FALAISE
Although Falaise is not a typical Norman town--for it has too much
character of its own for that--there are certain features here which
are to be found in nearly all the other towns in Normandy, such as the
long narrow streets, roughly paved with cobbles, and the irregular
houses, most of which are neither very old nor very new, but just
softened by time.
To linger in the streets is to get many a peep which, transferred to
canvas, would give lasting pleasure. In one place we see long narrow
passages running between houses; the black shadow is in contrast with
the yellow sunlight on the pavement beyond, and at one end there falls
over a parapet a mass of glorious deep-tinged lilac. Surely lilac
never grows elsewhere as it grows in Falaise! In another place there
is a tiny court, with an indescribable medley of steps, grey stone,
worn beams, gable ends, and child life. We come suddenly upon a tiny
chapel with a bit of ancient moulding that proclaims its hoary age; it
is perched upon a rock, up the steep sides of which straggle staring
yellow wallflowers, brilliant blue forget-me-not, and stiff tulips of
various colours.
One of the most striking bits of Falaise is the quiet square before the
Hotel de Ville, where grass grows between the cobbles, overshadowed by
the mighty figure of William on horseback, many times life-size. Round
the pedestal are graven his ancestors, the previous dukes, men to be
reckoned with, one and all, but not one to compare with their great
successor, whose magnificent energy and power the artist has succeeded
in transfixing in metal.
[Illustration: A STREET VENDOR, FALAISE]
On one side, aslant to the square, is the church of La Trinité, a
curious church, built without any rules; and at its east end bestriding
a street, with a delightful disregard for the change of level. It
has a fine porch, and admirably carved buttresses, and over a great
part of it runs that profusion of carving which the ancient craftsman
seems to have thrown in for sheer love of it. The tower, however, is
a note of ugliness, interrupting much pleasant quaintness. This is
not the most notable church in Falaise; that honour is claimed by St
Gervais in the widened space in the middle of the main street, and St
Gervais is all glorious without but disappointing within, where its
dull lines are devitalised by the terrible mockery perpetrated in the
name of decoration. Outside, however, the warmly tinted sandstone,
carved in every fantastic semblance, rises grandly against the
clear blue sky. Particularly noticeable are the gargoyles, turning this
way and that, and the wonderful moulding round the tower windows. The
restoration has affected notable improvement on the exterior, clearing
away all the old houses which clung like barnacles to the walls.
If one could only reverse the wheel of time and see the church as
it looked at its great dedication festival, when, glittering in the
smartness of work fresh from the chisel, it was dedicated in the
presence of Henry the First of England! Would the workmen differ
greatly in type, we wonder, from the group who now sit lazily sunning
themselves on the steps? The present men, who are in blue blouses,
are spare, not large of limb, with faces the colour of their own
house-tiles, with sharp thin features and keen eyes? The clothing
of the poor in Falaise is not so picturesque as in many parts of
Normandy--the blouse is here as everywhere, but there is nothing else
striking in the costume of the men, and only the older women wear caps,
and those of a very simple sort; the young ones go about with heads
uncovered, and hair neatly coiled up in a little top-knot, after the
usual manner of the French.
One of the most attractive views in Falaise, is that to be gained by
standing on the raised road that leaves the town direct to Caen, and
looking east and west. In the deep fosse, where once a mighty river
must have run, there is now only a dirty ditch, which serves the women
of Falaise for a washing-place, as it did nine hundred years ago.
On either side rise neat trimly-kept gardens, terrace upon terrace,
rich in greenery. In fact, the masses of green foliage which break
up any general view of Falaise are among its principal charms. The
influence of environment is seen in character, for even the smallest
and poorest cottages have their window-boxes and flowerpots, and the
neatness of the gardens is a sight to marvel at; even the wee children
love flowers. In the shops, especially the butchers’, where least of
all one would expect to see them, one finds great bowls and pyramids
of flowers, so large that they could hardly be encircled by both arms;
these are made up of lilac, rhododendron, pale pink peonies, tulips,
and forget-me-not, and are such Gargantuan bouquets as would make
sunshine in any London house.
