DIEPPE AND THE COAST
Passengers who land at Dieppe may perhaps be conveniently divided into
two classes--those who pass through, intent on tours further inland
or in other countries, and those who go to Dieppe, as they would to
Brighton. It is pretty safe to say that very few of either class really
know the place.
But Dieppe deserves some consideration apart from its harbour and
its beach; it is no mushroom town of villadom, but has an old-world
flavour, and a delightful mingling of simplicity with its fashion. We
can see in it a series of charming pictures. There is, for instance, a
long, narrow, cobble-paved street passing through the middle, running
more or less parallel with the front, and cut off from it by a double
wall of houses. But, alas, there are few old houses, for gable end
and ancient woodwork went down before the furious bombardment of the
combined English and Dutch fleets in 1694, when the bombs, falling
in all directions, set the place on fire. After having done such
damage that the whole town had to be rebuilt, the fleet sailed away
to Havre. It is said that some of the rich inhabitants at the first
sign of danger hid their valuables in the caves, which may be seen in
numbers along the limestone cliffs, and that 4000 houses in all were
burnt. Thus it is that there is nothing to be seen in the streets
anterior to this date. Nevertheless there is a quaint irregularity in
the nondescript architecture that is very charming. And on a Saturday
morning the long street is lined by the market women, who come in to
dispose of their country produce. They have no stalls, but sit on
the edge of the pavement on the sunny side, each one with her basket
or baskets ranged beside her. Dazed hens with tied legs, faintly
expostulating ducks, baskets of pearly eggs, wedges of butter under
cool green leaves, great masses of roses and other flowers--such are
the goods for sale, and each one represents a large amount of hard
work and patience. The women chatter gaily, comparing produce and
prices, their pleasant, brown faces shining the while in the sun,
until perhaps the babel is for an instant stilled by a funeral passing
down the narrow street. The walking priests, in their birettas, lead
the procession, followed by the acolytes and the silent coffin; they
wind slowly over the cobbles, and the solemn dirge rises on the summer
air; but it has passed, and is forgotten, and all is happy tumult once
more.
Midway down the street, by the fountain, there curves off another, at
the end of which is the magnificent church of St Jacques. It is only
the west end we can see in this vista, with its two curious octagon
turrets, gargoyle crowned, but as we draw nearer, the fine western
tower comes into view. The church, like so many another, was begun
in the thirteenth century, and completed in the sixteenth. The other
notable church of Dieppe, St Remi, stands further west, and is hemmed
in by houses; it was not begun until St Jacques was nearly finished.
[Illustration: THE GATEWAY, DIEPPE]
If we go into St Jacques late in the afternoon, when the sun is
flooding that glorious western rose-window, we shall find the whole
building filled with opalescent light. Soft patches of transparent
colour, amethyst and gold, far more glorious than even the rich blue
and orange of the glass through which they filter, creep slowly across
the aisle and climb the pillars. They rest upon the bowed shoulders of
an old peasant woman, who sits with hanging head. Her plain stuff dress
and the print cap tightly fitting her grey hair, the blue check apron
telling of days of toil, are all suddenly transformed into something
“rich and strange.” But she sits there with the dark beads falling
one by one through her work-worn fingers, heedless of the glory in
which she is bathed; and if you go nearer you will see that poor proud
face drawn by lines of sorrow, and every now and then the fingers are
interrupted in their work to wipe off those too insistent tears;
evidently no ordinary case this, but a woman who has suffered trouble,
and who comes to seek peace, though happiness has left the world so far
as she is concerned.
It is a wonderful place this church, the mighty chancel and transept
arches seem to hold the silence as a bowl holds water; one could not
“strive or cry” aloud here. Yet outside, through the open door, one
can see a patch full of life and movement--boys darting to and fro, a
carter unloading a van, continual passers-by; and every now and then
out of the light a boy or girl flits into the solemn spaces of the
wonderful silence, gives never a glance at the gorgeous colours that
make one feel as though one were in the heart of a jewel, but with a
hasty genuflexion passes out at the other door into the market-place.
In the market-place there is medley and chatter, bargain and sale. All
the usual things are here. Coloured curtains, masses of shoes, rows
of shining utensils, piles of snowy draperies, sweets, flowers, toys,
cakes in profusion. A yard of ribbon, a pair of stuff shoes, a bit of
glittering jewellery from that fascinating stall where all goes at
“quinze sous” the piece, this is the extent of most purchases that can
be seen.
