THE COAST WESTWARD OF THE SEINE
Westward of the mouth of the Seine is a little strip of coast-line which
in a restricted sense may be said to be the resort of the Parisian world
of fashion during the summer months. Trouville-Deauville,
Beuzeval-Houlgate, Dives-Cabourg, and Arromanches have their own
especial attractions and their own _clientèles_; but they are all much
alike, and it is only in the old towns, such as Honfleur, Pont l’Evêque,
Ouistreham, Ruys, or Port-en-Bessin, that one sees anything at all
characteristically Norman.
“To Honfleur seven and a half miles, which we made in an hour in a
strong north wind, the river being rougher than I thought a river could
be.” So Arthur Young wrote in the eighteenth century, as he journeyed
from Havre de Grâce across the Seine bay to the still important port of
Honfleur. “A small town, full of industry,” he continues, “with a
harbour full of ships, and even some Guinea-men as large as at Havre.”
All this is true as far as a reminiscence of Honfleur’s former glory is
concerned; but its commerce to-day is fishing and the tourist’s trade,
and no deep-sea ships frequent its crumbling quays. Instead of casks and
bales and other evidences of traffic beyond the seas, you will find
white umbrellas and artists’ easels set about on the wharves, with their
owners all trying to catch the fleeting picturesqueness of the old town,
which has heretofore been successfully done by Eugène Boudin and his
fellows in art of a half-century or more ago. The name of this great
painter is much revered in France, and it stands for much that is best
in the modern French school of painting. Boudin’s work forms the bridge
which links the romantic style with the frankly impressionistic. Monet
was one of Boudin’s pupils; but he did not continue simply a preacher of
his master’s tenets, but ran riot with colour in a way which Boudin
himself could never have conceived.
Boudin chiefly worked in those towns and villages which fringe the north
coast of France, as indeed Monet has done since. But Havre and Honfleur
and the Trouville of other days claimed his best and most prolific
work.
Through the generosity of his brother, M. Louis Boudin,--still a dweller
on the Norman shore,--the important art museum of Havre has lately been
endowed with over two hundred of Boudin’s brilliant sketches; and at the
smaller gallery of Honfleur (where Boudin, the son of a sailor, with the
sea in his blood, was born) there are more than a dozen of his
characteristic paintings.
One reason why the art of Boudin is specially to be enjoyed at Havre and
Honfleur (though, indeed, the public galleries of those places contain
nothing of his that is so important individually as the great “Port de
Bordeaux” in the Luxembourg) is that there, within sight of its windows,
are the elements, in depicting which with poetic realism Boudin won his
title to fame. His are the fishing-boats riding the restless sea, his
the infinite variety of the rolling waters and the changeful sky.
Boudin’s characteristic was not of colour alone, but of motif as well.
He painted Breton “_Pardons_,” Belgian towns and scenes in the
market-place, and drew also the cattle of the valley of Touques. He
“placed” his cattle perfectly in those fat meadows,--they became, as he
was, a part of the country. He drew the fashionable world of 1868,
crowding the beach of Trouville. Without wishing it, he was the
historian of the crinoline and the beau monde of his time. But one
always comes back to those scenes which were the inspiration of his
life. Boudin set down, in unexampled vigour and vivacity, his impression
of the Channel, its vessels and its ports, its waters, winds, clouds,
and sunshine; the weather of every hour of each day.
To-day one reaches Honfleur from Havre after much the same procedure as
did the old-century traveller, whose description of the voyage might
well apply even now, except that one makes the journey by steam-packet
in a considerably less time. The latter part of the old account is,
however, only too true. The mouth of the Seine is almost a replica of
the boisterous Straits of Dover; but it is the only way to get to the
decayed old port, Honfleur, from Havre without going thirty miles or
more around and crossing the ferry at Quillebeuf.
Honfleur, the seat of a departed commercial glory, is to-day all the
more attractive because of its dry-as-dust decrepitude; and the contrast
with the busy metropolis of Havre, across the Seine, does not exaggerate
this, it only emphasizes it.
Here the sea, as it mounts at break of day, finds the people already
awake, and one sees a medley of fisherfolk and their craft, with which
familiarity is needed for appreciation. The _picoteux_ are a style of
fishing-boat seen only out of Honfleur. These fishing-boats are very
nearly yachts, for the modern science of construction, as to this type
of craft, has not improved upon the provincial simplicity.
It was the ancient town of Honfleur that once held the bulk of the trade
with New France in America; but its real commercial glory is now gone,
stolen by its more opulent and successful neighbour. The activity on its
quays to-day among passengers, stevedores, and fishermen is but a
comic-opera travesty on the more magnificent activities which once
obtained.
The beauties of Honfleur are to be found in its curiously appealing
ensembles. All that remains of its thirteenth-century ramparts is the
Quai Beaulieu, whence the boat for Havre leaves. Porte de Caen the
ancient harbour was first called, and later _La Lieutenance_. Eastward
lie the _quartiers_, as they exist to-day; and, though they are but a
mimicry of their former selves, they are still characteristic of the
olden time.
[Illustration: _Honfleur_]
The denominations of the ancient parishes were Notre Dame des Vases,
practically non-existent to-day; St. Etienne des Prés, called to-day the
town; St. Leonard des Champs, to-day really a suburb; and Ste. Catherine
de Bois, rising up the sides of the Côte de Grâce.