[Illustration: A LITTLE NORMAN GIRL]
A rough and narrow track leads along the northern side of the river
opposite the castle. This is a very poor part of the town, where one
small room serves for bedroom and living-room for a whole family, and
the dark nut-brown interiors are in striking contrast with the blaze of
sunlight outside. The children are mostly healthy, sometimes strikingly
so; and among them it is difficult to pick out any special type; bright
brown eyes and sepia locks are seen side by side with hair perfectly
flaxen in colour and eyes of palest watery blue; both types alike greet
the “English” as a friend, for too many English are seen here to allow
them to be awesome, and perhaps also the little ones learn with
their earliest history there is a bond of kinship between them and
these strange people who come from across the sea. From nearly every
house comes the quiet hum of a hand-machine, wherewith men and women
knit socks and other garments; this sound mingles with the splash and
thud of the women busily washing clothes in the little narrow ditch,
kneeling in their wooden tubs, arms in ice-cold water, and backs bent
in the occupation which seems to take up far the largest proportion of
a French peasant-woman’s day.
There are little bridges over the water, and footpaths winding in and
out, and above all is the clear vivid sky of a May day. If we went on a
little further until we were almost beneath the perpendicular walls of
the castle, we should come all at once on two things, which would carry
us back into the far past, for a large tannery still spreads irregular
buildings on the very place where once rose the tannery of William’s
maternal grandfather. Its presence is quickly felt, and we can see the
peasants coming away from it laden with the little “cakes” of waste
bark called “mottes,” which are used for fuel, and so oddly resemble
peats. Not far off a sound of voices and splashing of water will bring
us to a strange place, the town washing-shed, where, with the dim light
from the roof gleaming on the soapy green water, and the time-worn
posts, we shall find a score of women, perhaps some of them actual
collateral descendants of Arlotta’s, slapping and splashing the soiled
linen with as much heartiness as ever did the girl who was to become
the mother of a line of kings. It is the same spot, the same stream,
whose name is Ante, only the place is now roofed over instead of being
open to the sky, as it was in Arlotta’s day. We leave the valley and
wind upward past some tumbledown cottages of picturesque lath and
plaster; past others with such a solid foundation of stone showing in
the low doorways, that they seem as if they might well have stood since
the Conqueror’s day. On and on until we reach a lane, with high hedges
and lush rich green grass, and pass out at last on to a flat tableland,
where the purple-red orchis stand up like little tin soldiers in the
grass, and heather and gorse grow everywhere. We are upon Mont Mirat,
and at one end is a clump of grey rocks close by a group of windswept
firs; quite suddenly, at our feet as it were, a familiar object greets
us, startlingly close; it is the flat cap of the Talbot tower, and
as we near it, we see the whole castle appear, and realise we are on
the other side of the ravine, on a level with the tower, which is in
reality some distance away, but which, in the brilliant clearness of
the atmosphere, looks as if a well-thrown stone might easily strike it.
The jackdaws wheel and scream around the walls, and their shadows flit
after them, growing, fading, disappearing with infinite fantasy. And
the castle is a vision of light, bathed in the rays of a westering sun;
it appears as a perfect mass of yellow, from the deep dead gold of the
streaks of lichen to the palest biscuit colour of the patches on the
walls, fading to dun and sepia in the shadows.
You can still see in the castle the room in which the mighty William
is said to have been born, though all probability points to his
birthplace having been in the valley below. The room shown is in no
sense a royal apartment; it is a little, dark, dungeon-like chamber,
airless and lightless, built in the thickness of the wall; but sleeping
accommodation was not made much account of then. In any case, the
castle and the valley on which we look were the earliest associations
of William’s childhood. Here he lay an unconscious babe, when, as we
are told by Wace, he was visited by two of the premier barons in the
land, one of whom exclaimed prophetically, “Par toi e par ta ligne sert
la mienne moult abaisse.”
Here in that varied childhood, passed partly in the unsavoury tanyard
with his grandfather, partly in the castle with the stern-faced man
who caressed him, and whom he was told to call father; eyed askance by
the richly-dressed young nobles; hugged by the simple-minded Arlotta,
he grew up. Gradually a knowledge of his own peculiar position, of his
royal but sullied birth, of the battle before him, must have forced
themselves into the mind of a boy far more thoughtful than his years;
and by the time he was eight, at an age when most boys have hardly
begun to think, he had to take up his stern inheritance.
There is no doubt that spring is the time to see Falaise--spring,
when the trees are at their freshest and richest, undimmed by dust or
heat. By standing on the highest part of one line of rocks, we can see
behind the castle in miniature the church of Guibray perched on a hill,
its conical spire showing up against a distant line of horizon, so
straight, so blue, so misty, it might well be the sea.