Behind the market-place rises one of the chapels of the transept, built
by Ango, whose history is told in connection with the castle; its
fellow is on the other side, and in its solid plainness of design,
and with its worn stone, and two stages of red tiles, the chapel is in
delightful contrast with the ornateness of the pinnacled and buttressed
choir.
To the south and west of the church is another market, one of the most
repulsive imaginable. Spread out on the open ground are old second-hand
articles of every description, from loathsome rags to rusty iron.
If we pass down one of the narrow streets to the east of the church,
we come quite suddenly upon a scene of a different order. Here is the
basin where the steamers lie, and the swing-bridge which leads to the
fishermen s quarter, Le Pollet, one of the two places in Normandy where
the Celtic influence still lingers. There are some quaint superstitions
and ideas held by these men, but they are not ready to speak of them.
They are religious, and would not think of letting a boat go out
unblessed. One of the songs which is chanted at the lighting of a
candle in the hold before a boat puts out to sea, is as follows:--
“La Chandelle de bon Dieu est allumée
Au saint nom de Dieu soit l’alizé-vent, unie, regulier
Au profit du mâitre et de l’equipage,
Bon temps, bon vent pour conduire la barge.
Si Dieu plaît!”
On the quay is the fish-market, and outside it a mass of fisher-folk
broken up into groups. The men are nearly all rust-coloured in
complexion, with hair that curls fiercely and thickly, and among
the younger ones is to be seen not infrequently that type of face
which, idealised, appears in the portrait of Gilliatt, in the English
translation of _Les Travailleurs de Mer_, a face of a short oval, with
small pointed chin, and mobile, sensitive lips. Yet others there are as
square-jawed and bull-dog, as ruffianly in expression, as the lowest
among the sailors in London by the river.
The chaffering goes on hotly; two fine mackerel are handed over at
thirteen sous, four good ones, not quite so fine, at sixteen sous. All
the dealing is in sous. Strange, evil-looking fish with large heads
are sold for a song, and each customer as she gets them--for it is
nearly always a she--slips them into her string bag, and goes on her
way rejoicing, with a cheap and wholesome dinner for the young ones
at home. High on the cliff across the water, is the stiff new little
church--there is another in the town below--and behind it, on the
windswept cliff, the Le Pollet cemetery, filled with the cheap wooden
crosses laden with those tawdry ornaments that mean so much and tell
so little. But the Le Pollet cemetery does not account for more than a
fraction of its dead, for many a man and lad lie out beyond the point
in the shifting sea, and the wives and mothers at home have no graves
on which to lay their hardly bought offerings. On Le Pollet, under
the renowned General Talbot, the English erected a fort called the
Bastille, a name still retained by its site.
[Illustration: THE QUAY, DIEPPE]
But in lingering by the town and along the quay, we have not yet
visited the castle of Dieppe, which is at the other end, rearing
itself steeply on its mighty cliff. For Dieppe lies in the valley
between two heights, and occupies the space dipping down to the level
of the sea, hence the name which signifies deep, and is related to our
names of Deepdale and Deepdene. The castle hill was at first occupied
by a mere fort, which Rollo rebuilt; and Rollo’s fort lasted until the
time of Henry II. of England, who rebuilt it entirely, but Henry’s
fort stood a very short time, for when Philip Augustus retook the
country from John, one of his first acts was to raze any strong places
which might afford the English a foothold, and this fort was among the
number. Nevertheless his destruction was not entire, and some of the
walls attributed to Henry still remain incorporated in the castle,
which was begun by the Dauphin, after the historic fight of Arques
in 1435. The four towers belong to this date, but various additions
were made later. There is no admission to the castle now, and but
little history to clothe its walls in an aroma of the past. The most
interesting name connected with it is that of the merchant prince,
Jean Ango, who died here in 1551. Ango was a native of Dieppe, and
began life as a common sailor, but he had in him that curious ability
to seize his opportunity, which goes to the making of a fortune more
than any other quality. He soon rose to be a shipowner, and wealth
bringing wealth, he owned a whole fleet of vessels, and was a power
on the sea. When King François came to Dieppe, he was received and
entertained by Ango in princely style. François made his host governor
of Dieppe in return, and afterwards conferred upon him the dignity of
a vicomte. It was in 1525 that Ango built a house of the old timber
style, magnificently carved, on the site where the Lycée now stands,
opposite the station, by the quay where the Newhaven boats arrive and
depart. Shortly afterwards he followed this up by a country house at
Varengeville, which is still standing (see p. 173). Ango is described
by a contemporary as a big blonde man, with a large head and a gay
expression. For long he ruled as a prince, both on sea and land; when
the Portuguese had the audacity to harass French shipping, it was Ango
who armed twelve ships and made war on his own account, capturing
several of the Portuguese vessels. The king sent angrily to ask the
French king why he had done this, as the two countries were then at
peace, and the French king replied gaily that he must ask Ango, who
alone was responsible.