Honfleur has, in its Cours de la République, a sort of miniature
Cannebière which fronts upon the old harbour. On the Quai St. Etienne is
the old Church of St. Etienne, the most ancient in the city, though
to-day it has been converted into a sort of local pantheon, which was
commendable as an act of civic pride, but does not appeal to the
outsider.
From Honfleur, by the Trouville road, Puits is reached, one of the most
extraordinary and most lovable of all the little towns in Normandy. Here
is the Church of St. Leonard, an isolated church surrounded by a sea of
flagstones. It is not strictly beautiful as old churches go, though it
is undeniably picturesque. On the other hand, all its charms are
negatived by the heavy, meaningless tower or cupola which caps its
façade.
The curious timber Church of Ste. Catherine de Bois is perhaps the most
appealing and picturesque feature which Honfleur possesses; and, when
seen in conjunction with the still more curious wooden steeple, one
wonders that one has never been smitten by its charm before.
The church is separated from the tower by a narrow street, on which
faces a most ungainly and ugly Renaissance portico. The main building
dates from the fifteenth century, and its rare and mellow timbered
side-walls have worn well. These enclose the aisles, which have curious
little square windows with small leaded lights; while above rises a row
of clerestory windows, also squared, but with good flamboyant mullions
which would be the pride of many a more substantial and grander edifice.
More daintily environed than any other of Honfleur’s churches is the
little sailor’s chapel of Notre Dame de Grâce, on the Côte de Grâce, on
the west side of the harbour. There is nothing very splendid about its
surroundings or its appointments; but on a day of pilgrimage, when the
sailors and their wives, their sweet-hearts and their daughters, flock
hither, it presents a sight comparable only with the _pardons_ of
Brittany. Indeed, after its sailors and artists, Honfleur would seem to
be noted for religious processions.
The houses of Honfleur are, in general, less lofty and ornate than in
many other regions of Normandy; but their narrow timbered fronts and
irregular gables render them no less picturesque.
A half-dozen or more kilometres from Honfleur is a little stream, not
marked on many maps, known as the Risle. On its banks, about the same
distance from its juncture with the Seine, is Pont Audemer, another
beautiful town, given over, however, to industrialism. Its tanneries and
cider-presses give employment and sustenance to several thousand people.
The Parisian calls Pont Audemer the capital of the “_royaume de
chicane_,” and goes on to say that this district comprises nearly all
Normandy. This is manifestly an exaggeration and unfair; but it is
claimed further that the municipal court-house at Pont Audemer is the
most frequented of all its buildings, and that to be a notary, a lawyer,
or a sheriff here is to become immediately rich.
The town is picturesquely disposed on the banks of the Risle, which
furnishes an abundant supply of water to the tanneries which line its
banks.
It has a really great church in St. Ouen, which makes it a place not to
be omitted from one’s itinerary, if it can possibly be included. It
dates from the eleventh, the fifteenth, and the sixteenth centuries, and
still possesses fragments of early stained glass and some curious
Renaissance wood-carvings.
Between Pont Audemer and the juncture of the Eure with the Seine one
comes upon one of the most lively and interesting parts of agricultural
Normandy. Here the fields are literally covered with apple-trees,
planted more closely than elsewhere, to the number of a hundred to the
acre, but the trees thrive exceedingly. The peasant cultivates his trees
with great regard for their well-being, and is quite as deft and
painstaking as his brother of the vineyards farther south. There are no
vineyards which are celebrated north of a line drawn from the mouth of
the Loire to where the Oise joins the Seine, just south of the confines
of Normandy.
The Norman grower of cider-apples is assiduous in his devotion to his
work. To gain an advantage of his competitor he will rent more ground,
economize and borrow to buy other land, and wait patiently, working
meanwhile early and late for the fifteen years to pass before he may
gather a maximum crop.
[Illustration: _In the Cider-apple Country_]
When the fruit is abundant all the Norman country-side is a land of
fulness and plenty, which in other times is wanting. Sometimes it
happens that the cider crop is good when the wine crop is bad. Then all
the more profit for Normandy; but the failure of the apple crop
elsewhere--in England, for instance--does not affect the market in
Normandy. The French do not export cider as they do wine.
None the less assiduously do the growers of cider apples in the north
tend their harvest than the vine-dressers of the south; and the white or
blond nectar of Normandy is as highly valued in its own land as are the
ruby vintages of the south.
Savants have before now attempted to trace the origin of the apple-trees
which so plentifully besprinkle Normandy, but they have generally fallen
back upon the old excuse, “_L’origine s’en perd dans la nuit des
temps._” Some, again, have claimed that the first trees were brought
from Italy by a Gauloise legion, a part of which penetrated into the
north and settled in the land between Evreux and Caen; while still
others of the older writers have said that the first apple-trees came
from the north of Spain, in the time of Charlemagne.
For three hundred years at least the process of cider-making has not
changed in Normandy. It is a simple one, and doubtless does not vary
exceedingly from the practice elsewhere, except that it is made here
from the distinctive cider apple, of which there are three varieties,
the bitter, the bitter-sweet, and the sweet. As made in Normandy, it is
the pure juice of the apple, purer doubtless than most wines alleged to
be made of the juice of the grape. There is no sugar or spice added, and
no marble dust to simulate a carbonated drink. Since the apples are not
eaten, there is an abundance of all the varieties, which are usually
mixed in equal proportions.
