the Department of the

Eure; while northward and westward, by Conches and Beaumont-le-Roger to

Caen and Bayeux, lies a wonderful country of picturesque and historic

towns, such as Lisieux; Bernay, famous for its horse-fair; Falaise, the

birthplace of William the Conqueror; and Dives, where he set sail for

England’s shores,--names which will awaken memories of the past in a

most vivid fashion.

Westward of the valley of the Orne lies the Cotentin, with the cathedral

towns of Avranches, Coutances, and St. Lô, and Mont St. Michel, which of

itself is a sort of boundary stone between Normandy and Brittany.

The monumental curiosities of the province and the natural attractions

are all noted in the plans which are here given; and from them, and

this descriptive outline, one should be able to map out for himself a

tour most suitable to correspond to his inclinations.

There is this much to say of Normandy, in addition: it is the most

abundantly supplied of all the ancient French provinces with artistic

and natural sights and curiosities, and above all is compact and

accessible.

There is one real regret that will strike one with regard to the

journeyings in the valley of the Seine. There is no way of making the

trip by water above Rouen. From Havre to Rouen, one may journey in a day

on a little steamer, a most enjoyable trip; and at Rouen one finds the

little “fly-boats,”--reminiscent of the _bateaux mouches_ of

Paris,--which will take one for a half a dozen miles in either direction

for astonishingly low fares.

Pont de l’Arche, however, and Muids, and that most picturesquely

situated of all northern French towns, Les Andelys, onward to Tosny, and

still up-river, by Port Mort to Vernon, there is no communication by

water for the passenger, though the great barges and canal-boats pass

and repass a given point scores of times in a day, carrying coal, wine,

cotton, and other merchandise, through the very finest scenery of the

Seine.

A few words on the French language are inevitable with every author of a

book of French travel, and so they are given here. There is a current

idea that English is the language for making one’s way about. Try it in

Normandy or Brittany, in the average automobile garage, the post-office,

or the railway station, or on the custodian of some great church or

château, and you will prove its fallacy.

At Rouen, Havre, or Dieppe, and at the great tourist hotels it is

different; but in the open country seldom, if ever, will you come across

one who can speak or understand a single word of English; save an

occasional _chauffeur_ who may have seen service on some titled person’s

motor-car in England, and knows “all right,” “pretty soon,” and “go

ahead” to perfection.

The writer notes two exceptions. Doubtless there may be others.

At the quaint little Seine-side town of Vetheuil, near La Roche-Guyon,

which fits snugly in the southeast corner of Normandy, one enters the

tobacco-shop to buy a picture post-card, perhaps, of its quaint little

church, so loved by artists, and there he will find an unassuming little

man who retails tobacco to the natives and souvenir postal cards to

strangers while chatting glibly in either tongue.

At the Hôtel Bellevue in Les Andelys is a waitress who speaks excellent

English; though you may be a guest of the house for months and talk in

English daily with your artist-neighbour across the table, and not know

that she understands a word of what you say,--which surely indicates

great strength of mind on the part of this estimable woman, though the

circumstance has proved embarrassing.

In this connection it is curious to note the influx of English words

into the Gallic tongue. Most of these words have been taken up by the

world of sport and fashion, and have not yet reached the common people.

One can, if he is ingenious, carry on quite a conversation with a young

man about town, whom one may meet at table d’hôte or at a café, either

at the capital or in the larger towns, without knowing a word of French,

and without his realizing that he knows English.

“_Gentleman_,” “_tennis_,” and “_golf_”; “_yacht_,” “_yachting_,” and

“_mail-coach_”; “_garden-party_,” “_handicap_,” and “_jockey_,”--all

these are equally well-known and understood of the modern Frenchman.

“_Very smart_” is heard once and again of a “_swell_” turnout drawn by

a pair of “_high-steppers_.”

For clothing the Frenchman of fashion affects “_waterproofs_,”

“_snow-boots_,” “_leggings_,” and “_knickerbockers_,” and he travels in

a “_sleeping-car_” when he can afford their outrageously high charges.

When it comes to his menu--more’s the pity--he too often affects the

“_mutton-chop_” and the “_beefsteak_” in the “_grill-room_” of a

“_music-hall_.”

The fact is only mentioned here as showing a widespread affectation,

which, in a former day, was much more confined and restricted.

In the wine country, in Touraine and on the coast, you will hear the

“_black rot_” talked of, and in Normandy, at Havre, you will see a crowd

of “_dockers_” discussing vehemently--as only Normans can--the latest

“_lockout_.”

All this, say the discerning French, is a madness that can be cured.

“_Allons, parlons français!_” that is the remedy; and matters have even

gone so far as to form an association which should propagate the French

tongue to the entire exclusion of the foreign, in the same way as there

is a patriotic alliance to prevent the “_invasion étrangère_.”

The Norman patois is, perhaps, no more strange than the patois of other

parts of France. At any rate it is not so difficult to understand as

the Breton tongue, which is only possible to a Welshman--and his numbers

are few.

The Parisians who frequent Trouville revile the patois of Normandy; but

then the Parisian does not admit that any one speaks the real French but

he and his fellows. In Touraine they claim the same for their own

capital.

Henry Moisy claims the existence, in the Norman’s common speech of

to-day, of more than five thousand words which are foreign to the French

language.

The Normandy patois, however, is exceedingly amusing and apropos. The

author has been told when hurrying down a country road to the railway

that there is plenty of time; the locomotive “hasn’t laughed yet,”

meaning it had not whistled. Again at table d’hôte, when one has arrived

late, and there remains only one small fish for two persons, you may be

told that you will have to put up with “_œufs à la coque_” instead,

as there is only “_une souris à treize chats_.” It is not an elegant

expression, but it is characteristic.

Victor Hugo had the following to say concerning Norman French:

“Oh, you brave Normans! know you that your patois is venerable and

sacred. It is a flower which sprang from the same root as the French.

“Your patois has left its impress upon the speech of England, Sicily,

and Judea, at London, Naples, and at the tomb of Christ. To lose your

speech is to lose your nationality, therefore, in preserving your idiom

you are preserving your patriotism.”

“Yes, your patois is venerable and your first poet was the first of

_poètes français_:

“Je di e dirai ke je suis

Wace de Jersuis.”

The following compilation of Norman idioms shows many curious and

characteristic expressions. The definitions are given in French, simply

because of the fact that many of them would quite lose their point in

translation.

_Amuseux._--Fainéant, qui muse: “C’est pas un mauvais homme,

seulement il est un brin amuseux.”

_Annuyt._--Aujourd’hui. “J’aime mieux annuyt qu’à demain.”

_Andouille à treize quiens_ (chiens).--Petit héritage pour beaucoup

d’héritiers; on dit aussi “une souris à treize cats (chats).”

_Apanage._--Possession embarrassante; “Ma chère, c’est tout un

apanage de maison à tenir.”

_Chibras._--Paquet, monceau, fouillis, amas de choses en désordre.

Se trouve dans Rabelais.

_Quant et._--En compagnie de, “j’m’en vais à quant et té.”

_A queutée._--Rangée à la queue leu leu, “une à queutée de monde.”

_Assemblée._--Fête villageoise.

_Assiette faîtée._--Assiette dont le contenu s’élève au-dessus, en

faîte, littéralement en forme de faîte: “C’est un faim-vallier, il

ne mange que par assiettes faîtées.”

_Du feur._--Fourrage, vieux mot d’origine Scandinave, d’où vient le

fourrier.

_D’s’horains._--Mot honfleurais; dans l’ancien langage des marins

de Honneur, on appelait des _horains_ les plus gros câbles des

navires. Par image, le mot est entré et resté dans le langage

usuel, pour amarre. D’où la très jolie locution honfleuraise, dont

quelques vieilles gens font encore usage, sans trop en savoir le

vrai sens original. “Il a queuq’horain.” Il est amoureux, il a

quelques fortes attaches.

Et simplement: “Chacun a ses horains.”--Chacun a ses habitudes (en

mauvaise part).

_Crassiner._--Pleuvoir d’une petite pluie fine qui a nom _crassin_

ou _crachin_ et ressemble à du crachat qui encrasse les objets.

_I’s ont té el’vés commes trois petits quiens_ dans un’ manne

auprès du feu.

_I’ li cause._--D’un amoureux, il lui fait la cour.

_I’s parle._--Se dit d’un paysan qui cherche à parler le langage de

la ville.

_Le temps est au conseil._--Jolie expression maritime pour dire que

le temps est incertain.--Le “conseil” délibère s’il fera beau ou

vilain.

_Se démenter._--Se donner du trouble d’esprit, pour quelque chose.

A Villerville, les pêcheurs sont tous des _maudits monstres_ et des

_maudits guenons_, termes d’amitié.--Les femmes sont des “por’ti

cœurs.”

_Pouchiner._--Caresser un enfant comme une poule son poussin.

_Adirer._--Perdre, égarer.

_Espérer_ quelqu’un.--Attendre.

_Capogner._--Chiffonner avec force, déformer.

_Se chairer._--S’asseoir en prenant toute la place, se carrer.

_Mitan._--Le milieu, le centre (tout au mitan).

_Le coupet._--Le sommet (au fin coupet de l’arbre).

_Binder._--Rebondir.

_Patinguet._--Saut.

_Un repaire._--Se dit d’un homme vicieux. “Ne me parlez pas de

celui-là, c’est un repaire.”

_Atiser, ratiser._--Corriger par des coups: “j’t’ vas ratiser.”

_Atourotter._--Enrouler autour; “l’serpent l’atourottit et

l’étouffit.”

_Attendiment._--En attendant que; “soigne le pot au feu,

attendiment que j’vas queri du bois.”

_A c’t’heure._--Maintenant: A cette heure, vieux français employé

dans Montaigne.

_D’aveuc._--Avec.

_Barbelotte._--Bête à bon Dieu, coccinelle.

_Bavoler._--Voler près de terre; “i va ché d’qui (il va tomber

quelque chose), les hirondelles bavolent.”

_Qu’ri._--Quérir, chercher.

_D’la partie._--En partant de là, depuis; “d’la partie de

Pont-l’Evêque, j’sommes venus à Honfleur.”

_A l’enrait._--A cet endroit.

_Piler._--Fouler aux pieds; “ne m’pile pas su le pied.”

_S’commercer sur, s’marchander sur._--Faire des affaires; “i

s’marchande su’ les grains.”

_Aloser._--Louanger, dire du bien de.

_Allouvi._--Avoir une faim de loup: “j’sommes allouvis.”

_Détourber._--Déranger, détourner.

_Crépir._--“I’s’crépit d’su’ses argots.” Se dit d’un coq.

_A ses accords._--A ses ordres. “Si tu cré que j’sis à ses

accords.”

_A ses appoints._--Même sens.

_Demoiselle._--Petite mesure de liquide. Ce qu’une demoiselle peut

boire d’eau-de-vie ou de cidre.

_Dans par où._--Laisser tout dans par où; commencer un ouvrage sans

l’achever.

_Goublain._--Revenant, fantôme, diable des matelots; ils

apparaissent en mer sous la forme des camarades noyés. En passant

“sous Grâce” ou quand on fait le signe de la croix, le goublain se

jette à l’eau; _Kobold_ des conteurs du Nord.

_Décapler._--S’en aller, mourir. “Le pauvre bougre est décaplé.”

Terme maritime.

_Itou._--Aussi.

_Une bordée._--Compagnie nombreuse.

_Eclipper._--Eclabousser.

_C’est un char de guerre._--Se dit d’une personne brutale. Même

signification que _Cerbère, porte de prison_.

_La terre est poignardée._--La terre est corrompue.

_Le monde tire à sa fin._--Pour exprimer l’étonnement d’un fait

rare, extraordinaire, une découverte.

_Où Dieu baille du train, il donne du pain._--Dieu protège les

nombreuses familles.

_Cramail._--Le con, “prendre au cramail.”

_La belle heure._--“Je ne vois pas la belle heure de faire cela!”

Ce ne sera pas commode.

_J’va pas voulé ça._--Oh! mais non, par exemple.

_Pièce._--“J’nai pièce:” je n’en ai pas.

_Heurer._--“Il est heuré pour ses repas.” Il a ses heures

régulières.

_Heurible._--Précoce. Un pommier “heurible.”

_Ingamo._--“Avoir de l’ingamo,” avoir de l’esprit.

_Cœuru._--Qui a du cœur, dru, solide.

_Faire sa bonne sauce._--Présenter les choses à son avantage.

_Pas bileux._--Qui ne se fait pas de bile.

_D’un bibet il fait un eléphant._--Il exagère tout.

_En cas qu’ça sé._--En cas que cela soit, dubitatif ironique, pour:

cela n’est pas vrai.

_Cousue de chagrin._--Une fille cousue de chagrin, elle ferait

pleurait les cailloux du chemin.

_Suivez le cheu li._--On dit que c’est un brave homme; avant de le

croire, suivez-le chez lui. Dans l’intimité, l’on se montre ce

qu’on est.