The town itself shows as a mass of roofs, varying from brick red
to slate blue, but mostly the colour of rust; these are strangely
high-pitched to an English eye, and show well amid the mass of
complementary green, in which there are darker touches in the copper
beeches and cedars here and there--a magnificent panorama, with enough
sentiment and history about it to keep it from the insipidity of mere
beauty, and nothing more.
Only second in interest to the story of William’s precarious boyhood,
is the tale of that other boy, Arthur, the young Duke of Brittany,
who, at the age of fourteen, was brought to Falaise a prisoner in
the hands of his treacherous, crafty, and unscrupulous uncle, John.
The room in which Arthur was confined is still pointed out near the
supposed birthplace of William. It was in August that he came here,
and often must he have looked out over the wide horizon, wondering if
his faithful Bretons would come to his rescue. All through the winter
he remained a close prisoner; but he won the sympathy of his gaoler,
Hubert, and when John, finding him obdurate in his refusal to sign
away his rights, gave the cruel order that he should be so maimed as
to render him incapable of ruling, Hubert tacitly refused to obey it,
pretending to the king that the boy had died, and even arranging a
mock funeral. It seems odd, that having got so far he could not manage
to compass Arthur’s escape altogether; but when matters had reached
this point “the fury of the Bretons became boundless, and Hubert soon
found it necessary, for John’s own sake, to confess his fraud” (Miss
Norgate). This incident showed John that if he were to rule in peace
he must use sterner methods, and Arthur was, at the end of January,
removed to Rouen, from which time we hear no more of him.
A good deal of the castle which still stands is of the thirteenth
century, and there is no reason to doubt that it was within these very
walls the proud boy ate out his heart in loneliness and captivity.
A word must be given to the famous General Talbot, first Earl of
Shrewsbury, whose name is kept alive in the great donjon which he
built. He held the castle as governor during the English occupation
under Henry V. and VI., and his deeds are scattered broadcast in the
annals of the continual fighting of the period. We hear of him at
Dieppe, in Anjou, and in Maine, and his name became a synonym for
dash and daring. At the age of more than seventy years he was slain in
actual warfare at Castillon!
There is one other association of a generation preceding that of
John which cannot be wholly omitted. It was at the Castle of Falaise
that William the Lion, King of Scotland, did homage to King Henry of
England, acknowledging him as overlord, and thereby regaining a limited
freedom.
The castle can be visited at any time, and though there is not much to
see--the keep being a mere shell, and the chapel not now shown--it is
worth going over for the sake of the superb views which its situation
commands. It is said that Rollo built a fort on this site; and
certainly if he ever saw it he must have done so, for a more perfect
position for a fort can scarcely be imagined. It was in this building
or its immediate predecessor that Robert was besieged by the brother he
afterwards so traitorously murdered. It is probable that Robert himself
built up and restored the castle after his accession to power. A good
deal of what stands, however, dates from much later, including Earl
Talbot’s tower.
[Illustration: RURAL SCENE]
Beside the memorable siege under Henry V. of England, Falaise has been
retaken more than once, notably by Charles VII., commanding in person
in 1450; and by the French king, Henri IV., in 1590.
In the neighbourhood of Falaise there is some of the most attractive
scenery in Normandy. It is true that the main roads, which stretch
out from the town like the rays of a starfish, are not interesting.
They are of the typical green-bordered, poplar-lined kind. But the
side roads are very different. Take, for instance, the direct route
between Falaise and that other castle-fortress, Domfront. Here there
are woods of straight-stemmed beeches and proud oaks covering acres of
rounded hills that fold softly, contour on contour, revealing at last a
distance seemingly infinite in its horizon. Wide, splendidly engineered
roads sweep in flattened curves down the hillsides to the brown river,
amid its brilliant grass, and rise again as smoothly. Every vista shows
some picture; perhaps a tiny church perched on the top of a hill, its
spire rising sharply, or a tall, stern Calvary set against a background
of firs. The number of these Calvaries bearing recent dates, would seem
to show that faith still shines brightly among the country people,
whatever may be the trend of thought in the large towns.
The road passes many a typical Norman village of the poorer
sort--villages where the houses are made of lath and plaster or lath
and mud, and are set about anyhow and anywhere, rather as if they had
come together from some neighbourly instinct than had been regularly
built as a village. They stand often in a little plot of ground, worn
and poor enough, but made shady by the apple and pear trees. The umber
of the simple cottage walls, and the peculiar dead colour of grass in
shade, make a particular effect. Under the trees the mother of the
household sits sewing, as often as not with a child beside her.