The actual making of cider in Normandy is a sort of a home occupation.
One does not take his apples to an established press in some centre of
population, if he has not one of his own, but arranges for a sort of
travelling brewer to come to his own house. The various disjointed
elements of a press, differing only in details from the usual form known
throughout the world, are brought up on a cart, unloaded and dumped down
in the courtyard at an early morning hour.
The process of erecting the press is not a long one, as the operation is
astonishingly simple. A heavy square or circular platform is surmounted
by the latticed cylindrical or square box into which the apples,
previously mangled by a sort of gigantic coffee-mill, are emptied until
it is filled to the brim. The long capstan-like arms, propelled by the
master cider-maker and his press boy, complete the operation, and, two
hours after sun-up, the end is in sight. By nine of a summer’s morning
he is on his way to the next customer, leaving behind the débris of two
or three hundred kilos of apples, which have been turned into 150 or
more litres of the luscious brown juice, which only needs its eight days
of fermentation to evolve itself into a sure cure for the gout and
rheumatism.
There is very little variation in the process, though often it is
carried out on a larger scale; and one progressive patron of an
ambulating cider-mill has ingeniously attached a petrol motor by a
simple system of shafting, which completes the preliminary process of
mashing the apples in an astonishingly short while.
There is another method somewhat in vogue, and, though it is not so
commonly practised, it is supposed to produce finer cider.
After a first crushing or bruising, the apples are left in a great tub
open to the air for a day. Then the free juice is drawn off and the rest
left to dribble out, after tepid water has been added to hasten the
process. It is then left to ferment very slowly in a temperature of
about 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Small cider--the common variety, one might
call it the _vin ordinaire_ of Normandy--is a mixture of apple juice
and river water; the muddier the better, it would seem.
[Illustration: _A Norman Cider-press_]
The consumption of cider is apparently increasing throughout France.
Statistics show that it is made in over half the departments, and in
Picardy, Normandy, and Brittany all classes drink little else.
It is popularly supposed that the increase in the consumption of cider
was originally due to the invasion of the phylloxera in the wine-growing
districts of the south some years since. Whether this is so or not, it
does not much matter; the real Normandy cider forms a welcome summer
drink after the heavy beer of England and the glucose-like compound of
the Low Countries.
The cider industry is one in which the profits fluctuate, because it is
almost wholly an article produced for home consumption. When the
fruit-growers and the cider merchants’ receipts are less, the money in
circulation in the neighbourhood is correspondingly less; and in some
sections this produces much hardship. The cider of commerce is of two
varieties, that drunk by the peasants and labourers of the towns--a
rather weak mixture of cider and water--and that usually served at the
better class of inns and hotels.
Beyond Pont Audemer is Touques, a most ancient town of about 1,200
souls; possessing, in its Church of St. Thomas, the first stone of which
was laid by Thomas à Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, a shrine which no
English tourist should omit from his itinerary of Normandy. In the
middle ages Touques enjoyed a great and growing importance until the
Revolution stunted its growth.
Between Pont Audemer and the Seine, at Quillebeuf, is a patch of morass,
like nothing so much as the _polders_ of Holland. Here it is known as
the _Marais Vernier_; but it has a real, genuine Low Country dike
encompassing it, known as the “Digue des Hollandaise.” An artist can
here paint black and white spotted cows, windmills, houses on stilts,
and most of the local colour of Holland without leaving the Seine
valley.
At Beuzeville is a fine public square surrounded by quaint old houses,
with a church in the ogival style of the thirteenth century, and a
charming market-house which, undoubtedly, if transferred to canvas with
the proper amount of skill, would make a picture worth buying.
Pont l’Evêque, just south of Trouville, enjoys the reputation of being
one of the most picturesque towns in Normandy. This is due,
principally, to the aspect of the life of its streets and squares in
conjunction with its backgrounds of old houses, the great square tower
of its church, and the usual surroundings of a quaint market-town. At
any rate, it is typically Norman and is directly on the line between
Trouville and Lisieux, or across country by road from Rouen to Caen; so
there is not much excuse for real travellers to pass it by, although
they frequently do so. Moreover, it is blessed with an excellent country
inn, the Bras d’Or, where one is served a bountiful and excellent meal
at a most modest price.
_Bons vivants_ will revere Pont l’Evêque for its cheeses. Situated in
the midst of the District of Auge, its pastures are very fertile, and
accordingly its milk products are justly celebrated. Rich pasturage and
great orchard enclosures, with hedges of willow so thick as to form a
barrier as impassable as barbed wire, indicate the source of prosperity
round about, with here and there a modest château half-hidden by the
trees.
In the neighbouring Château of Bonneville William the Conqueror
frequently resided.
The ancient market and the old houses of wood lend an air of antiquity
to the general aspect of this rather more than usually lively country
town.
In the Touques forest, which is an exceedingly fashionable driveway in
summer for the gay folk of Trouville, is the Château d’Agnesseau, which
dates from the reign of Louis XIII. At the cross-roads of Croix-Sonnet
one comes to a vast plateau set out with orchards and fruit-gardens,
while the forest itself, as one enters it by road from Trouville, offers
thirty or more kilometres of beautiful tree-lined roadways, which must
be refreshing to those dulled and jaded with the stone pavements and hot
sands of Trouville-Deauville.