_Plus la haie est basee, plus le monde y passe._--Plus vous êtes

malheureux, moins on a d’égards pour vous.

_Les filles, les prêtres, les pigeons,_

_No sait ben d’où qu’i viennent._

_No n’sait point où qu’i vont._

_N’y a cô qu’sé à ses noces._--Il n’est rien de tel que soi-même

pour veiller à ses intérêts.

_L’ergent ça s’compte deux fé._--L’argent se compte deux fois.

_Veux-tu être hureu un jour?_ Saoule té!

_Veux-tu être hureu trois jours?_ Marie té!

_Veux-tu être hureu huit jours?_ Tue tan cochan!

_Veux-tu être hureu toute ta vie?_ Fais té curé!

With the English tourist, at least, the Norman patois will not cause

dissension, if indeed he notices it at all--or knows what it’s all

about, if he does notice it.

Every intelligent person, of course, is fond of speculating as to the

etymology of foreign words and phrases; and in France he will find many

expressions which will make him think he knows nothing at all of the

language, provided he has learned it out of school-books.

Many a university prize-winner has before now found himself stranded and

hungry at a railway buffet because he could not make the waiter

understand that he wanted his tea served with milk and his cut of roast

beef underdone.

French colloquialism and idiom are the stumbling-blocks of the

foreigner in France, even if he is college bred. The French are not so

prolific in proverbs as the Spanish, and the slang of the boulevards is

not the speech of the provincial Frenchman. There are in the French

language quaint and pat sayings, however, which now and then crop up all

over France, and as an unexpected reply to some simple and grammatically

well-formed inquiry are most disconcerting to the foreigner.

A Frenchman will make you an off-hand reply to some observation by

stating “_C’est vieux comme le Pont Neuf_,” meaning “it’s as old as the

hills,” and “_bon chat, bon rat_,” when he means “tit for tat,” or

“sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.”

If you have had a struggle with your automobile tire, or have just

escaped from slipping off the gangplank leading from a boat to the

shore, you might well say in English, “That was warm work.” The

Frenchman’s comment is not far different; he says, “_L’affaire a été

chaude_.” “Business is business” is much the same in French, “_Les

affaires sont les affaires_,” and “trade is bad” becomes “_Les affaires

ne marchent pas_.” “He is a dead man,” in French, becomes, “_Son

affaire_ (or _son compte_) _est fait_.” The Frenchman, when he pawns

his watch, does not “put it up” with his uncle, but tells you, “_J’ai

porté ma montre chez ma tante_.” “Every day is not Sunday” in its French

equivalent reads, “_Ce n’est pas tous les jours fête_.”

“He hasn’t an idea in his head” becomes “_Il a jeté tout son feu_,” and,

paradoxically, when one gets a receipt from his landlord that individual

writes, “_pour acquit_.”

A fortune, in a small way, awaits the person who will evolve some simple

method of teaching English-speaking people how to know a French idiom

when they meet with it. Truly, idiomatic French is a veritable pitfall

of phrase.

PART II

CHAPTER I.

THE PROVINCE AND ITS PEOPLE

Gaul in the time of Cæsar included Normandy in its general scheme, as is

shown by the ancient names,--that of the Lexovii, at Lisieux; the

Bajocasses, at Bayeux; the Unelli of the Cotentin; the Ambivariti, at

Avranches; the Veliscasses of Vexin and Rotomagus (Rouen), and the

Caletes of the Pays de Caux.

It was many centuries before all these peoples were welded together

under one stable government, the Franks only predominating toward the

end of the fifth century, after they had vanquished the Romans at

Soissons, in Belgica, in 486.

Normandy formed one of the four ancient provinces of transalpine Gaul

known to their founder, Augustus, as Lyonnaise. Since it bordered upon

the Manche, or what is otherwise known as the English Channel, the

“ancient land of Lyonnese” is known to geologists as forming a fragment

of what was one day the mainland of Europe.

In our later day the only attempt at the preservation of this ancient

name was in the distribution of the ecclesiastical provinces of France

previous to the Revolution, when the archbishop who had his throne at

Rouen exercised his rights through all the northern province of the

Lyonnaise of Augustus.

Later ancient Gaul became again divided, so far as the present limits of

France are concerned, into four great divisions, of which Neustria, a

vast triangle between the mouth of the Escaut, the source of the Seine,

and Bretagne, which included the whole of Normandy, was one of the most

important.

The Neustri Kingdom (_ne-ost-reich_, the kingdom which is not of the

east) was further distinguished from the _Ostrasien_ by manners and

customs which were climatically influenced to differ from those of the

_ost reich_, which were manifestly Germanic.

In 1789 the Assembly reconstructed the map of France--the great rhomboid

of France, as the French school geographies put it--into eighty-three

departments, when Normandy was dismembered to form the Departments of

Calvados, Orne, Manche, Eure, and the Lower Seine.

DÉPARTEMENTS. PRÉFECTURES. SOUS-PRÉFECTURES.

Lower Seine. Rouen. Havre, Yvetot,

Dieppe, Neufchâtel.

Eure. Evreux. Bernay, Pt. Audemer,

Louviers, Les Andelys.

Manche. St. Lô. Cherbourg, Valognes,

Coutances, Avranches,

Mortain.

Orne. Alençon. Domfront, Argentan,

Mortagne.

Calvados. Caen. Vire, Bayeux, Falaise,

Pont l’Évêque,

Lisieux.

Normandy, as a powerful independent state in the middle ages, was

greatly helped by its natural advantages.

Its great spread of territory, along the Channel coast between the

Bresle and the Couesnon, for a matter of six hundred kilometres, has its

shore lined with numerous creeks and valleys and marked by jutting fangs

of rock, with here and there a sand-spread shore lying beneath a chalky

cliff.

Upper Normandy was the name given to that portion of the province lying

to the eastward, and Lower Normandy to that lying to the westward; the

dividing line being the Pays d’Auge, lying between the valleys of the

Touques and the Dives.

Upper Normandy is a series of plateaus, not unlike Picardy and Artois.

The streams run through deep valleys which divide these plateaus into

distinct blocks, each with a striking individuality.

To the west is the Pays de Caux, which has for a subdivision a

restricted region between the Bresle and Dieppe known as the Petit-Caux.

Dieppe, Havre, and Rouen are the three angles of this elevated plain,

which, on its western boundary, is bordered by the Seine, where a great

promontory known as the Nez de Tancarville juts out into the river.

To a great extent these plateaus are deprived of water, but the valleys

have a super-abundance.

Along the coast of Upper Normandy are the famous seaside resorts of

Tréport-Mers, Dieppe, Veules, St. Valery-en-Caux, Petites Dalles,

Fécamp, Yport, and Etretat.

In the interior is the curious Pays de Bray, between the valleys of the

Ept and the Andelle. This is a part of the ancient Vexin, of which the

Isle of France also held a portion as well as Normandy; the old

divisions being known as “Vexin Français,” and “Vexin Normand.”

Westward of the Seine is the Plain of St. André, and between the Eure,

the Avre, and the Iton is the Campagne du Neubourg.

The Roumois lies between the Eure, the Iton, and the Risle, and the Pays

d’Ouche between the Iton and the Charentonne, while the Lieuvin borders

on the Risle and the Touques.

The Pays d’Auge, between the Touques and the Dives, is also a fragment

cut from the same plateau which lies to the eastward.

Throughout Upper Normandy are innumerable forests, preserved to-day from

reservations of a former time and guarded carefully by a solicitous

government.

These are principally the forests of Eu, Arques, Bray, Lyons (an

enormous tract), Les Andelys, Vernon, Bizy, Louviers, Pont de l’Arche,

Londe, Roumare, and Rouvray (opposite Rouen), Jumièges, Trait-St.

Wandrille, Beaumont, Ivry, Evreux, and Touques.

In Lower Normandy the topography and configuration change completely. It

contains innumerable little streams and rivers, and it is more uniformly

elevated than in the east; the plateaus averaging between one and two

hundred metres above sea-level.

The Orne and the Vire are the chief waterways among this multitude of

rivulets, very few of which, except the two former, are navigable to any

extent.

The chief districts here are: The Campagne de Caen, the Pays du Bessin,

the Bocage, the Cotentin, and the Collines de La Perche--whence come the

Percherons.

The whole region is most delightful, abounding in charming river

scenery, valleys, and wooded tracts of oak, beech, and pine.

The coast of these parts is more sombre and austere than that to the

eastward, though none the less delightful, the Nez de Jobourg and Cape

de la Hague being as unpeopled and as little known to tourists as if

they were in Labrador.

For the most part the climate of Normandy is the same as that which

prevails throughout the lower Seine valley; in general moderate and

without extremes of heat or cold, and yet quite different from the

climate of America, which Reclus, the geographer, has apportioned to

Brittany.

Frequently, in the valley of the Orne, the early mornings are thick with

mist which makes those charming views which artists love; while, in the

valley of the Auge, and in Bessin, there is undoubtedly too much rain,

as there is in some parts of the Seine valley, while at Les Andelys,

thirty miles away, there is a notable absence of it.

Generally speaking, it rains more frequently on the coast than in the

interior of Normandy. The Cotentin peninsula possesses the mildest

climate of all, favouring that of Brittany to a great extent, owing to

the proximity of the Gulf Stream. So mild is it here that myrtle,

camellias, and fuchsias grow in the open air, which they do not in other

parts of the province, unless well sheltered and cared for.

Properly speaking, France has no northern frontier, though the coast

which borders the Strait of Calais and the Channel is quite as

vulnerable and open to attack as it has been in times past, and as is

the German frontier of Alsace and Lorraine.

The mementos of war along the shores of the English Channel are numerous

indeed. From St. Malo to Dieppe, the corsairs frequently attacked. At

Dives the fleet of William the Conqueror set sail for the shores of

England, and Harfleur was the place of landing of Edward III. of England

in 1346. The English occupied Cherbourg for a long period, and in 1415

Henry V. disembarked at Harfleur, near the mouth of the Seine, at the

beginning of that campaign which terminated at Agincourt.

At the mouth of the Seine, François I. founded Françoisville, later

Havre de Grâce, which for a time was in the hands of the English, and

was three times bombarded during the wars of Louis XIV. and Louis XV.

St. Malo, Cherbourg, and Dieppe also suffered in the same way.

The dividing of the old historical provinces of France into

administrative departments, after the Revolution, was a most ingenious

work. The idea was then, and always has been, to foster local pride and

love of country, province, and district, and for this reason the

nomenclature of the new departments, carved out of the old provinces,

was most convenient and suitable.

It could not have been better done, for the names of local, physical,

and topographical features, such as rivers, mountains, and plateaus were

used to distinguish them.

Thus, whilst he is a Breton, and a Frenchman, the native of the Morbihan

may have quite different emotions and sentiments from one of Finistère;

and the peasant of the Pays de Caux, known as a Cauchois, is quite a

different person from the peasant of the Cotentin.

These political divisions are now as familiarly impressed upon the

French mind as were the old names of the provinces, and a son of the

Aube or the Eure will fraternize to-day with none of those jealousies

which formerly rankled between the Bourguignon and the Norman.

After the division into the old provinces, of which the residents of

Normandy and Brittany were as proud as any, came the kneading together

after the Revolution of those widely divergent influences which go to

make up modern France.

The affairs of the departments--of which the ancient Normandy, as we

have seen, made five--are administered by a Préfet appointed by the

President on the suggestion of the Minister of the Interior.

Each department is made up of many districts, of which the smallest

number is four, if one excepts the poor, rent fragment known as the

Territory of Belfort--all that is left of the former Department of the

Upper Rhine.

The district, of which there are 362 in France, has its affairs

administered by a Sous-Préfet. He is nominated by the President of the

Republic and is subordinate to the Préfet of the department.

The district is made up of many cantons, the smallest number being

eight. The canton comprehends, usually, many communes, the smallest

number being twelve. It forms a group, which, popularly speaking, enjoys

a certain form of self-government, under a commissioner, who is, of

course, directly responsible to the Sous-Préfet of his district. There

are, throughout France, 2,865 cantons.

The commune represents the smallest territorial division recognized in

the economic conduct of the French governmental affairs. There are in

the neighbourhood of 36,000 in France, and they usually comprise a city

or large town, with its surrounding villages, hamlets, isolated

dwellings, and farms.

The affairs of the commune are administered by the mayor and common

council. In the capitals of the department, district, or canton, the

mayor is nominated by the President of the Republic, and in the other

communes by the Préfet.

The city of Paris, however, has a special administration of its own.

The ancient province of Normandy, after it had been confiscated and

welded to the royal domain of Philippe-Auguste (1204), enjoyed many

unique rights; of which the chief was the privilege of its inhabitants

to be judged on appeal to their own supreme court, which sat at Rouen.

The peasants of the country-side had always rebelled against royal

despotism, for which reason their individuality was most pronounced.

Upper Normandy had Rouen for its capital, and Lower Normandy, Caen. This

last city possessed a university and long remained the intellectual

centre of the province.