[Illustration: STARTING FOR THE WASHING-SHED]
The women do a great deal of the work. Far out on a country road one
overtakes an old, wrinkled, shrivelled woman, whose right place is
surely not far from her hearthstone, trudging along with a great scythe
over her shoulder. The market carts one meets on the roads are driven
by women more often than men; women tend the cows as they feed quietly
by the wayside; women do the work in the fields; they do the milking,
frequently also in the fields; where the great glittering copper jugs
may be seen, standing on the grass, shining in the sun; the women
make the butter; and when one thinks that to all this are added the
multifarious duties of maternity and housekeeping, there is little
wonder that Norman women have small time to think of their personal
appearance, and are usually far from beautiful, though their brown
shining faces generally have that comeliness which the content of a
well-filled useful life gives. On the roads all over Normandy one meets
with donkey carts, for donkeys are more largely used than with us,
and they form a contrast to the fine team of great horses over which
the carter cracks his whip, and whose height is greatly increased to
the eye by the monstrous sheepskins, dyed dark blue, with which
their collars are nearly always adorned. In some parts the collars
themselves are resplendent, painted red and yellow, and bells jingle at
every step, making a team of horses as striking an object as a show.
Yoked oxen of massive build are still occasionally seen, notably in the
country about Gisors.
The situation of the castle at Domfront is curiously like that of
the castle at Falaise; both stand on a spur of cliff, separated from
a similar spur by a deep ravine in which runs a tiny stream. But at
Domfront the scene is more striking, for the rocks are higher, the
ravine is narrower, and the great masses of strata, inclined at an
angle of 45°, would fit into one another if pushed together like two
pieces of a child’s puzzle. It seems almost incredible that water can
have exercised such immense corrosive force, the appearance is rather
as if a giant hand had chiselled out the rocks, for their masses would
require no less than a Titanic agency, yet we know that from time
immemorial that little stream the Varennes has run in this cleft.
The peculiarities of the situation are best seen from the fir-crowned,
heather-covered heights opposite; and it is the situation that makes
Domfront, for the castle is a mere ruin, picturesque enough, and giving
an excuse for the public garden that runs around its base, but not in
itself interesting. The site is grander far than that of the famous
Chateau-Gaillard, grander even than that of Falaise, for the sheer
height is stupendous; no wonder Domfront was a strong castle and house
of defence to him who held it.
The view from the plateau is limited only by vision. A single hill to
the south-west stands out above the plain. In the immediate foreground,
just below, are a few toy houses, and a tiny, neat church, cruciform,
and bearing Norman date in every line of its architecture. It was
only ten or eleven years junior to the chateau in its first building,
and has long outlived it. The man who built both chateau and church,
Guillaume de Belesme, sleeps within the latter. He had not held the
chateau so much as forty years, when a stronger William than he, the
mighty Conqueror, swooped down upon him and drove him out. Of another
Belesme, a scion of the same house, we shall hear elsewhere.
William’s successors retained the castle in their own hands, and Henry
II. here received the nuncio sent by the Pope to reconcile him and
Becket. In the religious wars of the sixteenth century the castle was
seized and held by the Protestants, and only taken after a bitter
siege; otherwise it has not much recorded history. It is peaceful
enough at present, surrounded by a charming garden, where one may
wander at will, gazing out over the widespread view, watching the
swallows wheel and skim far below, and hearing the song of countless
birds, which, here as elsewhere in Normandy, build preferably in the
neighbourhood of man to escape their more dreaded foe, the magpie.
There is an old rhyme which says:--
“Domfront, ville de malheur
Arrivé a midi pendu à une heure.”
Though the reason why the town should have earned so unhappy a
reputation is lost in the mists of antiquity.