But this big, cheery, bluff man, a sailor at heart, changed
unaccountably in his old age; he grew morose, suspicious, and
overbearing; he quarrelled with his neighbours, got himself entangled
in lawsuits, and finally, ruined in pocket and credit, had to take
refuge from his enemies within the castle walls, where he died.
The general idea is that Arques is the parent town of Dieppe, and that
the men of Arques gradually established themselves on the sea-coast,
for the purpose of fishing. Others, however, point to the Camp of
Cæsar, anciently called the City of Limes, which is on the top of the
hill near Puys, as an old Gaulish settlement before the advent of
Cæsar, and say that this was the parent town, and that the settlement
at Dieppe came later, when a great part of the cliff near the Gaulish
town had fallen bodily into the sea.
With the siege of the castle of Arques by William the Conqueror we
have dealt elsewhere. But the castle of Arques, always a stronghold,
underwent a yet more terrible ordeal in the attack by Henri IV. in
1589, when it was held by the Duc de Mayenne. The king had 4000 men
against 30,000 of the Leaguers, but the smaller force was victorious,
and the battle was long spoken of as a miraculous event.
Having so far dealt with the immediate surroundings of Dieppe, we turn
now the coast-line. The great white cliffs which rise vertically on
both sides of Dieppe have their counterparts in the white cliffs of
England, so exactly similar in structure that no one can doubt they
once joined across what is now the Channel. Even were there no other
means of judging, the great friability of these cliffs and the masses
which continually fall off into the sea, driving the coast-lines
further and further apart, would alone answer the suggestion in the
affirmative. All the way to Tréport stretches this grand rampart.
Tréport is situated in the embouchure of the river Bresle, and above
it rise the cliffs. It has a modern part with first-class hotels, a
casino, and other of the usual attractions, and the older village
nestles in the narrow valley ascending from the beach. The beach is
limited by the river to the east, beyond which begins the beach of Mer.
Eu is a place of considerable importance in Norman history. It is
the outlying border town of Normandy in this direction, and beyond
it was the vexed country of Ponthieu, between whose counts and the
Norman dukes there was so much fighting. All those who have followed
the chapter on the Bayeux tapestry will remember that it was on the
territory of Ponthieu that the unfortunate Harold was blown by wind
and tide, and that it was Guy, Count of Ponthieu, who brought his
captive proudly to William. He did not, however, do so until he had
been repeatedly commanded by William, who also bribed him, though Guy
was “his man,” having done homage to him five or six years previously.
Eu had also been the scene of the Conqueror’s marriage about ten years
before, when his Flemish bride, his own first cousin, had met him here.
The church which witnessed that famous ceremony has disappeared, but
the present one, a fine building of the thirteenth century, worthily
replaces it.
In the Chapelle du College, a splendid building, are some fine
monuments to the Guises, whose name was associated with Eu in the
sixteenth century. The elder Guise, François, was called Le Balafré,
because he bore on his face a horrible scar from a sword-cut received
at Boulogne; he was assassinated in 1563, and succeeded by his son
Henri, also assassinated in 1588.
The whole coast-line is shingly, and its chief characteristic is the up
and down sweep of the contour, which continually rises to the top of
tall white cliffs, and almost immediately falls again right down to the
sea-level, only to rise once more. This peculiarity is admirable for
its variety, and it affords fine shelter to the seaside places in the
folds, but it renders any attempt at passing along near the coast on
foot or bicycle very tedious work. The white cliffs, however, and the
shingly beaches make eminently beautiful foregrounds for a sea so often
blue in the sunlight which France seems to attract so much more than
England, and some of the cliffs are crowned by fine trees or blooming
gorse.
Going westward from Dieppe, we come to the little village of
Varengeville, standing high on the top of the cliffs. It has two great
attractions--one its shady lanes, arched by beeches so as to resemble
veritable cathedral aisles, a thing unique in Normandy; and the other
the fine Maison d’Ango, now a farmhouse. This is built round four sides
of a courtyard, and the walls are worked with marvellous skill into
various intricate patterns with the materials of flint and brick. The
latter, which adorn the cowbyres, are set in even patterns, and the
effect with the red tiles and thatch is pretty and curious. On one side
of the mansion itself is an open loggia or arcade, raised above the
ground-level. But the most striking and notable detail is the columbier
standing in the yard, one of the very few remaining. It is cylindrical,
and the walls are worked in patterns of lines and bands in the same
way as those of the house. It terminates in a curved dome-like roof.