To-day its five departments, the Lower Seine, Eure, Calvados, Orne, and

Manche, have their ecclesiastical metropolis and archbishop at Rouen,

with suffragans and bishops at Evreux, Bayeux, Sées, and Coutances.

From “The French Drawn by Themselves,” of Bedollière, one learns that

“the Normans are the _Anglais_ of France, but in industry only.”

Jal says briefly: “The peasants of Normandy have a great love for the

bonnet of cotton.”

Bedollière continues with the statement that “the costume of the Norman

women is varied to the infinite, but all, down to the _fille d’auberge_,

have the instructive science of _coquetterie_.”

“The Norman will never answer you directly,” says another; “yes and no

are difficult replies for him to make to one’s question.”

“The Norman is the Gascon of the north and the Gascon is the Norman of

the Midi,” one reads, also.

La Fontaine carried the simile still further, though it is difficult to

follow his argument exactly:

“_Les serments des Gascons et des Normands passent peu pour mots

d’Evangile._”

A similar vein is the following Norman supplication which some cynical

Frenchman has invented or unearthed from a hidden source:

“O Lord, I ask you not to favour me with good things. I merit not that

which thou would’st give; but tell me only where they are and I will go

and take them.”

The inhabitants of Normandy have unquestionably a strong individuality,

“above all,” says a local chronicler, “good sense and good judgment.”

The one would seem to include the other, but that is the way it is put.

[Illustration: _A Woman of Normandy_]

The Norman is always serious and always practical. Some call him an

evil-doer, but he is hardly that. He is, however, exceedingly

economical. He deplores exaggeration of all sorts; is seldom or ever gay

with that abandon one sees in the Midi or even in Touraine; he adores

the sentiments of the old régime, even though it may have been his

grandfather who lived under them; and he never ceases to struggle to

defend the reputation of his country in all things. To-day he lives in a

political hatred of change, something akin to the spirit which feared

not Richelieu when provincial liberties were in danger.

“Est ce le loyer attendu

Pour avoir si bien défendu

La couronne des rois de France,

Et pour avoir par tant de fois

Remis et lys en assurance

Contre l’Espagnole et l’Anglais?”

With the Revolution it was much the same. Whatever may have been Norman

sympathies, she demanded less of those responsible for the overthrow

than any other of the old provinces of France.

All that Normandy stood for in the past, liberty and equal rights, were

offered; but the province remained faithful in spirit during the sombre

days of the Terror--and to-day the native will emphasize the fact by

recalling to your memory the heroism of the young girl of Caen who

stabbed Marat.

“The Normans,” it has been said,--by a Parisian, of course,--“are

tolerant; the Bretons fanatical;” and in a way this describes the two

peoples very well.

Most geographies, and many guide-books and histories, omit all mention

of the etymology of place-names. This is greatly to be regretted; from

the former and the latter they ought never to be omitted, and they

should be included in the guide-books as well.

In a work like the present it is interesting to know something of the

early nomenclature of a place whose present name bears at least some

resemblance to its former appellation. Not always has such information

been included, from lack of space. But it might well be made a part of

every work which attempts to purvey topographical or historical

information.

Every one knows, or may be supposed to know, that the Breton is from

Brittany, and the Gascon from Gascony; but how many among the

untravelled can put their finger on that spot on the map of France where

live the Cevenoles, the Tricastins, or Cauchois; or, for that matter,

can locate with exactness the country of the Comminges, the Caux, or the

Cotentin?

With France, more perhaps than any other nation on the globe, names of

places have a great romantic and patriotic significance. Little by

little geography and history have given circulation to some which

perhaps are indissolubly impressed upon the mind; but the

foreigner--meaning, of course, those who are not of France--never, until

he has delved below the surface, knows a tithe of the meaning of the

well-nigh sacred devotion which the native has for these glorious titles

which have become so identified with the national and life history of

the people of France.

With the Frenchman it is something more than local pride and patriotism.

It is the country first, his town or place of birth next, then his

present domicile, and, lastly, his own person.

As with the topographical aspect, so with the inhabitants themselves.

Great diversity obtains; and, in “these little lands of strangers,” as

it has been delicately and suggestively put, the Frenchman of one

locality is, except for a general likeness of speech and manner, almost

as much of a stranger as the foreigner in race.

The Norman has little or nothing in common with the Provençal; the

native of French Flanders still less with the men of the Midi; and

those of the north not much of the feeling and spirit which actuates the

life of those in the south.

This is, perhaps, unique among modern nations; and, while to-day this

diversity does not exist on such lines of stringent demarcation as

formerly, the difference is still there in a lesser degree.

Even though all are Frenchmen, they still pride themselves in proudly

asserting their right to be called a Norman, a Gascon, a Bourguignon, or

a Languedocian; without confounding, at the same time, their love of

France, the great mother country.

It is interesting to note that it is perhaps a survival, rather than a

modern interpolation, which accounts for most peculiar local customs met

with in a journey across the country. Normandy has two neighbours which

in former warlike times loved her but little, the Parisian and the

Breton. To-day the Parisian no longer fears that Rouen may become the

capital of France, but the Breton still feels some of the old rancour of

contempt for him he calls the “wicked Norman.” Furthermore, the peoples

of the two neighbouring provinces of Normandy and Brittany resemble

each other not at all; nor ever will so long as old customs and

traditions endure.

Normandy was divided into Upper Normandy and Lower Normandy. There were

formerly many separate districts, and are still, for tradition has by no

means wholly left these parts.

The country of Caux, between Rouen and Dieppe, which took its name from

its first inhabitants, is the chief. The etymology of the word is

considerably mixed. Caex, Cauex, and the Celtic Kalet all come to the

fore. The earliest inhabitants were known as Caletes, which in later

times became Cauchois. To-day one mostly sees the Cauchoises in their

quaint cloaks and head-dresses on the quays at Caudebec, or in the

markets at Yvetot or Duclair.

A physiological memorandum is found in the fact that the Cauchoises of

eighteen years, when they open their mouths, show very bad teeth; which

in all other lands is an indication of decrepitude.

Here in Caux, however, it is supposed to come from the abundant

indulgence in _cidre_, which, by its corrosive properties, attacks the

enamel of the teeth.

France has never been considered a prolific country, but here in this

corner of Normandy the contrary seems to be the case. A Rouen daily

journal published recently a notice of a matter which was just then

attracting the attention of the Society for the Protection of Children.

It seems among eight mothers of Yvetot, whom in recent years it had

helped, there were forty-nine children. When interviewed, one fond

mother made the following statement:

“Yes, monsieur, I have eleven children all brought up by myself and all

living. I expect a twelfth! As you see, they are all blonds. Here is my

eldest. Eighteen in the month of May. Is it not fine? She works with me

in the fields. The three boys work at the forge with their father. There

is another an apprentice to a saddle-maker, and there are six at

school.”

The society makes a gift of forty francs upon each birth. Surely a

patriotic encouragement.

The chief of the separate districts of Lower Normandy is the peninsula

of the Cotentin.

The Cotentin was the ancient _pagus Constantinus_. Its capital was

Constancia, which by process of evolution readily became Coutances. It

is celebrated for its rich pasturage and the fine cattle which it

breeds. The inhabitants are known as Cotentins or Cotentines.

“The Cotentin race with regard for all reason is the type _laitier par

excellence_,” wrote Arthur Young in 1789, who was mostly taken with the

milk-giving qualities of the Cotentin cow, but who was an astute

observer of many things, nevertheless.

The Avranchin is another district of Lower Normandy, known anciently as

the _pagus Abrincatinus_. Its inhabitants are known as Avranchais. They

were further qualified by the sobriquets of Bouiderots and Bouilieux,

probably because they were employed for the most part in the salt-works

built on the shores of the bay of Avranches, where they boiled the salt

water dry of its moisture and recovered the salt from great cauldrons of

copper.

There is an old proverb which says: “Let the Auvergnats return to their

pastures, the Normans to their fishing, the soldiers to their warfare,

and the children to their games.”

Bocage is a separate district in the Departments of the Orne and

Calvados. Its capital was Vire. Bocage took its name in a roundabout way

from the German word _Busch_, which in Norman French is _bosc_, which

comes from _bois_, meaning, in this case, a forest, from which in turn

becomes _bosquet_ (sort of arbour), _bûcheron_ (a wood-chopper), and

finally _Bocage_.

From a French source one learns that Bocage is the least productive part

of all Normandy, and its workmen and peasants, known as Bocains, are the

most laborious.

There is a charming little tale of the Bocage, by Anatole France, called

“The Curé’s Mignonette,” which tells the story of a dove who came to a

curé and brought untold blessings upon his parish. It is but a slight

tale, but quite worth looking up for its charming sentiment.

Of the women of this part of Normandy the following remark by Arthur

Young, the agriculturist, who wrote a century and a quarter ago, is

pertinent. Writing from Caen, he says:

“I could not but remark an uncommon number of pretty women. Is there no

antiquarian that deduces English beauty from the mixture of Norman

blood?” He was a profound agriculturist, Arthur Young, and he wrote

mostly of cabbages, departing occasionally into the realms of kings, but

pretty women seem to have pursued him, or he them, for a bit farther on

in his delightful “Travels in France,” he says:

“Supped at the Marquis d’Ecougal’s at his château La Frenaye”

(Calvados). “If that French marquis cannot show me as good crops of corn

and turnips as I would wish, there is a noble one of something else--of

beautiful and elegant daughters, the charming copies of agreeable

mothers.”

Robert Wace, the Norman poet (1120-80), put the following words into the

mouth of William the Conqueror as he lay on his death-bed. They

characterize the Norman of those times as faithfully as do the romances

of Flaubert and the _contes_ of Maupassant to-day.

“En Normandie è gent moult fière,

Je ne sai gent de tel manière

Normant ne sunt proz saint justise

Foler et plaisier lor convient;

Se reis soz piez toz tems les tient,

E ki bien les defalt et poigne,

D’els parra fare sa besoigne.

Orgueillos sunt Normant é fier

Evantéor é bombancier;

Toz tems les devreit l’en piaisier

Kar mult sunt fort a justisier.”

The _gent moult fière_ of Normandy proved his ancient strength eight

hundred years later at Bernay, when three hundred of the National Guard

stopped the advance-guard of the Prussian army under General Bredow

three leagues from the town. It was a daring thing to have done, since

the Prussians were in overwhelming numbers, and the town was mulcted to

the tune of a hundred thousand francs for the valour of its citizens, as

a contribution of war.

The French coast is ever a source of joy and pride to the Frenchman; and

no part in all its twenty-nine hundred kilometres is more frequented by

summer dwellers by the sea than the strip along the Channel and the

Strait of Calais from Dunkerque to Brest.

Picardy, Normandy, and Brittany all have their partisans; but the shores

of Normandy and Brittany are the ideal spots wherein the Frenchman loves

to while away a summer’s day.

No country of Europe, unless it be Greece, has its coast-line more

deeply serrated than France. Brittany is rocky, Normandy high with its

chalk cliffs, and Picardy populous with wind-swept dunes of sand and

shingle. Each presents a distinct variety of attractions.

The downs of the north are the real lower country; but all this changes

as one comes up with the Norman border. Then come great chalk cliffs,

grass-crowned, and at their feet a pebbly strand. Occasionally granite

ledges crop out, as they do in Brittany, until one reaches the Bay of

Mont St. Michel, where the real Breton coast-line begins.

Cap de la Hève, which shelters Havre on the northeast, is one of those

freaks of nature which have a great interest for the geologist and the

geographers. It is the same great chalky cliff that we find on the south

coast of England, and eastward toward Etretat, where are those

wonderfully carved picture-rocks, so loved of painters of a former day.

Here on the northern edge of the ancient district of Caux, the

vociferous waves and currents of the British Channel eat up the

coast-line at the rate of a couple of metres a year, sometimes in one

place and sometimes in another.

These great, chalky cliffs continue westward to the Cotentin peninsula;

or would continue did not the Seine estuary rend them in twain with its

mighty flow.

At Trouville advantage has been taken of the formation, and a modern

roadway built which, in its way, quite rivals the celebrated arch of the

Riviera. At present it serves merely the purpose of the gay life of

Trouville, and automobiles, omnibuses, and motor-cycles rush around its

death-dealing curves and sharp descents, to their great risk, and

causing an occasional death.

There is a flaring red danger-board, a guide-post and telephonic

communication with a red cross hospital plainly set out in view, but

even this does not check the recklessness of the road-users in these

parts.

Just beyond Trouville is Dives, from whence departed the fleet of the

Conqueror in his descent upon England. To-day, the port is choked by the

débris thrown into it by the sea.

Gradually the chalk cliffs give way to sand-dunes or high-rolling

greensward, until Granville is reached on the other side of the

peninsula.

Throughout all this extent the coast-line is dotted here and there with

long stretches of sand and pebbles, which once and again have been

turned into popular resorts, where inland France comes to enjoy the

sea-breezes.