At the St. Philibert is a statue framed with verdure, erected by the
wood-choppers of the forest to Notre Dame des Bois.
One makes his way from Honfleur to Trouville by a _corniche_ road, which
is a marvel among all similar roads in the north of Europe.
In a way, it reminds one of the famous _corniche_ from Nice to Cape
Martin on the Riviera, but so far as it goes it is a superb, though
perilously planned, roadway running along the very face of the cliff,
which blankets the coast-line for so great a part of the Norman shore.
Its fifteen kilometres make an exceedingly picturesque drive, with
charming snap-shots of sea and shore at nearly every turn.
The Hôtel St. Simon and its ancient farm and _cour_, which has been so
often painted by artists (immortalized, one may say, by Monet), is
passed on the right, and for a half-dozen kilometres or more one is
within sight and sound of the sea and its sands.
The only town of any magnitude whatever passed is Cricquebœuf, which
has a celebrated vine-grown church dating from the twelfth century, and
an old manor-house which is unusually pretentious.
From this point, on by Villerville, one reaches Trouville via the _Jetée
Promenade_ and the _Terrasse_ which faces the square, below the
dominating hills which run inland to the woods of Touques.
Trouville is principally the resort for society, for millionaire
yachtsmen and horsemen; but, for all that, it is, in a way, a typical
Norman fishing village.
Lovers of Dumas will recall that it was the scene of the early life of
Gabriel Lambert, in the romance of that name. Gabriel, the counterfeiter
who finished his life in the galleys at Toulon, spent his early days at
Trouville, whence he made his way to Paris by way of Pont
l’Evêque,--just the route that record-breaking automobilists take
to-day. The story of Gabriel Lambert and Marie Granger is an interesting
one, albeit a sad one, and there is a wealth of local colour woven into
it.
Trouville is also the scene of another of Dumas’s little-known tales,
“Pauline.” Dumas’s own description of the little fishing village, as it
then was, has a semblance of a likeness even to-day, when rococo villas,
great hotels, electric-cars, and golf links have added an air of
modernity to it which is anything but peaceful.
“You know the little town,” said he, “with its population of fisherfolk.
It is one of the most picturesque in Normandy. I stayed there a few days
exploring the neighbourhood, and in the evening I used to sit in the
chimney-corner with my worthy hostess.... There I heard strange tales of
adventures which had been enacted in Calvados and the Manche.”
Dumas also describes, though more or less superficially, many another
quaint historic Norman town: Caen, Lisieux, Falaise, blessed with the
memory of “the Conqueror’s birth,” Pont Audemer, Havre, and Alençon.
Trouville has two interesting, though not architecturally great,
churches in Notre Dame des Victoires and Notre Dame de Bon Secours,
which latter has an _ex voto_ chapel as its great attraction.
The town hall is a modern structure, but it has two fine landscapes by
Charles Mozin and Isabey hung in its board-room.
The public square is of course the rendez-vous of Trouville’s
fashionable element, and, if they are not “_five o’clocking_” at the
neighbouring tea-shops _à l’Anglais_, they may be found strolling on the
boulevard which flanks the sands “_quatre à six_,” as the local
expression goes.
It is impossible to catalogue society’s attractions here; nothing is
missing; and those who are looking for the distractions of a modern
watering-place will find them all.
Deauville is Trouville’s more exclusive and aristocratic neighbour, and
has its polo field, golf links, tennis-courts, and automobile
race-course. It is an impossible place for the man of moderate means,
and is as Parisian as the boulevards themselves.
The “_Terrasse_” may be called its chief sight, though hardly any but
mammon worshippers seek it out. Along its length and breadth, for it is
a vast seashore boulevard sixty or more feet in width, are the villas of
many whose names are famous in the society columns of the journals of
France, England, and America; and, though Deauville’s season is short,
it is very lively.
Villers-sur-Mer and Beuzeval-Houlgate each possess, in a minor way, the
villa attractions of Trouville-Deauville.
From Villers to Houlgate extends a line of sombre cliffs called the
“_Vaches Noires_,” from which fishermen may fish in June and July with
almost invariable good luck. Its seaweed-strewn rocks are covered with
mussels and other less edible shell-fish.
Dives-Cabourg is another of those hyphenated resorts of the Calvados
shores which possess delightful aspects of sea and sky.
Dives-sur-Mer is the old town, the very old town, from which set sail
William the Conqueror, in his descent upon England, with his two hundred
thousand varlets and fifty thousand gens d’armes. Accordingly Dives and
the country round about should prove of an interest to all lovers of
historic shrines. The Church of Notre Dame is of the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries; but built up from the ruins of an edifice which
existed in the eleventh century, and was destroyed in 1436 by Edward
III. of England.
[Illustration: _Dives-sur-Mer_]
The old market-house of Dives, like many another in these parts, is an
admirable construction in wood, and covers a part of the vast Place du
Marché, where was formerly situated the ancient abbatial of St. Marie du
Hibou of the twelfth century. The police now occupy an old Benedictine
convent.
Dives’s really great curiosity, for those who marvel at personal relics
of other days, is the “Hostellerie de Guillaume le Conquérant,” in part
dating back to the sixteenth century at least, which has been preserved
and restored with considerable care and skill by its proprietor, M. Le
Remois.
