GUERNSEY
Jersey, with larger acreage and a bigger population, is content to
form a kingdom by itself; Guernsey is fain to ally itself with its
immediate neighbour, Sark, and even seek bonds of union with Alderney,
twenty miles away. The diversity maintained jealously in these little
islands, which an Englishman is too hastily accustomed to regard in a
lump, is complex and even amusing. Just a few trivial details must
suffice. In Guernsey the toad is altogether unknown, except for some
few stuffed specimens in the Guille-Allès Museum; whereas Jersey
exhibits an exaggerated species that is supposed to be quite peculiar
to itself. The mole, again, though common in Jersey and Alderney, is
unknown in Guernsey, though the last has a field-vole of its own.
Guernsey, in fact, is supposed to have become an island at least
14,000 years ago, whilst Jersey was torn asunder from France not
more than 3,000 years before Christ. Guernsey thus received only the
Continental fauna that flourished at the period of its final
insulation. All the islands, like Iceland, are exempt from poisonous
snakes. In domestic animals, again, the distinction is strongly
marked. Jersey has a picturesque cow of its own, mottled white and
yellow, placid, and rather big. Guernsey, on the other hand, has a
smaller breed of cattle, much more wiry in movement, and a kind of
tawny red. Beasts from Guernsey and Alderney are allowed to
inter-breed, but the Jersey cattle are looked on as undesirable
aliens, and sternly prohibited from the sister State. In all three
instances the cattle are tethered when at pasture, as happens also in
some parts of France. The animal, thus driven to forage in a circle,
perhaps crops the ground more closely than when free to range at will.
[Illustration: MOULIN HUET, GUERNSEY.
A particularly attractive bay on the southern side of the island.]
Guernsey, whatever were its merits half-a-hundred years ago, will now,
perhaps, be found the dullest of the Channel Islands. Owing to the
frenzy for intensive cultivation, the inland parts of the island are
now literally covered with glass. Acre after acre of ugly rows of
hothouses have displaced over most of the interior what once were
pleasant fields. Attached to each such settlement is an ugly concrete
house, and each has a skeleton iron windmill, for pumping up water,
that completes the repellent aspect of the scene. The writer has
travelled over most of the island on foot to explore its twelve old
churches, and investigate its coast. Frankly, he is driven to put on
record that he found it a dismal task. Features, of course, remain of
interest and beauty, if one is willing to walk about in blinkers, and
seldom raise one's eyes above the ground. The old, granite-built
farmhouses, standing back, as a rule, but a little from the road, are
uncommon, and extremely picturesque. Inland Guernsey, again, possesses
one single glory that is almost unknown in Jersey. Everywhere in the
island, commencing even with the very suburbs of St. Peter Port
itself, the low, green, sod walls that divide the little fields are
covered with millions of saffron primroses. Such a wealth of primroses
I have never seen elsewhere--not even in the remotest lanes of the
Surrey or Sussex Wealds. How the primrose has survived in such
excessive fertility, with so huge a population, and with such bitter
cultivation, is a problem easily stated, but not very easily solved.
Whether it is likely long to survive is a question one fears to ask.
In Sark, again, the primrose--though here it is no marvel--carpets the
ground like daisies on a "wet bird-haunted English lawn"; like
daisies, too, in Switzerland, the stalks of the Sark primrose grow to
remarkable length. But as soon as we cross to Jersey--and when the
writer noted this strong contrast, he crossed directly from Guernsey
to Jersey, and almost directly from Jersey to Sark--the primrose is
seen no more by thousands in the hedge-side. The only spot where I
have noticed it growing in profusion in the larger island was on the
prehistoric "hougue" at Prince's Tower.
Guernsey, however, though thus irritatingly spoilt in its
interior--for the visitor comes to see beautiful scenery, and not to
assist at a horticultural triumph--still possesses in its south coast
a feature of distinction that neither recklessness nor greed of money
has so far been able to spoil. It also possesses in St. Peter Port a
capital so pleasant, and withal so picturesque, that it makes one
desiderate all the more keenly the beautiful environment in which it
was once set. Approaching this port in the early morning light, the
colour and grouping of the little town seem almost fantastically
correct. Surely this more resembles an imaginary sketch than a city
actually realized in this commonplace, workaday world. St. Peter's
Church, in the middle of the picture, has just the required outline,
and is set in just the right place. The tall, brown houses behind it,
with their mellow red roofs, are of just the right colour, and in just
the right number. The new church of St. Barnabas is just rightly
designed, and is built just exactly where it ought to be built. And
lastly, the wooded amphitheatre behind all, with its sprinkling of
white villas, is just neither more nor less than such a background
ought to be. A composition like this on the drop-scene of a theatre
would scarcely surprise us, but here we rub our eyes. We land; and the
cheerful anticipation of the sea-view is hardly hurt at all by contact
with actual fact. A pleasanter little town than this, or more full of
bustling happiness, is not readily conceived. Darker aspects no doubt
are there, but they do not obtrude on the casual view.