How many French affect this sort of a holiday it is impossible to say;

but they seem to have a decided preference for the northern shore, and

are quite as great devotees to the seaside--as it is known to Americans,

and watering-places, as the English call it--as those of other

nationalities.

Trouville and Deauville, with perhaps Cobourg, are the most brilliant

and fashionable of these resorts in Normandy, though there are many

others of lesser repute and decidedly quieter.

The western coast of the Cotentin peninsula has for its chief centre the

picturesque old and new towns of Granville, which face the great islands

of Guernsey, Jersey, Alderney, and Sark, the Channel Isles of the

English, and the _Iles Normandes_ of the French.

This western shore-line of the peninsula marks the boundary between

Normandy and Brittany at Pontorson, the gateway to Mont St. Michel; of

blessed memory to tourists for its old fortress-abbey--and Madame

Poulard’s chickens and omelets.

“The granite isles of La Manche,” as the French geologists call them,

comprise the Channel Islands, which belong to Great Britain, and the

Iles Chausey, a hideously terrible formation of jagged toothlike rocks

which would prove a veritable ocean graveyard, were they but in a line

of direct travel. A few miserable fishermen’s huts are the sole

habitations on this bleak, wind-swept island; but the picturesque

desolation of it all will quite make up for the lack of other features,

if one is venturesome enough to make the journey by sailboat from

Granville, and is prepared to rough it in the same manner as do the

Cotentin fishermen themselves.

The Rocher des Moines and the Roches du Rhinocéros are quaint and gaunt

indeed, but one wonders--as usual with regard to such fantastically

named topographical features--where the resemblance comes in.

The coast-line of Normandy is generally high, cut once and again into

canyon-like valleys, the chief of which are those of the Ault, Bresle,

Arques, St. Valery-en-Caux, Fécamp, and Etretat.

Tréport lies at the mouth of the Bresle, and Dieppe at the mouth of the

Arques.

To-day the commerce of other days on this coast is threatened. Dieppe

has held its own as a fishing port, perhaps, and in a way, so has

Tréport; but there is no deep-sea traffic now of any size between Havre

and Boulogne, save the cross-channel passenger traffic between Dieppe

and New Haven, and the Terre Neuve fisheries of Fécamp.

There have been rumours from time to time of the establishing of a

deep-sea canal between Dieppe and Paris, but the project is too

visionary for serious consideration, and the great waterway of the Seine

is certainly all-sufficient.

From the Cape of the Hève to Cape Barfleur extends the delta of the

Seine, or the Bay of Calvados as it is sometimes known,--the vast delta

of the Seine.

The Bresle is a lively little river which purls away the seventy

kilometres of its length between the hills of Picardy and Normandy, and

passes Aumale and Eu, to finish its course in the Channel at Tréport.

The Arques flows gently down fifty kilometres of one of the richest

valleys of Normandy, and enters the sea at the busy cross-channel port

of Dieppe. Its confluence is made up of the streams of the Varenne,

Bethune, and Eaulne. Between the mouth of the Seine and Cape of the

Hague is the Touques, which comes down by Lisieux and Pont l’Evêque, for

a hundred kilometres, and finishes at Trouville; the Dives, with a

waterway of a hundred kilometres also ending on the coast at Dives; the

Orne, which comes to the sea at Caen, after 150 kilometres through rich

pasture-lands; the Seulles and the Drome, two tiny rivers of Calvados,

and the Vire, of 130 kilometres; the Douves; the Taute; the Divette; and

the Sée and the Sélune of the Cotentin.

From St. Malo, eastward to the north of the Somme, is a particularly

vulnerable coast-line, which, in times past, was frequently attacked by

the cross-channel brethren of the Normans. To-day, however, with strong

defences at Cherbourg and the forts at Hogue and Havre, and others at

Dieppe, there is little likelihood of its being again invaded without

warning, though the memories of Gisors (1119), Crécy, (1346), and

Agincourt (1415) die hard.

The gateways to the rich Norman country-side are both numerous and

ample, however; and it may be depended upon that the distribution of the

French army is such that ample protection is afforded to such important

entrances as Granville, Caen, the little rivers Dives and Touques, and

the galaxy of towns and cities lying above and below the cliffs at the

mouth of the Seine, to say nothing of Dieppe and Fécamp, and the cities

of the Seine valley itself.

CHAPTER II.

NORMAN INDUSTRIES

Normandy is still a land fertile and rich, as well by nature and the

product of the soil, as by the industry of her people.

The following charming lines by Frédéric Berat are appreciative.

“J’ai vu les champs de l’Helvétie,

Et ses chalets et ses glaciers;

J’ai vu le ciel de l’Italie

Et Venise et ses gondoliers!

En saluant chaque patrie

Je me disais: aucun séjour

N’est plus beau que ma Normand

C’est le pays qui m’a donné le jour.”

Not alone from this does one infer the prominence which the province

holds, and has held in industrial and economic affairs since the time

when Henry II. really broke the power of the Norman barons; but there

are self-evident intimations at every turn of one’s footsteps, whether

by the highroads or by the by-roads.

It is difficult to imagine what France would have been to-day had it not

been for the disaster of the Franco-Prussian war, the rebuff of Fashoda,

and the unrest attendant upon the Dreyfus affair.

France has held her own remarkably, when one considers the depression

which periodically falls upon other European nations.

Still, there is a great influx of foreign influences to France which, in

all but individual manners and customs, is making itself felt.

The English who have settled here in the great woollen industries in

Normandy, at Louviers, Elbeuf, and in the neighbourhood of Rouen, are a

notable indication of outside influence; but still more so is the recent

advent of things American, to say nothing of the forty thousand persons

who form the permanent American population of Paris.

American farming machinery is seen everywhere, and if the American

automobile has found no place in France, American machine tools are

greatly in use in the manufacture of the horseless carriages of France.

The French are to-day wearing and copying the fashions in American boots

and shoes almost exclusively, and are imitating the Americans in their

habits and customs of travel.

A universal English innovation one sees everywhere is tea; but it is not

the afternoon variety, except in the case of the “_five o’clocks_” of

the Paris boulevards. Your Frenchman drinks his tea--and likes it very

much, apparently--after his dinner. Other folk have the idea that this

tends to sleeplessness, but not so the French.

In a recent number of a French journal devoted to travel an admiring and

appreciative Frenchman says:

“The English and Americans come in great numbers to our land, and travel

hither and thither over our great railway lines. They spend their money

liberally, and to them we owe the opportunity of doing all that we can

to facilitate not only their travel, but to make pleasant their stay

amongst us. We should reconstruct the sanitary arrangements of our

hotels, and encourage the circulation of information with regard to

places of interest.”

And all this the French are doing, and if it is coming but slowly, so

far as the country-side is concerned, it is most surely coming, and

to-day no more delightful travel-ground is to be found in all the world

than France, and Normandy and Brittany and Touraine in particular.

This, then, is one of the industries that is an important one in France,

and the coming of the automobile and the revival of travel by road will

do much for the increased prosperity of the genuine market-town inns of

Normandy.

In the Seine valley, in the heart of Normandy, has sprung up a cotton

and woollen manufacturing industry of immense proportions. Much of the

wool is a local product, but large quantities of it in the raw state are

brought from the river Plata; while at the wharves of Rouen are vast

warehouses filled with cotton from the Southern States of America, ready

to be worked into cloth by the busy looms of France.

The woollen mills of Elbeuf and Louviers are now turning out worsteds

and cloth for men and women’s clothing of a quality and quantity quite

rivalling that of Bradford, in England, in the olden times.

As far back as 1780-90 Arthur Young wrote of a visit to a great woollen

manufacturer of Louviers, where he saw “a fabric unquestionably the

first woollen in the world, if success, beauty of fabric, and an

inexhaustible invention to supply with taste all the cravings of fancy

can give the merit of such superiority. Perfection goes no farther than

the Vigonia cloths of M. Decretot.” This, from an Englishman born and

bred in the Midlands, is praise indeed.

[Illustration: _Harvest-time in Normandy_]

The country to the west of Evreux forms the very heart of Normandy. It

is a region of rich farms, great prairies, and apple orchards, in which

apple-trees are set out twenty-five or thirty to the acre. Nowhere more

than in the Plain of St. André and the country district of Neubourg,

which immediately environs Evreux, is there to be found anything more

characteristically Norman.

Little by little great pasture-lands have been made into tilled fields,

to the prosperity of the individual and the nation as well. Were the

English farming peasants able and willing to work small holdings in

England in the same way, who knows but what prosperity might come to the

small farmer there?

Through these rich lands of the Departments of the Eure, Orne, and

Calvados flow the Eure, the Iton, the Risle, the Touques, the Dives, and

the Orne, which nourish them abundantly, and give a thriving aspect to

the towns and country-side alike. That Normandy is so plentifully

watered, accounts for its bountiful pasture-lands and prairies; which,

by a process known to all the world, produces most abundant supplies of

butter and cheese, to say nothing of such by-products as the cattle

themselves. It is doubtful if the cattle-raising industry of itself has

a tithe of the economic value and importance of the trade in milk

products, which in some parts of Normandy is of tremendous proportions.

The butter of Gournay (Lower Seine), of St. Lô, and Isigny is famous

throughout England and France, while the savoury cheeses--above all the

Camembert and the Pont l’Evêque--are exported to all ends of the earth.

A good cow in the Pont l’Evêque country produces cheese to the value of

350 francs a year; and at Lisieux, the centre of the Camembert industry,

as much as five hundred francs worth in value.

Agricultural machinery is coming fast into use, and increased crops are

the result. In 1862 there were but 10,850 reaping-machines in France,

but their number is now more than quadrupled. In a country where nearly

fifty per cent. of its inhabitants follow agricultural pursuits, this

may be considered as of some significance.

[Illustration: _Norman Horses_]

The Cotentin cow gives as much as twenty-five litres of milk per day.

With the cows of the Cotentin and the horses of La Perche lies the chief

glory of the product of Normandy to-day. The industry of

horse-raising in Normandy is most prosperous in the valley and

Department of the Orne. Northwestern France produces three races of

horses, the Percheron, the Merlerault, and the Breton. The Percheron is

mostly raised in La Perche, the Merlerault is a crossing of the Norman

with English stock; and the Breton is a hardy little animal, not at all

beautiful to look at, but, nevertheless, a most useful and economical

animal to own, which is saying a good deal in its favour. The chief

horse-trading centres in Normandy are Alençon, Vernon, Bernay, and

Mortagne.

In general, the cattle of Normandy are famous for the quality and

richness of their flesh none the less than for their products, and the

Norman beef and mutton are much in demand in the markets of Paris.

The market-towns of Normandy are very numerous and important, but they

are by no means so picturesque as are those of the south of France, or

even of the cities and towns along the Loire, or in Brittany. Market-day

is more of a matter-of-fact, hard-headed commerce, with the Norman

peasant, than it is an opportunity for a day in town.

To the market the Norman peasant and his wife come to sell and to buy,

in a tilt-cart, usually attached to an ancient-looking, though not

decrepit, white horse, who is used to only moderately long journeys. As

a matter of business the peasant leaves his home by nine in the

morning--the height of the market usually being just before midday. By

nine, then, all is ready,--the eggs in the pannier, the chickens in

their baskets, and the cheeses and butter between crisp, cool leaves of

beet-root or cabbage. Crossing the courtyard, a door is opened,

disclosing the old harness hung on its iron nail. Soon it is on the back

of the old white horse, and he is marched forth to be attached to the

shafts of the great, high, two-wheeled tilt-cart, which seems very

unsteady. When the baskets are all finally disposed, and the peasant and

his wife are seated, it seems even more so; but as no one has ever seen

it overturned, the Norman peasant’s cart must be a most satisfactory

vehicle.

There is one event which comes off periodically in Normandy, which has

never had much prominence given to it from the outside, and that is the

fair at Guibray,--a suburb of Falaise, the birthplace of the Conqueror.

Next to the great fair at Beaucaire, of which Dumas writes in “Monte

Cristo,” the fair at Guibray is the greatest in all France; and is of

the popular order of the trading-fair at Nijni-Novgorod in Russia.

At Guibray the event has been held for many, many years, though of late

its importance has fallen somewhat away. A hundred years ago merchandise

was sold to the value of 100,000,000 francs, while at Beaucaire the

sales sometimes totalled 500,000,000.

Besides this, Normandy has the great horse-fair of Bernay, held at the

_Fête des Rameaux_ (Palm Sunday), the most famous and largest of its

kind in France.

These great fairs of Normandy are one of the most interesting of all the

attractions to the stranger.

No one should expect to find a town at its normal aspect on one of these

occasions, and sightseeing of the conventional order is out of the

question at such times; but, on the other hand, one’s gain is great, if

he is a lover of such assemblages. Oftentimes the whole town will be

found to be given over to the great local event, with the churches and

musées closed, and the tables d’hôtes overcrowded.