It is a veritable museum of ancient relics, too numerous to be more than
hinted at here. It is decidedly the great attraction for the visitor,
and whether he is impressed the more with the relics of the days of the
Conqueror, or by those of the accomplished Madame de Sévigné, he will be
assured of comfortable quarters, a warm welcome by the landlord, and a
bountiful repast. A stay at this old-time hotel is decidedly one of the
pleasures which all travellers in Normandy will afterward cherish.
Cabourg it is impossible to describe; and in spite of its proximity to
Dives and its association therewith, one will not come away from it
with any feeling of regret. It is new, painfully new, with its shop-,
café-, and hotel-bordered Avenue de la Mer, its casino, and its beach
covered with bathing-machines, red umbrellas, and white tents.
The lay-out of this “_station balnéaire_” is unique. It opens itself out
like a fan from the centre, where is the casino, with long, radiating
streets and avenues bound together with semi-circular avenues in most
symmetrical and dull fashion. There are fine sands, to be sure, and the
attractions are all irreproachable of their kind; but the true lover of
Normandy will much prefer to make his stay at Dives than at its seaside
neighbour of Cabourg.
Caen, the old capital of Lower Normandy, is one of those conventional
tourist points which ten-day travellers from across the Channel usually
“do” in an afternoon, and hasten on to Bayeux for the night. With the
beautiful “Abbaye aux Dames,” with its crypt of the thirty-four closely
set pillars, at one end of the town, and the “Abbaye aux Hommes,” with
the one-time tomb of William the Conqueror at the other end, to say
nothing of the various churches lying between, it is hard to see why a
tourist should hurry away. However, there is much available information
on this paradoxical city of the present day Department of Calvados to
be gathered from many sources; and, save to observe that its modernity
and its ancient decrepitude are so strongly contrasted that it is
bewildering, not much space can here be given to it.
The chief sights are its eight magnificently planned mediæval churches,
of which the “Abbaye aux Dames,” founded by Mathilda, the wife of the
Conqueror, and the “Abbaye aux Hommes,” founded by the Conqueror
himself, are the most celebrated architecturally and historically.
The Manor-house Gens d’Armes, so called from two curious statues which
flank its tower, is situated somewhat away from the beaten track of
tourist promenades, and is quite worth the hunting out, if only to
snap-shot its remarkable disposition of parts. It is an admirable
example of sixteenth-century French domestic architecture.
With the same regard for architectural beauties, one must remark the
admirable Renaissance apse of the Church of St. Pierre, mainly a Gothic
fabric, but with the interpolation of one of the most elaborate and
successful Renaissance adaptations in all French ecclesiastical
architecture. This portion of the edifice dates from the early
sixteenth century, while the main body goes back to three hundred years
before. It was the masterpiece of Hector Sohier, one of the leaders in
the art of the Renaissance in France.
[Illustration: _Tower of Gens d’Armes_]
A bibliographical note which is often ignored is the fact that Caen was
the birthplace of two men whose names are very great in French
literature.
The first is he who has been called the father of French poetry, though
perhaps a truer name would be the father of French critics; for
Malherbe’s title to the name of poet seems to rest mainly on those
beautiful verses he wrote to console his friend Du Perier on the loss of
his daughter, in which are the oft quoted lines:
“Et rose, elle a vécu ce que vivent les roses,
L’espace d’un matin.”
François de Malherbe was born in 1555 and died in 1628, and to French
litterateurs he is known as the reformer (modernizer?) of the French
tongue and of French poetry. The Malherbes seem to have belonged to
Caen, for the father of the critic held the position of counsellor for
the king in its magistracy.
The other celebrated litterateur born at Caen was even a more
interesting man, Huet, Bishop of Avranches, the preceptor of the
Dauphin, son of Louis XIV.,--he who has been called the last of those
encyclopædic and massive scholars of whom France has produced so many.
To-day one admires Huet most, perhaps, for the breadth of mind with
which he united philosophy and orthodoxy. Malherbe and Huet are only two
out of many of whom one must needs think, if one thinks of the past at
all, in Caen, but they are probably among the cleverest of her sons.
Here, then, is something more than six hours’ work already laid out for
the tourist. He will find innumerable facts and details set forth in the
red-covered books with which tourists of all nationalities arm
themselves; and Caen, for many reasons, will prove a vast and edifying
treasure-house.
At Caen lovers of architecture should hunt out the Hôtel d’Escoville, an
elegant edifice accounted one of the best of Renaissance domestic
establishments. It was built between 1532-38 by an architect whose name,
but not his fame, was buried with him.
Two other similar structures exist at Caen of value in the study of
architectural art, but frequently overlooked by tourists in general.
They are the Hôtel Mondrainville and the great pavilion of the Château
of Fontaine-Henri.
[Illustration: _Cloister of the Capucin Convent, Caen_]
On the keystone of an arch of the church of Ifs, near Caen, may be seen
a curious device, presumably that employed by the master builder of
olden times as a sort of a trade-mark. In form it is readily recognized
as a stone-worker’s hammer or _marteau_, and, like the curious
cryptogrammic and “Bill Stumpsian” marks on the cathedral at Cologne,
doubtless means nothing more or less than the stamp of approval of the
builder or his workmen, or the insignia of the work actually put into
place by some particular individual.