The neighbourhood of Domfront is full of interest: westward lies
Mortain, which has a bit of ruined castle, speaking of the building
destroyed by Henry I. after Tinchebray. Mortain is interesting because
of its counts. The first of any general interest is that Robert,
half-brother of the Conqueror, son of Arlotta and Herlouin, who took
great part in his brother’s conquests, and accompanied him to England,
being the first Norman to receive a grant of land after Hastings. He
was made Earl of Cornwall, and received also large estates in Devon,
Somerset, and Yorkshire. The title had previously been held by the
Comte de St Sauveur, and it was after his rebellion it was joined to
that of Mortain, and the two went down the ages together. John Sans
Terre, when only a little boy of eight, became Count of Mortain and
Vicomte du Côtentin. Though the first Count Robert is known chiefly
as a rather rough soldier, he was a large benefactor to the Church,
founding the abbey of which, as usual, the church remains, and but
little else. The parish church of Mortain is due to a later gift of
the same patron.
Mortain abounds in beautiful peeps; its irregular rocks stand up in
fantastic shapes amid numbers of trees, and the broken ground makes
great variety of scenery. It is chiefly celebrated, however, for
its waterfall, notable only in a country where such a possession
is literally unique. The Great Cascade, as it is called, is about
sixty-five feet high, and should be seen in wet weather if possible,
or the glory of Normandy’s only waterfall will be sadly discounted.
Northward is Vire, with a ruined castle, which was rebuilt in the
twelfth century, and demolished by Richelieu’s order in 1630. But the
fine gateway with its tower belfry is what everyone goes to see at Vire.
Not far from Vire is Tinchebray, the site of the brothers’ struggle.
This battle is mainly of importance because it indicated a curious
reversal of that at Hastings. Then a Norman duke had conquered England,
at Tinchebray an English king conquered Normandy. Freeman says “the
fight of Tinchebray really was a battle, one of the very few pitched
battles of the age,” and he decides that it must have been on the flat
ground near the station that the historic contest was fought, when
Robert fell into the hands of a brother some eight or ten years his
junior.
If instead of coming north-westward from Domfront we had gone
north-eastward, we should have come to a district not so beautiful in
natural scenery as that about Mortain, but in itself well worth study.
Argentan has the donjon of an ancient castle, a fifteenth-century
church, and several other points well worth attention. The two small
places of Exmes and Almenèches are associated with the name Robert of
Belesmes, who seems to have been a monster of cruelty. He is said to
have plucked out the eyes of a little godson; and refused ransom for
prisoners, as he preferred holding them for the pleasure of torture.
His unfortunate sister Emma was abbess of Almenèches; and in 1102, when
Robert had been driven out of England, he descended upon her abbey and
burnt it, meantime occupying the castle of Exmes.
At one time he had in his possession the strongholds of Alençon,
Bellême, “Domfront, St Cevery, Essai, La Motte, Pontorson, Mamers,
Vignes, and very many more.”
Robert had been in every Norman war occurring since he was of an age
to bear arms, and his personal vigour had made him worth something
to the cause he espoused. He married Agnes, daughter and heiress of
Guy, Count of Ponthieu, the same into whose hands Harold had fallen,
and he subsequently became Count of Ponthieu; also, he succeeded his
brother as Earl of Shrewsbury, in England. When he was tired of his
diversions in Normandy, he returned to England, seized and held his
forfeited castle of Shrewsbury, until he was forced to surrender,
and a second time exiled. He came to a fitting end, for having,
by joining in the rebellion of Fulk of Anjou against King Henry of
England, proved himself a traitor, he had the audacity to go as an
envoy from the French king to Henry, who, with poetical justice rather
than in accordance with the laws of nations, seized him and kept him
a prisoner, out of the way of further mischief, until his death. The
little town of Bellême, twelve miles south from Mortagne, was the
original home of the family from which this promising branch sprang.
The highest part of the hill is crowned by houses, but beneath there
are still underground vaults, and wall foundations belonging to the
mighty castle of the Bellêmes or Belesmes.
At St Saturnin, near Séez, in this district, Charlotte Corday was born,
but her later life was so closely associated with Caen, that she is
there mentioned more fully.
Westward is the large town of Alençon, which marks the border of
Normandy in this direction. Alençon has been famous since the reign
of Louis XIV. for its beautiful point lace, and the industry is still
carried on, though to a less extent than before. The lace is made of
pure linen thread, worth £100 per lb., and is composed of ten different
stitches, which are specialities done by different workers.
[Illustration: LACE MAKING]
The usual earning for this highly-skilled labour is about 1s. a day.
The castle of Alençon was destroyed, all but the keep, by Henri IV. of
France.
Of the famous siege of Alençon we have already spoken.
Here must come to an end this rather rambling chapter, designed to
cover a district which, with the exception of Falaise, is comparatively
little known by the English visitor to Normandy.