Artists and lovers of new sensations, especially, will not mind this,

for these local fairs and holidays will furnish much amusement and

edification that would otherwise be missed. Colour and noise and life

is everywhere. Everything smacks of gaiety and good nature, and for the

most part it is distinctly local. Parisian costumes and manners have no

place here, and one must be prepared to take things as he finds them.

The almanacs and local journals will give particulars of these events,

and one can avoid them or not as is his mood. One cannot, however, claim

to have really seen Normandy unless he has attended at least one fair.

Normandy is one of the greatest wheat-growing sections of France. Every

plain, valley, and hillside is literally covered with it.

In the midst of all this agrarian industry are set many towns and

villages alive with an industry of another sort. On the Avre, at

Nonancourt, are the great spinning mills of M. Waddington, whose name

and fame as a naturalized Frenchman are world-wide. At Evreux are great

establishments which manufacture linen, cotton-stuffs, hosiery, and

kindred products in vast quantities; while at Bayeux, Alençon, Argenton,

and Caen lace is manufactured on a large scale. Again, cotton and

woollen stuffs are produced at Elbeuf, Louviers, and Rouen; leather at

Pont Audemer and Evreux; yarn and thread at Bernay, Alençon, Mortagne,

Lisieux, and Vire, and pins and needles at Rugles and Laigle.

In addition, the fisheries and oyster cultures of Normandy are very

great; likewise the coastwise shipping, to say nothing of the

trans-atlantic traffic of the great liners from the ports of Havre and

Cherbourg.

[Illustration: _Raising the Sugar-beet_]

Out of Fécamp go many deep-sea fishermen bound for the Newfoundland

banks; and Tréport, Yport, Dieppe, and Granville are important home

ports for the mackerel and herring fleets of the North Sea and the North

Atlantic Ocean.

There is a great and still growing interest in France, and indeed in

many other parts of Continental Europe, in the sugar-beet industry.

In Normandy it is very considerable, and “potato spirit” and “beet

sugar” are two products of the soil which of late have added much to its

prosperity.

CHAPTER III.

MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE

Whereas England is a country whose land is owned by a comparative few,

France is owned by the many. Of its population of forty odd millions

there are nearly six million land-owners, almost, it would seem, one to

each family.

The plots are small, not more than ten acres, perhaps, on an average,

for the peasant landholder; but the degree of cultivation which they

have attained is remarkable to one who comes from the far West of

America, where only farming on a gigantic scale is pursued.

For a long time the Norman farmer held out against any ideas of progress

with regard to machinery. He did not exactly plough with the proverbial

crooked limb of Biblical times, but the implement with which he laid out

his astonishingly straight furrows was, until recently, an antiquated

piece of iron, which he handled in a most laborious manner.

To-day American sowing and reaping machines, or Continental imitations

of them, are everywhere making their way, and the laborious, patient

work of a former day is now being accomplished much more handily.

The French are great lovers of their land, the Normans in particular.

They do not emigrate like the Germans or the Italians, and they are not

great travellers, out of their own bailiwick.

The dwellers of the country-side of France are about the richest per

capita of any nation on the earth. The enormous Franco-German war debt

was promptly paid, and, stowed away in small parcels, there are

doubtless hundreds of millions of francs which are never put into

circulation.

French farming is carried on most assiduously, and a single plot of land

becomes wonderfully productive under the hands of its devoted peasant

proprietor.

One is wont to commiserate with the European peasant, who is supposed to

be taxed to death, but, as a matter of fact, the French peasant is taxed

very little. The recent tax exemptions of French farmers have caused a

decrease in the revenue of 25,000,000 francs, and this sum has been

saved to the very smallest of taxpayers. Nevertheless, some taxes

exist, though they are almost infinitesimal. There are more than

8,000,000 persons who each pay a land tax ranging from ten to twenty

sous only; more than 3,000,000 who pay from five to fifteen francs; and

more than 2,000,000 land-holders who each pay from twenty to thirty

francs per annum. If a farmer pays a rent of 250 francs or under he is

untaxed; if he pays eight hundred francs, he is taxed only on a part,

but if he pays more than eight hundred francs, he is taxed nine per

cent, on the whole sum.

Almost all taxes here are based on incomes or rents. Business property

is taxed eight per cent, of the amount for which it is rent, and if it

is idle it is not taxed at all. If a store or house burns down the tax

on the land stops from that moment, and if a factory stops work its tax

stops. Every loom in the silk, cotton, and woollen mills of

Normandy--where they are very numerous--pays a tax while it is working;

but if it is broken or becomes idle, the tax officials are notified, and

the tax is not collectible.

There is money in trees in France; and in Normandy, quite as much as in

any other part, one sees those long, regimental rows of poplars which

make walled alleys of the great national highways and the banks of

rivers as well.

The French appreciate the commercial value of their forests. There are

vast woodlands belonging to the government, and private holdings in

which the trees are as well cared for as in a city park.

Only matured trees are ever cut in a national forest, and every piece of

fallen wood is saved.

Normandy has one of the finest and most celebrated of these great

national forests in the forest domain of Lyons, a few miles southeast of

Rouen, just north of the ancient district of Vexin.

Some of the trees are a hundred feet high and bare of branches, with

only a tassel left on the top. Others are full-limbed, and others are

just sprouting new growth on all sides. Poplars are grown for their

branches, and are finally cut down for wood or furniture. The branches

grow rapidly. They are cut off year after year, put into bundles, and

sold to the bakers, to make the hot fires necessary for the crisp crust

on the French bread. There is such a demand for them that raising them

is one of the chief industries of France. The poplars are planted in

places which are good for nothing else; and after five years each will

annually produce at least twenty sous in value in mere trimmings. Later

on, the trees are thinned out and cut down and sold. Willows are grown

in the same way, their sprouts being used for baskets, and the

basket-maker is a familiar figure in nearly every town and village in

the river valleys of Normandy.

Market-gardening in France is no inconsiderable industry. Not only does

it supply the markets at Paris, but a vast product is sent across

Channel to help nourish old England; potatoes and onions from Brittany,

and cauliflowers, lettuce, radishes, etc., from Normandy, to say nothing

of cheese, eggs, and butter, which are usually a product of the same

farmyard.

The French have one million acres devoted to gardens and fruits; and,

throughout the country, one sees fields of hotbeds and glass frames

propped over plants outside the beds. In many places glass bells are

used to cover the individual plants, and there are some sections which

raise early potatoes under glass for export to London. Apparently, about

the only vegetable or fruit crop which Normandy does not export is the

cider-apple.

The French study the soil and the sun, and they coax both to work. They

feed the crops rather than the land, and in places get three crops a

year through intensive cultivation. Near Cherbourg, cabbage is raised

early in February. After it is taken off a crop of potatoes is planted,

and a third crop comes on in the autumn, and this is on land that has

been used for generations without becoming impoverished.

The farming peasant of the Seine valley is in every way a kindly person.

He will pose for the artist, does not object to being snap-shotted while

at work by the amateur photographer, and will courteously help the

automobilist who is in trouble to set himself to rights.

For all this, he wants and expects nothing, save that perhaps he will

take a glass of wine or cigar at the nearest public house if there

happens to be one near by. An inquiring stranger is not _persona non

grata_, and the Norman peasant-farmer is more than glad to stop and

discuss the good or bad times, or the state of the crops and the cattle

market; his _quid pro quo_ seeming usually to be your opinion about the

state of things in the adjoining competing community which may send its

products to the same market as he does himself.

Certainly a close-mouthed, ill-natured Norman farmer is a rare thing in

the Seine valley, or indeed in any other part of the province. Not so

in some other lands, where every civil advance of the stranger is met

with a taciturn reply or a miserable whine against a presupposed unjust

fate which permits a landholder to expect the tenant to pay rent.

Normandy, where it borders upon the Seine, comes very near being the

artists’ ideal sketching-ground. It has all the attributes of the open

country, as well as great industrial centres with picturesque

chimney-stacks, and possesses a part of the most charming seacoast of

France. Etretat and Honfleur are famous, Caudebec-en-Caux, in a way, is

one of the reputed paradises for artists, while Les Andelys, Giverny,

and La Roche-Guyon are--well, spots which as soon as they shall become

popular with tourists will lose much of their charm, which is to-day

natural, simple, and characteristically local. Throughout the open

country in the Seine valley one may contemplate a succession of

farmyards, orchards, and great brown and green patches of cultivated

land which will make him envious of the genius of a Daubigny or a

Millet.

The great walled farms of Normandy are ever a source of surprise to the

stranger and of pride to the occupant, who, like enough, is the fifth

of his line; for the peasant-proprietor is a power in the land to-day,

as he has been since before the Revolution.

Usually, however, the peasant-proprietor, in Normandy at least, is not

of the ambitious order that aspires to more than a small area to work as

his own, compared with his apparently more opulent neighbour, who,

perhaps, farms his land on shares with the actual land-owner, a practice

known throughout France as _métayage_. Besides the two smaller classes

of farmers, those who hire or work on shares, or those who own small

tracts, there are the large landed proprietors who farm their own land

on a scale known as high farming. The three together have made possible

the prosperity of the greater part of the France of to-day; and in no

other country can such a forcible economic lesson be learned of the

power of a country to be self-sustaining.

Before now it has been said that Normandy is monotonous, but this is not

true. Writers have compared its angularities, so to speak, with the

nicely rounded _contours_ of the South Downs of England; and its sturdy,

soil-grown villages with the undeniably picturesque hamlets of Surrey

and Sussex. One is characteristic of France and the other of England;

but wherein is one more monotonous than the other?

Really, Normandy is one of the most diversified sections in all France,

and while quite different, in almost every way, from Brittany, Maine,

and Anjou, its neighbours, it forms with them a region where one learns

more of the varying conditions which go to make up the life of the

nation than in any other parts of France as it is known to-day; for

Burgundy and its people are still Burgundian, Provence, Provençal, and

the Midi, Spanish--or something very akin to it.

The Normandy of to-day, its people, and their manners and customs,

however, breathes the very spirit of history of feudal and even more

ancient times, from the days of Rollon, the Dane, down through Norman

William and Richard Cœur de Lion, to the times when Normandy finally

became attached to the Crown.

“High farming,” as the working of the great estates is called, is, of

course, a very different thing from the working of small farms or

vegetable gardens. Two and a half acres of land within a half a dozen

miles of a city like Havre or Rouen, or even a town like Louviers or

Vernon, will support a family of five, if the wife carries the produce

to market herself, which she generally does, leaving the men-folks to

gossip in a café and to hitch up the mare and the family cart when the

day’s trading is finished.

It is only as one reaches the great plain of La Beauce, just across the

southern border of Normandy, that one comes upon grain culture on a

large scale, though, to be sure, the farm product of Normandy is by no

means limited to vegetables. One must not forget the cider-apple and its

product, the true wine of the country.

Olivier Basselin, who died in 1419, wrote in old Norman French an

“Apologie du Cidre,” which as near as may be is translated as follows:

“Though Frenchmen at our drink may laugh,

And think their taste is wondrous fine,

The Norman cider, which we quaff,

Is quite the equal of his wine,

When down, down, down, it freely goes

And charms the palate as it flows.”

Mere diffusion of property is no indication of the wealth of a nation,

but a general prosperity is; and if we except a few departments where

the shepherding and grazing of flocks is the principal occupation, there

are very few parts of France where one notices any lack of actual

necessities.

France was poorest as a nation, and her working classes most prosperous,

under Charles-le-Sage. France was richest, and her poor the most

miserable, under Louis XIV.

Erasmus in his “Adages” has said: “Open your purse and pay, for you

enter a port; pay, for you cross a bridge; pay, for you use a ferry;”

and in general and with much elaboration there is still something more

than a vestige of feudalism left in the life of to-day. What it was in

former times, in France, is no more, but the single-taxer and the

socialist--and some strangers from a supposedly freer land--will

complain at the octroi, and the tax on matches and tobacco, as if a

revenue from some source were not necessary for the conduct of the

state. Whatever may first appear to the contrary, France is not

overtaxed to-day, and no evidences of oppressive taxation are actually

to be seen in the lives of the peasants of the rich hillsides, or the

workers of the busy towns of Normandy.

Normandy must always have been a wealthy province; for, in Leopold

Delisle’s “Study of the Condition of Agriculture in Normandy in the

Middle Ages,” is made the astounding--and authenticated--statement that

“the monks of Montdaie fed their pigs on meat.”

Up to within the last half-century, if we are to believe the

chroniclers, a Norman peasant might visit any parish in the province and

note but little change from the aspect it bore in mediæval times.

In our day this would hardly prove to be the case: what with

cream-separators, throbbing, mechanical sowers and reapers,

traction-engines, and light-railways, all but the face of nature itself

is changed--and in many parts not a little of that.

In some of the depths of Brittany, the heart of the Cantal, or the

wastes of Lozère, this may be true. There indeed one might find little

changed the wooden-pronged plough and rough flails, and hand labour

throughout still continues its round of pastoral life as of yore; but in

Normandy and the more prosperous north things have changed greatly, and

always for the better.