Running due south from Caen there is a pretty bit of river--the Orne. On
leaving the town, the road keeps close to the river, running through a
charming valley interspersed with rocks and wooded banks, and in the
midst of a country--
“Richly set
With châteaux, villages, and village spires.”
To continue up the valley of the Orne, and its smaller tributary, which
is hardly more than a babbling brook, is to leave the well-worn roads
behind and to strike out for oneself.
The valley of the Noireau is one of these. The towns are not as populous
or as famous, perhaps, as those that fringe the coast; but they have at
least so much to offer that one would regret not having known them.
Condé is a bustling little factory town, which is idyllic as to its
situation, though the place itself is unattractive enough. Tinchebray,
where Henry I. of England defeated and captured his elder brother, Duke
of Normandy, in 1106, has a curious church, overburdened with
clock-faces; for it has two, an ancient one which looks not out of
place, and a modern one which looks as though it might belong to a
cotton factory. Sourdeval is a charming old-world little town, though by
no means a dull one, and when it celebrates the fête of its patron saint
in the summer, it is as gay as the gayest resort on the coast.
The Brouains, which rises beyond Sourdeval, is a busy little working
river which turns countless mill-wheels, and also waters many square
kilometres of meadow-land. Above is Chérence, which is not found on many
maps, and here the valley widens into a more ample vista. Brecey is a
small town with a large public square; and, ten miles away, the coast of
the bay of Mont St. Michel at Avranches is reached through the Cotentin,
after a journey of some forty miles by road.
Not every one will perhaps make the journey, but the way is given here
because of the fact that it embraces a region of the country-side of
Normandy which is unfamiliar and certainly very beautiful and quite
unspoiled.
[Illustration: _Tinchebray_]
Bayeux, Balleroy, Ryes, Port-en-Bessin, and the coast-line from
Arromanches to the “Roches de Grand Camp” might well occupy a lazy week.
Most tourists rush into Bayeux by train or automobile, have luncheon, a
look at the famous tapestry and the cathedral, and take the road again
to St. Lô, another cathedral town, and so to Coutances for the night.
The thing is possible by either road or rail, but it is most
unsatisfactory.
Of Bayeux but little need be said here. The guide-books do it ample
justice; and the hand-books and various accounts which have been written
concerning the now time-worn and rather dingy _tapisserie_ have made it
almost a familiar spot to “armchair travellers” as well as tourists.
Near Bayeux is the charming Château of Balleroy, built by the elder
Mansard, the originator of the “Mansard” roofs, in 1626. On Wednesday
one may visit its great apartments, good pictures, tapestries, and rare
old furniture. Although it does not rank with the great Loire château,
it approaches it.
The façade is handsomely disposed, if one admires Mansard’s manner, and
the ensemble view just before one reaches the little village of Balleroy
is quite on the grandiose order.
The château dominates the village and stands high above even the top of
the parish church. There is a chapel attached to the château, or rather
situated within the park.
Near by is the forest of Cérisy, planted closely with young birches like
so many French forests. Nowhere does one see any old trees, and therein
lies one of the reasons why the French forests are so well preserved.
Northward from Bayeux to Ryes one passes at Sommervieu the old-time
château formerly belonging to the Bishops of Bayeux, which to-day is
reconstructed and used as a seminary.
Normandy abounds in “fortified farms.” On the road to St. Lô from Bayeux
there are several which one passes by road, and one of the best examples
of its class is the farm of the Pavillon at Ryes. It has three great
protected gateways, which to all intents and purposes are quite on the
lines of a fortification.
Ryes is daintily situated on the little river Gronde, and possesses also
a remarkable church of the twelfth to fourteenth centuries.
Asnelles, on the coast, four kilometres from Ryes, is a tiny
watering-place whose population doubles itself during the summer months.
Offshore, a distance of a mile or more, is a series of great rocks known
as the rocks of the Calvados, from which the name of the department was
originally taken. It is presumed that the name Calvados was originally
the name of one of the ships of the invincible Armada, _Salvador_, which
was wrecked here at the time of the coming of the Spaniards to invade
the north.
[Illustration: _Walled Farm_]
Arromanches-les-Bains is very pretentious, but of no interest whatever
to the general traveller; though the artist, in spite of the
distractions of the little resort, will get some good bits of life and
colour among the mackerel fishermen of the town.
Port-en-Bessin, lying to the westward of Arromanches, just before the
Cotentin peninsula is reached, is a fishing port at the mouth of the
Drome which has not yet become overrun by tourists of the watering-place
kind. Many who know its fame come here from neighbouring towns to enjoy
the luncheons and dinners of the town’s fine _tables d’hôtes_, but this
is all.
It is yet quite an unspoiled bit, not accessible by railway and not on
the direct road to anywhere, though but eleven kilometres from Bayeux.
For this reason it may retain for some time to come some measure of its
present unworldliness and the charm of its local manners and customs.
South of the actual coast towns of mid-Normandy, and before one reaches
the plateau region of the upper valleys of the Touques and the Orne,
from Rouen to Mont St. Michel via Lisieux, Falaise, and Avranches, are
innumerable roads which are unknown to most tourists.