The whole is well worth going to see, in spite of the churlish, and we
must add, in France, very unusual, spirit that animates the present
occupants. We pass many little places ever growing in popularity, such
as Veules and St Valery en Caux, bearing family resemblance to Dieppe
in their situation in the breaks formed by streams cutting through the
chalk cliffs, and come to Fécamp, which is a bit of a health resort, a
bit of a manufacturing town, and a bit of a fishing harbour, without
being particularly distinguished in any one of the three things. From
Fécamp, as from all these northern fishing towns, there annually
sets forth that fleet for the cold waters near Iceland so touchingly
described in Pierre Lôti’s _Pêcheurs d’Islande_.
[Illustration: FISHERMEN AT FÉCAMP]
Fécamp stands at the foot of cliffs from 300 feet to 400 feet in
height, around the base of which are scattered the great blocks of
débris with which the seas play like footballs. The memory of the
terrible storm of 1663, when the whole of the valley or chine was
blocked by these stones, hurled up by the terrific power of the
sea, is still preserved. The chief claim of Fécamp to notice, however,
is its splendid abbey, of which the church still remains; it was built
in the Conqueror’s reign, burnt and rebuilt, so that the greater part
is of the thirteenth century, and some dates from the reconstruction in
the fifteenth. What is left of the abbey has been built into the public
offices of the town.
But the strange legend of La Fontaine du Precieux-Sang should come
before mention of the abbey, for it was because of this relic St Waneng
erected here the first religious house for nuns. The story goes that a
case containing some of the blood of our Lord had been placed in the
cleft of a fig-tree by Isaac, the nephew of Nicodemus, but in some
way the stump had been cut down, and reached the sea, from whence it
floated unaided all the way to Fécamp, and a well in the courtyard of
a house is pointed out as the actual spot where it stranded. During a
great conflagration this precious relic was lost, but an angel brought
it back, saying, “Voici le prix de la redemption du monde, qui vient
de Jerusalem.” Needless to say, this priceless relic drew thousands
of pilgrims to the shrine at Fécamp. They came in spite of wind and
weather; as the quaint old Norman song has it:--
“Rouge rosée au matin,
Beau temps pour le pèlerin
Pluie de matin
N’arrete pas le pèlerin.”
And the monks reaped a rich reward from their ingenuity! Passing
Valmont, with its old castle of the D’Estoutevilles, we come to
Etretat, a much more fashionable bathing-place than Fécamp.
The coast at Etretat is grand and beautiful, though the beach is stony.
The sea with its ceaseless work has carved caverns in the high cliffs.
The three principal headlands, standing grandly out to sea, all end in
a natural arch. Here, as elsewhere, fishermen mingle with the gay crowd
that increases the population some five hundred per cent. in the summer.
[Illustration: HAVRE]
The wall of cliff continues right on to Havre, where the Cape de la
Hève feels the full shock of the resistless north winds. Also the cliff
is always crumbling, with that law of nature that ordains that the sea
shall gain on the land on the rocky coasts, and the land shall advance
out to sea on sandy beaches. Once or twice, more than mere crumbling
has taken place, for with a noise like the rumbling of artillery the
face of the cliff has broken away, and fallen headlong into the sea,
sending gigantic spouts of water heavenwards, while the roar attracted
attention even at Havre. Havre has a population of 120,000, and is a
self-respecting busy town. It has a very large traffic, and it is also
favourably situated for inland trade, being connected by a dredged-out
canal with Tancarville, and thence by the Seine to Rouen. The mouth of
the Seine is here so treacherous and shifty, that without constant
dredging navigation would be impossible. There is only one more remark
to make before leaving Havre, and that is, to tell how it earned its
secondary title of Le Havre de Grace. One of those terrible high tides
that about once in a generation sweep through the Channel, appeared on
the coast and overwhelmed the breakwater, flooding it to such a height
that it seemed to the inhabitants nothing remained for them but utter
ruin, even if they managed to preserve their own lives; when, as they
were momentarily expecting to see the town swept from end to end by the
lowering mass of water, a new channel burst suddenly through one of the
walls which prevented the escape, and the water flowed away into the
bed of the Seine. This was considered a special miracle in favour of
the town, which was henceforth known as Le Havre de Grace.