A bird’s-eye view of the history of the provinces of France furnishes

many surprises, as many, if not more, than would a résumé of the affairs

of the capital, which has always reflected much more the sentiments of

the country-side than has the capital of any other world power.

In spite of the more or less vulgar show of the wealth of the cities,

it is in the country that the great prosperity of France lies, and in

Normandy this aspect is very much to the fore.

The peasant-proprietor has always been a factor in the life and history

of France. True enough, he was often suppressed and doubtless quite

miserable at times; but from Martin’s history we learn that the land

transfers of the time of even the Crusades were notable for their

magnitude.

Between the seigneur and the serf were two classes, known as

_tenanciers_ and _mainmortables_. The former could bequeath their lands

to their children, while the latter “lived a freeman, but died a serf,”

as the saying goes, his heirs being compelled to purchase their right to

inherit the land.

Just previous to the Revolution, curious as it may seem, one-third of

French territory, according to Arthur Young, belonged to the

peasant-proprietor.

In 1789 four millions of French subjects were land-owners, but to-day

there are over eight millions, quite a fifth of the population.

Fénélon and La Bruyère drew sombre pictures of the French peasant of a

former day; but they must have had in mind individual cases, or at

least examples far from representative, taking into consideration the

figures above given and the following statements. Foville cites the

Commune of Paroz in the Department of the Seine et Marne as showing in

1768, and again more than fifty years later, that the land-holdings

corresponded precisely, both in number and extent. In an article in the

_Contemporary Review_ (May, 1886) M. Baudrillart gives many more

examples in a similar vein. Even during the reign of Louis XIV., when

the monarchy and aristocracy were at their height, the farming peasant,

in his own right, had begun to prosper.

Bois Guillebert wrote in 1709: “It would be impossible to find here a

square foot of ground which does not produce all that it is capable of

producing. No man is so poor that he is not decently clothed and who has

not plenty of bread and drink.” (Meaning wine or drink made of fruit

juices, as, for instance, the cider of Normandy--and, sometimes, an

imitation of it known as “Boisson Normand.”)

In 1738 the Abbé St. Pierre wrote: “Almost all day-labourers possess a

garden or a plot of ground.”

A half-century later Arthur Young, in turn pessimistic and optimistic,

tells of a general prevailing prosperity of all that part of France

through which he travelled. He goes particularly into details with

regard to Normandy with credit to that province; while with Brittany his

estimate is almost the reverse.

Balzac, that great delineator of French character, sets forth, in “Les

Paysans,” the somewhat equivocal statement that the time would come,

owing to the steady progress of the French peasant, when France would

have neither horses nor cattle. In those days it is hardly likely that

he anticipated the automobile, so we may infer that he had in mind that

every peasant would be his own producer, and would accordingly not need

the horse as a beast of burden to carry him and his produce to market.

The population of Normandy is in general of a full-blooded, blond type,

with blue eyes, and of a good height. Misery and poverty are quite the

exception throughout the farming communities, and the long blue blouse

and the black bonnet, which one sees so frequently on the fair days,

usually covers a wealth that at first glance is quite undiscernible.

Enter any of the ordinary farmhouses, which you may come across in a

day’s travel by road, and you will see preserved many of the usages of

olden times.

Your Norman of the old régime will not discard an ancient custom for

another merely because it is new--sometimes he won’t even think of it in

favour of a better one.

It is the hour for the repast; in the kitchen one sees a long, narrow

table covered only with a simple napkin, more often none at all, but

scrubbed to such a degree of whiteness as only old oak can attain.

The farmer and his household seat themselves about the table, frequently

on a long bench, and the conversation is simply that of the

country-side, tempered with occasional rallies as to the state of crops

or the weather. There is never a word of outside interest; for as likely

as not the old peasant-farmer has never left his native village, giving

to his sons or his daughters’ husbands the burden of whatever

intercourse may be necessary with the outside world.

[Illustration: _A Norman Farmhouse_]

In the Cotentin there were, and still are, though they are not built

to-day, numerous mud houses and barns, quite like the adobe homes of the

Mexican Indians. Some of these structures, in the Cotentin peninsula,

before reaching Cherbourg, are of three stories in height, with not a

rock in their make-up, being simply straw and mud strung together with

beams and rafters.

The earth used for the purpose was a thick brown loam into which straw

had been kneaded, after which it was cut into cakes (though not baked,

as are bricks) and built into walls by layers simply. The walls are

sometimes two feet thick. All the houses need is a periodical coat of

whitewash to become as good as new.

France has been commonly thought to be a non-meat-eating nation, but the

consumption is steadily rising. Only so late as the reign of

Louis-Philippe the consumption per capita was but twenty kilos, but

thirty years later it had risen forty per cent.

Lest any one should think that the peasant of Normandy knows not how to

eat, let him read Gustave Flaubert’s description of a wedding-breakfast,

which, in part, runs as follows:

“It was under the roof of the great wagon-shed that the table was laid.

It had upon it four joints of beef, six fricasseed chickens, stewed

veal, three legs of mutton, and in the middle a whole roasted suckling

pig. At the corners were placed brandy in _carafes_ and sweet cider in

bottles, and all the glasses on the board were already filled to their

limits. There were great dishes of yellow cream which shook at the least

shock given the table, and from Yvetot came the cakes and the tarts. A

great wedding-cake completed the repast. The base was a sort of temple

with porticos, colonnades, and statuettes. On the second layer was a

‘keep’ composed of sweetmeats from Savoy, garnished with almonds,

grapes, and oranges, while above the whole was a cupid.”

It has been a commonplace to revile French cooking for a long time, but

the custom is going out of fashion.

Perhaps the English and American palate is becoming accustomed to a

ragoût of mutton, rabbit garenne, or chicken chasseur, and it no longer

looks “messy.” As a matter of fact, it is far more palatable than boiled

fowl or the eternal boiled mutton of the average English country hotel.

In France one notes one difference, at any rate, in the country fare.

The old-time inn, if it has not wholly disappeared, and there are at

least a dozen reminiscent examples in Normandy which prove that it has

not,--at Les Andelys and Louviers, for example,--has become more modern

in the excellence of its cuisine.

There is the eternal chicken, of course, which is, however, better than

eternal boiled mutton; there is a surprising frequency and variety of

omelets, but they are excellent. There is always a stew of some sort,

but it is not made of left-over scraps of some one else’s dinner, as is

popularly supposed; and there is the roast with its salad, which is, of

course, the principal dish. The crisp, green, and, above all,

_well-dressed_ salad is an infinitely better combination than best

English beef and Yorkshire pudding or mutton and dumpling.

In France, too, there is always soup, which is always good--more than

can be said for the feeble imitations of England and America. And there

are no sticky cloying English puddings or abominable American pies to

wind up with. A light, tasty cheese is served throughout Normandy, Petit

Bondon, Cœur de la Crême, Pont l’Evêque, or Camembert, and a biscuit

which one dips in his wine and munches thoughtfully, as he speculates as

to what the price may be for all this, or how it can be done profitably

at the price. The cost is not over three francs, and perhaps only two

francs, fifty centimes, or even two francs.

It is a curious fact that on the beaten track in Normandy, in the Seine

valley for instance,--though not all of its highroads and by-roads are

well worn by English-speaking people as yet,--the patron of your hotel

thinks nothing of it if you want the regulation Anglo-Saxon ham and eggs

for breakfast. He only marvels if you drink _café au lait_ with it, and

then top off with jam or marmalade. If it is the former you want, you

ask for _confiture_, but if nothing but marmalade will do--by which, in

the English-speaking world over, is meant orange marmalade--you ask for

“Dundee,” and you will get it, if your inn is in a town above ten

thousand inhabitants.

Until recently Englishmen and Americans have had a great contempt for

the out-of-door pleasures of the French, but matters have changed

considerably during the past decade.

The sport of society is passed over here; horse-racing, golf, tennis,

etc., and only such as form a part and parcel of the life of the common

people is considered.

The French tendency in physical exercise is toward gymnastics and

military drill--not quite to the German extent, but a nearer approach

thereto than is found elsewhere. All this makes for a general physical

improvement, class for class, throughout France. Fencing is still

greatly in vogue, though, of course, it is practised, in its duelling

aspect, only in the higher walks of life. When it comes to walking, the

endurance of the French inhabitant of the country-side is astonishing.

The peasant will trudge slowly thirty, forty, or fifty miles in the

round of the clock and think nothing of it. There is not much horseback

riding in France, particularly among the poorer classes, though the

influence of the army has kept it from dying out entirely.

The French peasant can carry his whole family behind one horse in his

light, high-wheeled cart; and, on any market-day, near a large town, you

will see a cavalcade of country carts filled with a large proportion of

the suburban population, all wending their way, for a dozen, fifteen, or

twenty miles round about, to the market-town.

“As a nation,” says Hamerton, “the English are incomparably the finer,

but the English industrial system of increasing the concentration in

large towns is rapidly diminishing their collective superiority. The

French generally are of small stature, so that a man of middle height in

England is a tall man in France, and French soldiers in their summer

fatigue blouses look to an Englishman like boys.”

[Illustration: _A Peasant’s Cart_]

Still, though the average Frenchman is short in stature, he is often

muscular and capable of bearing great fatigue. His shortness is mainly

in his legs, yet he strides vigorously in marching. Sometimes one finds

a tall, powerful man in a French village, such as the men of

Louis-Napoleon’s famous “Cent Guards,” and more often in Normandy than

elsewhere, whereas in Brittany, even the inland country peasant has

manifestly the cut of the sailorman whose ranks he mostly fills.

CHAPTER IV.

THE CHÂTEAUX OF OTHER DAYS

The art and architecture of Normandy with respect to religious edifices,

and not less with regard to its feudal châteaux, is of a peculiar

variety, quite apart from the other types seen in France.

The birth of Norman architecture, as it is commonly known, was

undoubtedly an out-growth of the older Romanesque.

The Scandinavian conquest of Neustria left no arts or evidences of art

that would demonstrate to the least degree that these peoples brought

any innovations of building with them.

The Merovingian period itself has left but few remains which are

characteristic of any development of artistic taste. Hence such

monuments as exist of Merovingian or the prehistoric civilizations are

very meagre, and comprise no structures of any magnitude.

The Romans, however, coming between the two, have left very visible and

splendid remains of their sojourn here,--though to-day in a ruinous

condition,--the great theatre at Lillebonne being perhaps the chief and

the most magnificent. Other important remains of this period are found

near Lisieux, and Valognes, in the Cotentin.

The Romans built many defences in the region, particularly Limes, near

Dieppe, and Chatelliers in the Department of the Orne. Generally the

Roman defences in Lower Normandy were disposed in a double range of

walls; and from these developed on a smaller scale the feudal château of

later times.

Rollon and his companions had given a great impetus to the feudal régime

in the duchy, and rival seigneurs built themselves strongholds, if

possible, more formidable than those of their neighbours. By the ninth

century this fortress-building gave way to establishments endowed with

more comforts and luxuries of a domestic nature, but they continued to

be fortified, as they were for a long time after.

The remains of the Châteaux of Arques, Domfront, Falaise (the birthplace

of the Conqueror), Gisors, and Gaillard (the “daughter of a year” of

Richard the Lion-hearted) were all wonders of their time.

All travellers for pleasure or edification have a lively interest in

châteaux, whether they be of the feudal variety of fortress, or the

comparatively modern domestic establishments of the Renaissance period.

Normandy had quite a representative share of both classes of these

mediæval monuments, and their existing remains to-day are numerous and

admirably cared for, ruins though many of them be.

[Illustration: _Donjon of Arques_ (_diagram_)]

According to Viollet-le-Duc, the Normans were the first to apply

defensive works to a residential château, that is, an edifice which was

primarily something more than a fortress.

[Illustration: _Château Gaillard, Les Andelys_]

Such strongly defended châteaux as that of Arques near Dieppe, whose

donjon was the last to surrender to the French king after the

conquering of the province, were exceedingly rare.

In general, the Norman châteaux of the eleventh and twelfth centuries

were little more than a rectangular or round donjon, surrounded by

exterior works of relatively little strategic importance. They were

always defended by a deep fosse, and by subterranean passages which

would allow the defending forces to move under cover from one point to

another; and in addition, they were frequently placed upon the summit of

a hill or rocky promontory, as was the case at Les Andelys, La

Roche-Guyon, Falaise, and Domfront.

The Norman influence of château-building spread widely. England, of

course, followed speedily; but their keeps or donjons were more often

rectangular and seldom circular.

In the Vendée at Ponzanges, at Beaugency, on the Loire at Montrichard,

and at Loches, the Norman influence prevailed, but still the most

complete and successful examples were confined to Norman soil.

In the thirteenth century the châteaux throughout France all began to be

built on one specific plan and arrangement, keeping, meanwhile, to the

best traditions of Merovingian and Carlovingian times.