[Illustration: _Port-en-Bessin_]
Since this book does not pretend to survey the old province minutely,
not all of these byways can be outlined here. Suffice to say that the
chief towns of what one may be allowed to call South Normandy and those
of the Cotentin peninsula and their characteristics are treated of in
the chapters which follow.
For the rest, any who will linger on the way in a trip across Normandy,
from the Seine to the Bay of Mont St. Michel, in a line drawn
practically midway between the coast and the southern border of the old
province, will meet with a succession of old-world spots which are
comparatively little known.
Lisieux, St. Pierre, Falaise, Argentan, Domfront, and Mortain point the
way in a comparatively straight line between the two points before given
and form the chief places of interest; but the country which lies
between is inexpressibly charming, and has only to be threaded in any
direction to prove the unexpected wonders of days long gone by. The
survival of many manners and customs which have not yet died out or
become worldly by contact with railways, telegraphs, telephones, and
great metropolitan newspapers will also be revealed.
If there ever was a city of wood it is Lisieux. All its buildings,
however, are not wood; for there is a not very beautiful, but
astonishingly complete, Gothic cathedral, and numerous other civil and
domestic structures which are of stone; but wooden houses are
everywhere, and in every state of hoary and tumble-down
picturesqueness. Occasionally, even to-day, a salon exhibitor will show
a painting of a street of those old lean-to houses of Rouen, which
tourists and buyers of picture post-cards know so well. If he would
paint some of those to be found at Lisieux, his fame would be made, for
a more decayed, disreputable-looking, but altogether lovely, lot of
mediæval houses it is not one’s good fortune to find elsewhere.
As a local Frenchman has sung:
“Dans nos vieilles maisons de bois,
Le beurre est d’or, le cidre est d’ambre;
Juin rit aux éclats; mais Novembre
Me semble aussi gai, quand je bois
Dans nos vieilles maisons de bois.”
To Lisieux one passes through Normandy’s most flowering farm-lands, but
the thought of Falaise and its associations as the birthplace of the
Conqueror will not allow one to linger by the way once he has got within
fifty kilometres of it.
[Illustration: _Old Wooden Houses, Lisieux_]
To-day Falaise has eight thousand inhabitants who live around its
ancient historic château, one of the most important military
constructions of mediæval times. The town sits upon a sort of isolated
promontory in a most superbly imposing situation. Its history is so
momentous and interwoven with that of the early days of the Normandy
dukes and English kings that it were futile to attempt to review it
here.
[Illustration: Plan Chateau of Falaise]
The château is built of gray quartz, and its entire surrounding moat,
with its twelve towers and two great gates each flanked by towers, is
preserved to this day. The twelfth and thirteenth century remains are
admirably preserved; and the donjon, which in this case was perhaps the
residential portion as well, is situated high upon a great cliff
overlooking the valley at its base. This great, grim square mass has
been restored in recent years (1869), and worthily, for its aspect has
not changed from what it was when the great Norman William first saw the
light within its walls.
The Talbot Tower, a great cylindrical donjon, was an addition during the
English occupation in 1415-18. One may stroll through the whole château
under the leadership of a most capable guide, and the usual half-day
given to Falaise will pass only too quickly.
The troubadours of the south have their celebrated heroines of whom they
sing praises, but those of Normandy sing of Arlette of Falaise, the
mother of the Conqueror.
Historians of olden times have given her the name of Arlette, Arliette,
Herline, Hélaire, Aluiève, Arlet, and Arlot; but to the Latin
chroniclers she was mostly known as Herlève. Thiérry has traced the name
from its Scandinavian root as follows: _Her_--noble; _lève_--love. “A
fine name,” says a Frenchman, “for a fine woman.”
Benoit de Saint More said: “She was wise, modest, and generous, to which
virtues she added a rare devotion.”
[Illustration: _Donjon of Falaise_]
All good Normans, and some others as well, know the legend of the
peasant maid, the gentle Herlève, when she was surprised by
Robert-le-Diable on his return from the chase at the fountain of the
Château of Falaise.
Vauquelin de la Fresnaye recounts it thus:
“Des piès et des jambes parurent
Qui si très beaux et si blancs furent
Que ce fut bien au duc avis
Que neige est pale et flor de lys
Emerveille, li torna s’amor.”
The story moves rapidly enough, and ultimately a son, William the
Conqueror, was born to Herlève and Robert the Magnificent.
After the death of Robert, Herlève married the Comte de Conteville, who
took the name of Herlevin. Two sons were born to the pair, Odon, Bishop
of Bayeux, and the Comte de Mortain, who fought gallantly at Hastings in
the train of his stepbrother. There was a daughter, too, Muriel, who
became Duchess of Albemarle.
Herlève and Herlevin were interred at the old Abbey of Grestain, whose
ruins are yet to be seen near Honfleur.
It is a well-recognized fact in history that Edward VII. is a direct
descendant, the twenty-ninth in the line, of William the Conqueror, the
illustrious son of Herlève of Falaise; but it is not so widely known,
apparently, that a number of the reigning sovereigns of Europe are
equally of the blood of the duke-king, William of Normandy.
The Bourbons of France, Spain, Italy, and Brazil descended from
Guillaume by the _reine-l’impératrice_ Mathilde, daughter of Henri I.,
likewise the Bourbons-Orleans.
The Emperor Joseph of Austria, of the house of Hapsburg, and Victor
Emmanuel of Savoy follow, the latter in the thirtieth degree.