A more complete contrast than that presented by the next two coast
towns could hardly be made. We have Honfleur, old, picturesque,
tumble-down, full of fishermen, with a church which for quaintness
could hardly be surpassed, and we have the villa-ed and elegant
Trouville, resembling one of the most gaily dressed of Parisians, where
not a line is out of order, nothing is left to chance, every fold, so
to speak, is arranged, every movement self-conscious.
I confess that to me such towns as Trouville exercise a repulsive
effect; the moment I arrive there I want to flee, and yet it is
impossible to overlook a place so patronised, so praised, so entirely
self-satisfied. Trouville is not Norman; it is a little bit of Paris
by the sea, and it is French entirely; it does not share in the old
Norman history, “C’est le monde frivole, joyeux et bruyant qui s’agite
et s’amuse et dont les petit cris, les chants quelquefois vulgaires et
de gout douteux, et tous les bruits de fêtes se percent dans le grand
murmure de la mer.” Hardly more than fifty years ago, Trouville was a
mere collection of fishing-huts; then someone saw the advantages of the
situation, the high cliff-like hills, the surrounding woods, the flat
sands, and almost at once sprang up the hotels, the casinos, the shops,
and the other accompaniments of a fashionable resort. Fishing is now
the least of its sources of wealth, or rather, perhaps, we may say it
is replaced by angling of another sort. Deauville is a kind of offshoot
of Trouville, situated on the other side of the Fouques, a lesser
Trouville, a shade quieter, but after the same pattern.
The next point to notice along the coast is the mouth of the river
Dives, where William assembled his ships before setting out to conquer
England. They remained here waiting for a favourable wind, and finally
put into St Valery, at the mouth of the Somme, from whence they made
their real start. The number of ships is estimated very variously; Wace
puts it at six hundred and ninety-six, a number which he had heard from
his father, but he says he saw it stated in writing to have exceeded
three thousand, a number which may have likely included every boat or
flat-bottomed raft which crossed over. William’s own ship, made like
the others of a boat-shape, with high prow, was propelled by oars. It
was brilliantly decorated; its sails were crimson, and its metal parts
were gilded; the figure-head was a child armed with bow and arrow,
aimed at England. The whole was a present from his duchess Matilda, and
it is said that the figure of the child had been copied from that of
their son Robert, a boy who was to cause them both so much sore grief.
Then we come to the mouth of the Orne, on which stands Caen. From the
Dives to the Orne we have had flat sands and sand dunes, a state of
things which continues still. Back from the coast is one of the most
splendid pasturage lands in Normandy, only rivalled by those about the
drained lands behind Carentan. Ouistreham and the minor seaside resorts
near Caen are much patronised, and contain hotels and villas to suit
all purses. After passing Courseulles, the hotels and shops and bathing
stations are left behind, and little fishing-hamlets take the place of
coast resorts. Port en Bessin is situated in the fracture of a cliff,
and there are in the neighbourhood formidable rocks. Then we come to
the great angular Bay de Veys, in shape not unlike our own Wash. Here
stands Carentan, and before the land was drained Carentan was almost
surrounded with water, for the tides ran far inland, making any attempt
to pass that way from the Côtentin hazardous and difficult. A grand
scheme was once mooted to build a large dike which should protect these
meadows, but the much more reasonable scheme of drainage was tried,
and has succeeded. Instead of being marsh land, the flat stretches now
serve for pasturage. The town has been no less than twelve times taken
by the English, in addition to which it suffered in the religious wars
of the seventeenth century. It is now a flourishing port, carrying
on an enormous trade in butter, of which the exports in one year to
Southampton alone were equal to 15,000,000 francs! Isigny, which stands
a little eastward, is the chief butter-producer, so much so that the
name Isigny butter has come to be a synonym for good quality. We have
now reached that strange peninsula, which, with exception of a strip
along the eastern side, is almost all of granite; the coast town La
Hogue marks the transition from the one sort of coast to the other. We
have dealt so fully with the Côtentin and with its continuation on the
west to the little stream Couesnon, that it is of no use to say more
here. We would merely remark that the action of waste by the sea can
be seen strikingly on the western side, where the peninsula meets the
full winds of the Atlantic. History says, though the statement may be
accepted with caution, that at one time Jersey was severed only by a
narrow channel from the mainland; if this is so, then without doubt,
at some far distant geological epoch, the whole of the peninsula will
be worn away to one thin strip of sandy beach, like those arms we see
extending for miles along the northern coasts of Germany.