By the end of the thirteenth century the feudality, more or less ruined

by the Crusades, were no longer in a position to build great independent

fortresses; and the château by the middle of the century following had

been shorn of many of its former fortifying attributes and became merely

the great luxurious habitation of the seigneurs who, in other days,

would have made war, or been attacked on their own account.

Some sort of defences they always retained, at least until a much later

date; a fortified gateway, perhaps, a crenelated battlement, partly for

use and partly for decorative purposes, and a moat, though oftentimes it

was a dry one from the absence of near-by water.

By the time the fifteenth century had dawned many of the old châteaux of

Normandy had been repaired, restored, or rebuilt, and many new edifices

were erected; but with the Renaissance a distinctly new type was

created,--that of a palatial country-house, which to all intents and

purposes may be classed generally as modern châteaux, even though they

may have been built up from ancient foundations.

Of this class in Normandy the most prominent were the magnificent

establishment of the Archbishops of Rouen at Gaillon, the Château

Inférieure at La Roche-Guyon, the Châteaux d’Eu, d’Anet, and Fontaine

Henri.

If one could trace the history of all the châteaux of France, or even of

Normandy and Brittany, to which are attached facts of historical or

romantic purport, or which are endowed with artistic tributes, or are

picturesquely environed, the results would make a formidable and most

interesting work.

In France by the end of the ninth century there were some twenty

thousand châteaux, so recognized by their own individual names.

The châtelain, or feudal lord, was a veritable king in his own domain,

with his standard, his court of justice, and his vassals; and, quite

rightly, in many cases he said to his people, “I will defend you against

the enemy, and give you the right of refuge behind the thick walls of my

château; at the moment of danger the pont-levis will lower for you, your

wives, and your children.”

The discussion of the rights or wrongs of the feudal system is too big a

subject to have place here; and, while the serfs of a former day may

have suffered in many instances, there was a certain paternal care which

doubtless more than overshadowed the ill deeds of the comparatively few

overbearing and tyrannical lords.

Not every tenantless and ruined château or seigneurial manor of Normandy

is a monument of greed and rapacity, and one need not conjure up a

picture of other days, with peasants’ fields trampled and uptorn, and

cattle and grain seized, in order to draw disparaging contrasts as

compared with the times in which we live.

The history of feudalism is a long and lurid one in many respects; but

there is much of the domestic life of the times which points again and

again to the fact that the overlord and his serfs were not in far

different relations than the king and his vassals, or the landlord and

tenant of to-day.

Time was when a certain class of feudal barons were robbers who lived in

moated and turreted castles and raided on the peasants beneath their

walls, or compelled them to bring to their castles the products of the

fields; but this was not so common in Normandy as elsewhere, and was

more German than French. If one is to believe the chronicles of the

feudal lords of Normandy and the northwest of France, there were a great

many who promulgated a law much more charitable and fair than that in

force in many a “boss-ridden” community of to-day, in England or

America.

When the Franks became masters of Gaul they were quite content to let

the old system of administration still obtain, and to confide to some

count the governorship of the cities. He was usually a person who was

subservient to the governor of the district, who, on his part, deferred

to the heads of the province and the kingdom.

The office was hereditary in most cases; and, as the possessors of

benefices which were withheld from the masses, they at first demanded an

allegiance which, in later times, came to be greatly abridged.

This was the beginning of the feudal system in France. It became

complete when Charles the Bold consecrated the hereditary offices by the

“_Capitulaire de Kiersi-sur-Oise_,” in 877.

Each seigneur reigned in his fief over his serfs and vassals; and he in

turn was subordinate to the count or duke, a rank higher up, the count

himself regulating his movements and actions according to the will of

the king.

Under the feudal system the government offered great opportunities for

irregularities, and the Roman law and rulings practically disappeared

from all but the ecclesiastical divisions.

From the tenth to the fourteenth centuries France was divided into as

many petty states as there were cantons or châteaux; and, so far as

intercommunication for purposes of commerce were concerned, the only

relations with the outside world were by the aid of great periodical

fairs, such as were held at Beaucaire in Provence, the most celebrated

of all, where the volume of trade was second only to that of

Nijni-Novgorod in Russia. In the north this great fair found its

counterparts at St. Denis, near Paris, and at Guibray, near Falaise in

Normandy, which was next to Beaucaire in magnitude and importance. As to

other outside communications, it developed largely along the line of

raids and warlike incursions into neighbouring territory, as a result of

jealousy and envy between the various seigneurs. The only other

opportunities offered for the lower classes to mingle with the great

world, beyond the feudal territory which claimed them for its own, was

through the means of religious pilgrimages and the Crusades.

This description to a great extent applies only to the châteaux of the

powerful and wealthy seigneurs.

One then comes to the small nobility and their manor-houses, which were

only less grand and luxurious in degree, not in kind. They were not

fortified, save by an encircling wall, often of great height and

thickness, which enclosed the whole domestic establishment and its home

grounds. The manor-house of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries took

frequent root in Normandy, and was often very splendid in its

appointments and proportions.

The château of to-day, as one finds it in France, that is, the strictly

modern edifice, which often bears the high-sounding name of château, is

nothing more than a country-house of a small manufacturer or merchant;

who, after thirty or forty years of a strenuous life, has married off

his daughters and sons, and wishes to settle down in the country, and

surround himself and his wife with the comforts of life and amid a

glamour which, he fancies, somewhat approaches the splendour of the

olden times.

All this is commendable enough, of course, and it is much better that

such a châtelain should build a brand-new red brick and green-and-yellow

tiled pompous edifice, with a plaster cat on the ridge-pole, than that

he should buy and seek to remodel in new style a really good old-time

edifice.

[Illustration: _Ancient Manor d’Argouges_]

With the inherent good taste undoubtedly possessed by the French, it is

astonishing how ugly and bizarre their modern country-houses are,

examples of which one often sees in Normandy, along the Seine in the

suburbs of Rouen, or in the neighbourhood of Dieppe or Trouville.

In the blazonry of the arms of the nobility of France, the château has a

supreme significance. Wherever it is seen incorporated in quarterings,

whether with a single tower or three, it signifies that the châtelain

thereof has rendered some signal service to the state of France in its

royal days.

Renaissance architecture in Normandy never achieved the magnitude that

it did elsewhere in France, albeit certain notable structures yet exist

to tell of the excellence of its comparatively few examples.

In the beginning Pierre Fain and Guillaume Senault built the

archiepiscopal château at Gaillon, truly one of the wonders of the

Renaissance. Roland Leroux erected that highly ornate tomb of the

Amboise cardinals in Rouen’s cathedral, which, however, must be

considered as merely a decorative, and not a constructive, work. In Caen

and its environs Hector Sohier and a truly great unknown exercised

their genius between 1515 and 1545. At Gisors, three generations of

architects by the name of Grappin, Jean I., Robert, and Jean II., proved

their originality.

This was the start made which culminated in the Hôtel Bourgtheroulde and

the Palais de Justice at Rouen.

If the notable examples of early Renaissance in Normandy are not so

numerous as elsewhere, they are certainly as beautiful, and reflect

great credit upon their designers.

Throughout the Caux, in Normandy, there are innumerable seventeenth and

eighteenth century châteaux. They do not rise to the splendour of the

great Renaissance edifices of the Loire, neither in point of grandeur,

excellence of their artistic embellishment, nor in their historical

reminiscence. They are not so very large; their architecture is in

general a great fall from that of the Renaissance beauties of the

preceding centuries, and only infrequently were their associations

intimately related with the court.

In spite of all this they exhibit many excellencies of detail, and, if

simply built, are at least in much better taste and more appealing form

than seventeenth-century architecture in general. Many of them are of

brick, and are of imposing aspect, when considered from the point of

view of great country-houses alone. Frequently they are preceded by

flower-gardens, which are in turn faced with greensward, in most

delightful fashion. Great avenues of trees lead from the highroad, and

generally the aspect is one of great comfort, if not of extravagant

luxury.

To-day, in many instances, these great domains are simply what are known

as “high-farms,” where the gentleman farmer who lives in the great house

is in far better odour than the country squire in England, principally

from the reason that he often rents, sells, or works in shares such a

part of his land as he does not work direct. This is an admirable

system, which works wonderfully well throughout France, and should be

studied by agriculturists and economists elsewhere.

CHAPTER V.

SOME TYPES OF NORMAN ARCHITECTURE

The religious architecture of Normandy, from the tenth century onward,

with regard to abbeys, cathedrals, and parish churches alike, was so

abundant and splendid as to merit the naming of the style as Norman.

The monkish builders of these early days, following in the wake of the

Conqueror, went throughout the length and breadth of Britain, sowing the

seed that was to develop the Anglo-Norman variety which, truth to tell,

differs in many instances not at all from the parent style, seen at its

best in such great edifices as the abbey churches of Jumièges and St.

Georges de Boscherville, near Rouen.

Normandy did not fall under the sway of the ogival or Gothic style,

which had established itself in the Ile de France and Picardy, until

quite a hundred years after it made its appearance there (1150).

The Norman-Romanesque, for such the local style really was, was

distinguished by a relative strength and grandeur which ranked it far

ahead of the pure Romanesque in its general interest. Its walls were of

great thickness, and frequently of great height, and the demi-rond

arcatures, often interlaced for decorative effect, were distinctly

characteristic.

The capitals were richly decorated, but seldom, if ever, in the style

imported by the Romans from the Greek, and the geometrical, and zigzag,

and lozenge decorations of the walls were, if bizarre, a departure from

anything heretofore seen. Seldom, if ever, were plant-forms made use of,

and statuary and effigies were, in the beginning, excessively rare.

Frequently in the early Norman churches there was no ambulatory to the

choir, and the easterly termination took the form of a flat chevet

rather than that of the trefoil or fan-like arrangement which had to

some extent obtained in the pure Romanesque type, and was undergoing a

high development through the interpolation of the flying buttress or

_arc-boutant_ in the newly innovated Gothic of the Ile de France.

The towers frequently numbered three, a great central tower and two

smaller members flanking the façade, or perhaps one of the transepts.

This great central tower gave rise to the lantern, which, for the

purpose of lighting alone, proved a most desirable feature, and which,

for long after the advent of Gothic, was retained in many Norman

edifices in England.

From the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries the distinct Norman style

developed rapidly before it was entirely crowded out by the onrushing

wave of Gothic. In its rudimentary forms it is found as early as the

ninth century, and some details lingered even after the wholesale advent

of Gothic, but practically its reign was but three hundred years.

It was between 1180 and 1200 that Normandy received the first Gothic

inspiration from the Ile de France. It resulted, at first, only in the

interpolation of certain details of decoration, differing from the

severer lines of the Normanesque; colonnets piled themselves up on

columns, and instead of great cylinders and octagons, the ploughed and

channelled Gothic piers slowly crept in. The windows gradually took on

the pointed arch, and the tracery became more elaborate. Finally the

triforium came, and balustrades, rosaces, and fleurons, and sculptured

capitals, after the form of leaves and branches, completed the

transition to pure Gothic forms.

At the end of the third ovigal period, when the Gothic was losing its

individuality of character elsewhere in France, it was still flourishing

in Normandy, and produced such marvellous examples as the south façade

of Notre Dame de Louviers, the porch front at Alençon, and St. Maclou at

Rouen, to say nothing of the more elaborate façade of Rouen’s cathedral.

In the Department of Manche one encounters frequent village churches

with massive rectangular central towers after the manner of the large

parish church in England, and once and again one comes upon a

squared-off east end, such as is so greatly in vogue in England, and so

infrequently seen in France,--the great parish church of Notre Dame at

Grand Andelys, on the Seine, being one of the most notable Norman

examples.

During the reign of Charles VII. and Louis XI. there was a great

building revival wherein the principles of the Renaissance--brought from

Italy, doubtless, by the nobles in the train of Charles VII.--flourished

to the exclusion of any other style.

Here in Normandy, as elsewhere in France, the Renaissance architecture

came to its greatest glories with respect to domestic establishments and

civic buildings, though once and again there were manifestly good

Renaissance details incorporated into the fabric of a great church, the

most successful and notable example of such in Normandy being Hector

Sohier’s work at St. Pierre in Caen.

The great château of the Archbishops of Rouen at Gaillon was a notable

example of the other class, also the Hôtel Bourgtheroulde at Rouen, and

such smaller works as the tomb of the Cardinals of Amboise in Rouen’s

cathedral, and the Hôtel d’Escoville at Caen.

It is commonly thought that the beauties of the Renaissance in the lower

Seine valley came as a result of the influence of the Cardinals of

Amboise, who built the great château at Gaillon. So far as religious

edifices went, it was mostly with respect to interpolated details or

restorations that the style took on any very great proportions, though

the evidences that one sees in the cathedral at Evreux and in the great

hybrid church at Gisors are by no means slight in bulk.

The Towers of St. Eloi and St. Martin at Rouen are notable examples, and

some parts of the parish church at Jumièges and the three chapels of the

church of St. Jacques at Dieppe complete the list of really prominent

religious Renaissance works in Normandy.