Finally, the Kaiser Wilhelm II. is a descendant, also the twenty-ninth
in line, of the Norman Herlève.
All these illustrious sovereigns are proud indeed of their Norman blood,
and when President Loubet visited the court of the Quirinal recently, he
presented to the little Princesses of Italy a family of dolls dressed
after the Norman fashion, a delicate sentiment apparently much
appreciated by their elders, besides being held a political move of the
first importance.
When the Kaiser, a few years since, made his celebrated journey to the
Holy Land, it was with the avowed intention of visiting the great
religious monuments of Sicily, erected by the kings of the family of the
Guiscards of the Norman Cotentin.
The learned work of Bellencontre of Falaise on the genealogy of the
ruling European houses traces all of the following directly in descent
from the peasant maid of Falaise:
“Angleterre, Anhalt-Dessau, Autriche, Bade, Bavière, Belgique, Bresil
(Dom Pedro), Brunswik, Cobourg-Gotha, Danemark, Deux Siciles, Espagne,
France (Bourbon et Orleans), Grece, Hanovre, Hesse, Leuchtenberg,
Lucques, Mecklembourg-Schewerin, Modene, Naples, Parme, Pays Bas,
Portugal, Prusse (Allemagne), Russie, Sardaigne, Savoie-Carignan
(Italie), Saxe-Royle, Saxe-Altenbourg, Saxe-Weimar, Suède, Toscane,
Wurtemberg.”
The Church of St. Gervais, an eleventh-century edifice which was begun
by Henri I., Duke of Normandy, is a fine work of its era, though there
have been many later additions, notably those after the style of Hector
Sohier, one of the chief of Renaissance architects in these parts.
[Illustration: _Street under the Church of the Trinity, Falaise_]
The Church of the Trinity dates from the thirteenth century, and is a
very elaborate and graceful work, though showing many Renaissance
interpolations which rankle the critics. At Falaise is held the great
fair of Guibray, which has been held annually in August of each year
since the ninth century. This great institution, so justly celebrated
for its magnitude and importance, is one of the sights of Normandy, and
is quite in a class by itself. Formerly it was a great mart for all
sorts of wares, which ultimately were distributed through all the north
of France; but to-day it takes prominence with the fair of Bernay as a
great horse-market.
From Falaise, southwesterly to Domfront, the country-side is
delightfully and picturesquely rolling, and deeply cut with river
valleys, finally rising to the highest elevation in Normandy, where one
crosses the forest tract of Andaine, just before Domfront is reached.
Normandy has a mineral spring of importance at Bagnoles de l’Orne,
situated in a deep gorge near Domfront. It is not a fashionable spa, as
great Continental watering-places go, but the baths accommodate a
quarter of a thousand bathers, and there are the usual conventional
amusements.
The following legend connects the waters with mediæval times, and shows
that they must have some desirable properties for those who affect that
sort of a cure.
An old seigneur of Bagnoles, of the name of Hugues, who regretted the
rapidity with which he had lived the life of his youth, became
transformed by bathing in these salt waters. He tried them on his horse
as well, and it, too, regained its early agility. All of which seems as
good an endorsement of the efficacy of a mineral spring as one could
wish, and the popularity of Bagnoles de l’Orne has steadily increased.
François I. affected them, as well as his sister Marguerite of Navarre
and Henri IV. Louis XIV. tried the waters on his soldiers, and, so
satisfactory was the result that, up to 1840, the spring was used as a
sort of auxiliary treatment at the military hospital at Paris. The
old-time sixteenth-century bath-houses are still to be seen half-buried
in the soil.
After all, the Bagnoles de l’Orne will not offer much inducement for the
lover of architecture, or even of the highways and byways, to linger for
long in their immediate neighbourhood. He will be impatient for the
grand panorama of Domfront, but fifteen kilometres away, through the old
forest of Passais, where the hermit St. Front established himself in the
sixth century.
Those familiar with the church history of France will recall that this
holy man finally came to the distinction of having the great cathedral
of Périgueux dedicated to his honour. This magnificent structure marks
the dividing line in the development of the Gothic architecture of
France from the warmer-blooded styles which were born of Mediterranean
surroundings.
St. Front built a chapel here in the forest, and gradually he and his
disciples formed a village, the name of which, Domfront, was readily
enough evolved from Dominus Frons.
At Domfront William of Bellême, seigneur of Alençon, built a fortress in
1011, and the place became one of the strongest defences of Normandy in
the middle ages.
The Château of Domfront, situated a couple of hundred feet above the
Varenne, served the Empress Mathilde as a retreat, and became the
birthplace of the Queen of Castile. There are yet remaining two walls of
its memorable donjon, reminiscent of the struggles of the Duke of
Montgomery, but the ancient fortress-château itself was dismantled in
1598.
The panorama from the height of Domfront’s donjon tower is one of the
most remarkable in France.
Of the twenty-four ancient towers with which the old town was
surrounded, but fourteen remain, and they for the most part are built
into various structures of the town. One alone has been restored and
fitted with a new upper story,--the Tower of Gondras.
To the southward one sees Mount Margantin above the forest of Mortain.
It is the most considerable eminence in Normandy, and rises to a height
of 370 metres.
[Illustration: _A Cotentine_]