PART III.

CHAPTER I.

THE SEINE VALLEY--PREAMBLE

Three great gateways to Paris, from England’s shores, lie through

Normandy: via Cherbourg and the Cotentin, via Dieppe and the Pays de

Caux, and via Havre and the Seine valley, by the old Norman capital of

Rouen.

All three routes traverse a lovely country, but it is probable that the

one by the great silent highway of the Seine is the most picturesque and

historically interesting of its length in the whole world.

If the Seine be truly a great highway--the main street--of that

elongated metropolis which extends from the Ile de la Cité, at Paris, to

Havre, it is equally true that the roadways along either bank become its

footpaths or sidewalks, and that the parallel highroads, running along

either side not far from the river-bank, are as busy with wheeled

traffic as any other of the great national roads of France.

“The Seine,” says Michelet, “is the most civilized and the most perfect

of the rivers of France. It bears the spirit of Paris to Normandy, to

the sea, to England, and to far-away America.”

“The valley,” say the geographers, “is monotonous up to Paris, varied to

Rouen, and picturesque to Havre.” Deep-sea navigation is possible from

its mouth to Paris, and above all as far as to Rouen, to which point

great ships come and go with the same regularity that would obtain in a

seacoast port. The tide of the ocean rises and falls as high up as Pont

de l’Arche, where the first dam and lock are built.

The affluents of the Seine below Paris are the Oise, its principal

tributary, which has its birth in the distant Ardennes in Belgium; the

Epte, a “pure water” stream which flows through a charming valley, from

Forges-les-Eaux to Giverny near Vernon; the Andelle, less important, but

a wonderfully picturesque little river, which joins the parent stream

near Pont de l’Arche. The Eure also comes to its confluence with the

Seine at the same point, and the Risle, which rises near La Perche,

after 140 kilometres, finally reaches the sea through the Seine at

Quillebeuf.

[Illustration: _An Inn by the Seine_]

The populous and charmingly situated towns of the Seine valley, its

wooded banks and forests, and the delightful roads along its banks, with

here and there a château half-hidden by trees, to say nothing of the

bosom of the stream itself, which forms a greatly travelled highway of

another sort, all combine to present a continually changing scene, which

is not excelled in all France.

There is a little village on the banks of the Seine below Vernon, where

everything save the grand old ruin near by dates from the time, a dozen

or more years ago, when a well-known American millionaire stopped there

in his long, low-built steam-yacht, and requisitioned all the resources

of the town’s not very ample supplies in provender for himself and his

“suite,” as the native will tell you. The party did not remain

long--over one night only, and for the _petit déjeuner_ the next

day--but they must have strewn their pathway with gold, for the memory

of the event still lingers.

Strange to say, this little old-world town has not become spoiled, and

is not yet a popular resort, though now that an “artist colony” of a

dozen or more young ladies descended upon it the last summer, in charge

of a patriarchal old gentleman and his wife, its popularity appears to

be on the increase.

The great highway of the Seine which connects the capital of France with

the capital of Normandy forms, for the most part of its course below

Paris, a broad, silvery band, which winds its way around numerous small

islands until it comes well up to Rouen, when for fifty or more

kilometres--as marked by the broad, white, and plainly visible stones

along its banks--it flows through deep-cut cliffs of chalk crowned with

greensward.

Below Rouen, after La Bouille is passed, the banks flatten out, until at

Caudebec they take on quite a low-country aspect, from whence the Seine

makes its way to the sea through the shifting sand-bars at its mouth.

For forty kilometres above Havre the estuary is a broad, lagoon-like

expanse which looks little enough like a channel to the sea, though the

country round about is not wholly flat, at least not in the distance.

Havre many travellers know as a port of embarkation or debarkation for

the great Atlantic liners under the subsidy of the French government.

Trouville, to the westward from Havre, across this broad bay of the

Seine, is a genuine resort of rank and fashion, not dull, to be sure,

but as stale and unprofitable a place in which to linger as one can well

imagine. It is the abode of the fashionable world and of millionaires

who are unable to take their pleasures except to the accompaniment of

details which are not even luxuries to many others, but which to them

are necessities of prime importance.

Etretat, practically equidistant eastward, offers much the same

attractions, with this difference: it has, or had a half-century ago, a

great vogue among artists. Its sea and sky and chalk cliffs are still

there, all, it would seem, in a more superlative degree than elsewhere

along the coast, but casinos, de luxe hotels, and “five o’clocks” have

eliminated all the idyllic foreground, or at least thrust it

paradoxically into the distance.

There are a dozen or more similar seashore resorts in the immediate

neighbourhood, but when one turns the prow of his motor-boat upstream,

or starts his automobile on the road which follows either bank of the

Seine for the greater part of the distance from sea to source, he enters

immediately upon associations of history and romance that are linked

with an unbreakable silvery thread, which never allows one to forget or

ignore the fact of its presence or the part it has played in the past.

Eastward lies the province of Caux, of the ancient peoples known as the

Calétes, while westward, and onward through the valley of the Eure, the

chief tributary of the Seine on the left bank below Paris, is the real

Normandy, whose junction with the Isle of France--the ancient domain of

the third race of kings--and the fertile plain of La Beauce is marked by

the village of Houdan.

It was Napoleon, as first consul, who said that in time to come, Havre,

Rouen, and Paris would be one and the same city, and the Seine would be

the grand highway.

There is generally to be found lying at the Quai de la Hôtel de Ville,

at Paris, a dumpy-looking little steamboat, with stubby masts and a

collapsible funnel, which, when all is in order and shipshape, has quite

the look of a deep-sea craft. In a way it performs much the same

functions, for the passage of some twenty hours from Tower Bridge on

London’s river to the entrance to the Seine at Havre is more often than

not of a boisterousness quite the equal of the far-away briny deep

itself.

Writing a hundred years after the great consul passed his observations

on the great highway of the Seine, one realizes still more that its

entire course, from Paris to Havre, in no small way resembles a great

business thoroughfare, with its marts of trade on either hand, its

green open places, its populous centres, its more bare and less

pretentious areas, and its cross-roads represented by the inflowing

streams, which empty into it from all directions.

In addition, the progress of the ages has multiplied the earth-roads

along its banks, and the boats upon its bosom, and the iron rails which

connect it with the uttermost corners of the land, bind and protect its

permanent value as a great highway of trade.

One other aspect to-day, of which the majority of English-speaking folk

know but little, is that the river is greatly given over, on certain

occasions and on all fête-days, to sports.

The oarsman has come in the last half-century in great numbers, and in

all the large centres on the banks of the Seine he is found, as often as

occasion permits, in his racing boat, or shell, a name he has adopted

from the English vocabulary. He may not go about his sport as

scientifically as his American or English brother, but he is quite as

enthusiastic.

To-day, also, the Seine is the true home of the automobile-boat. As an

innovation of the times it has had some success elsewhere, but nowhere

has the practice of the sport been achieved with the success that it

has in that broad, though sinuous stretch of water between the islands

below Paris.

Following again on the lines of Napoleon’s words, one appreciates that,

if Havre, Paris, and Rouen have not yet become one, Rouen and Havre have

come very near to it, for between the principal city of Normandy and the

seaport city on _La Manche_--as the French prefer to call the English

Channel--are a succession of villages and towns, one scarcely out of

sight of the other, all swarming with industry and life, from the

artists who throng Caudebec in summer to the peasants who, on a

fête-day, crowd into the nearest centre of population to stare at

townfolk and drink a particularly vile brand of the native

cognac--_calvados_--known in parts of America as “applejack” or hard

cider.

As a patriotic and observing Frenchman from the Midi told the writer:

“Nowhere else in France may one see so grand a succession of charms and

beauties, nowhere receive so live and varied impressions--the splendours

of the arts of other days surrounded by the wonders of modern

activities--as here in this beautiful stretch of the Seine through

Normandy.”

This is not fulsome praise, but enthusiasm merely, bred of intimate

acquaintance.

One dreams of the time when Paris was but a tiny bourg: then Rouen was

already a great city, having all the prerogatives of a capital. Indeed,

capital she was, in effect, under the Romans, who made their way along

the Seine and established their country along the banks of the majestic

river.

On a certain occasion it was a great question with the author of this

book as to whether a journey through the Seine valley in Normandy should

be made by means of the novel and speedy motor-boat, or some other small

water-craft, or by the better known motor-car.

A covered wagon, too, was thought of, with two small horses and a gipsy

driver, but the thing had been done before, and it was not wholly with

equanimity that we contemplated jolting over the many miles of the rough

streets for which French towns are noted.

For more reasons than one the motor-boat would not do. So the decision

ultimately came to the land automobile.

This offered great possibilities for exploration, in a well-known land,

to be sure, but as an enthusiastic automobilist once said, it was vastly

more satisfactory to him to discover a new and picturesque route from

some Channel port to the south of France, than it would be to cleave a

new path through trackless Africa.

The towns and places of historic interest or romantic beauty, if not of

the river itself, were on its banks or near them, and were properly

enough always considered in connection with the Seine.

The itinerary of the Seine occupied the whole of one long, bright

summer, and when one adds to this the numerous excursions out of the

Seine valley proper into those of its watershed,--up the Eure to Anet,

the Ept to Gisors, or the Andelle to Lyons-le-Forêt or beyond,--one

rounds off a considerable number of miles or kilometres to one’s credit,

besides accomplishing much more than could possibly be achieved were the

journey attempted by boat.

We progressed beautifully for the greater part of the journey.

Occasionally, off the beaten track--while trying to discover that new

route across France, or rather across Normandy from one river valley to

another--we came upon a hill too stiff for us to surmount at the top

speed. There is one in the Forêt du Rouvray near Grand Couronne, and

another at La Thuit near Les Andelys; but in France such ungraded hills

are few and far between. Even the dreaded Côte de Gaillon, of

hill-climbing fame, paled before our machine, and we took it flying at

twenty kilometres an hour.

Only one thing could have made our journey more delightful,--and that

unfortunately was not possible,--the possession of a sort of amphibious

automobile which, when occasion required, would take to water for a

space,--we did take to water on one occasion, but the circumstance is

too reminiscent of misery to recount here,--or to go one better, some

sort of a machine constructed by the ingenuity of man which should

travel by land, by water, or through the air; then bad stretches of

_pavé_ would truly be eliminated and all hills levelled. But this would

indeed be in the millennium, and this book deals only with facts.

One enters the Seine from the sea at Havre by rounding a veritable

graveyard of rocks. When we entered Havre on this occasion--the artist,

the automobile, and the author, it was a dull, misty morning in May, and

the hour, 5 A. M.

The cross-channel boat progressed slowly through the basin to its dock,

swung its length as slowly around, and finally tied up with its deck

some eight feet below the level of the wharf pavement.

The process of disembarking an automobile under these conditions was

complicated. With true British conservatism of tradition, the captain,

his mate, quartermaster, and crew of engineers and stokers declared that

the automobile could not be landed “until the tide served,”--and it was

still going down.

Meantime the patron of the local garage, having been advised of our

coming, was on the wharf thoroughly equipped to receive us. Accompanying

this thoughtful individual was a rubicund, genial-looking gentleman who

afterward proved to be the representative of the _Département des

Mines_, who had come from Rouen sometime during the still hours of the

night, to put us through our paces. Clambering the steeply pitched

gangplank, the author--who in this case was also the

chauffeur--interviewed the before-mentioned gentlemen, thinking

meanwhile that it was more or less astonishing that they should have put

in an appearance at such an early hour.

It was suggested that a half-dozen stalwart Frenchmen could lift the

automobile and all its twelve hundredweight on their shoulders. It

seemed incredible, but it was worth trying--otherwise, four hours delay.

It was tried, to the contempt of the crew of the steamer, and to their

chagrin the feat was accomplished at a cost of three francs, which was

immediately expended in _calvados_ at the little _cabaret_ opposite.

With the aid of the Automobile Club membership card, the custom-house

was passed without difficulty or delay. The tanks were filled with

naphtha, water, and oil, and forthwith the test was made--before the

rubicund gentleman from Rouen--upon the outcome of which our certificate

of fitness was to be granted or refused.

There was nothing formidable about the process, though we came to grief,

or rather to a standstill, in the midst of a flock of sheep just around

the corner, and, in returning, stopped only within the proverbial hair’s

breadth of a flock of geese who had flutteringly escaped from a near-by

market stall.

All this seemed to demonstrate a high and efficient degree of ability,

and “_un certificat de capacité pour la conduite des voitures

automobiles à pétrole_” was given us forthwith, and long before the hour

of high water we were in full cry at the French legal limit for

traversing the streets and boulevards of a large and populous city such

as Havre.

The bad effects of the exceedingly bad coffee, and equally unpalatable

“cottage loaf,” purveyed to us at that early hour on board ship, had now

been dissipated in air, and another coffee and rolls taken at a café on

the tree-shaded Place Gambetta proved to be so appetizing that we

lingered on for _déjeuner_.