Castle Cornet, immediately on our left as we approach the harbour,
holds much the same position to St. Peter Port as Elizabeth Castle
holds to St. Helier. Castle Cornet, indeed, is connected with the
mainland by a causeway; but as a building it is equally uninteresting.
In fact, the only object of antiquarian interest in St. Peter Port is
the old parish church, so conspicuous on the quay. This has a central
tower, with a good leaded spire, that is luckily not twisted like the
leaded spire at Chesterfield. At the side is a small cote for the
sanctus bell, exactly as at Barnstaple, in Devonshire. More frequently
these cotes were placed on the east gable of the nave, whilst at
Oxenton, in Gloucestershire, the sanctus bell swings to the present
day in a curious little opening high up on the south face of the
fifteenth-century tower. It is possible, too, or even probable, that
the curious "low-side" windows--once absurdly called "leper
windows"--which generally occur, when they occur at all, towards the
south-west corner of the chancel, were used to enable the sanctus bell
to be rung through their opening by hand. On the ringing of this bell
the passer-by would bow his head in reverential awe, just as the
peasants in Millet's picture bow their heads at the ringing of the
Angelus. Inside, the chief feature of St. Peter's Church is the
strangeness of the nave arcades, the arches of which spring from
piers that are only two or three feet high. Notice also the Flamboyant
tracery of the windows, so typical of the Channel Islands, and the
very striking piscina in the south aisle of the choir.
Historically the chief interest of Guernsey is comparatively recent,
and centres round the residence here of Victor Hugo. After the _Coup
d'État_ Hugo settled first in Jersey, where he occupied a house in
Marine Terrace. But the English Government, which maintained friendly
relations with the new French Imperialism, pleased him little better
than that of his native land. His conduct, indeed, was as wantonly
tactless as that of an earlier fellow-poet. If Shelley flaunted his
tract on the _Necessity of Atheism_ in the face of grave clerical dons
at Oxford, Hugo and his comrades were equally reckless when they
imagined that _la justice_ or _la verité_ were wronged. "Encore un
pas," cried this enthusiast bravely, "et l'Angleterre sera une annexe
de l'Empire français, et Jersey un canton de l'arrondissement de
Coutances." The occasion of this outbreak was the banishment of three
of his compatriots from the island in 1855. "Et maintenant," thundered
the poet in retort, "expulsez nous." Whether he intended it or not,
he was taken at his word. The protest was written on October 17, 1855,
and Friday, November 2, 1855, saw the expulsion of the whole band, 33,
who had signed the defiant document. Hugo at once removed to St.
Peter Port, and established himself there in Hauteville House. Here he
resided from 1855 to 1870, when Sedan rendered possible his return to
France, and the house still belongs to his family. To the Guernsey
visitor it is now a place of pious pilgrimage, not less than that
other old house, in Paris, in the charming Place des Vosges. Much of
the furniture and fittings remains almost exactly as he left them
fifty years ago, and much is of real historic interest. Thus a table
in the Red Dining-room once belonged to Charles II. of England; whilst
a fire-screen was worked by Madame Pompadour, and some bead-work
belonged to Queen Christina of Sweden. From the upper windows it is
possible to enjoy the same lovely view towards Sark, with Jethou and
Herm in the middle distance, that is got from all the upper parts of
St. Peter Port--as, for instance, from the grounds of the Priaulx
Library, or from the gardens of the Old Government House Hotel.
It is pleasanter to picture Victor Hugo at Guernsey, writing here his
novel, _Les Travailleurs de la Mer_--the scene of which is laid at
Torteval, in the extreme south-west corner of the island--and always
looking longingly towards the invisible shores of France, than to
dwell on certain other episodes in the history of the island, which,
however disagreeable, cannot lightly be put aside. The tale of Bailiff
Gaultier de la Salle, though wholly misconceived, will not quickly be
displaced from its niche in island tradition. He is said to have
resided in the Ville au Roi, though it is hardly likely that the house
now pointed out as his is really as old as the fourteenth century. A
neighbour called Massey had an easement to draw water which took him
in front of the Bailiff's windows. Annoyed at this invasion of his
treasured privacy, Gaultier laid a trap to get rid of the intruder.
Doubtless he had read the old history of Joseph, and of the silver cup
that was hidden in the corn-sack of Benjamin. But Gaultier's intention
was far less kindly, and he concealed the two silver cups in Massey's
wheat-rick in order that Massey might be accused of their theft. Here
is some deep confusion in the story, for we should naturally have
expected that the discovery of the wine-cups would be made the
machinery for fixing the crime on the victim. Why else should the cups
be hidden in Massey's wheat-rick, when they might easily have been
hidden in some much surer place? Anyhow, the Bailiff, suborning
perjured evidence, fixed so black a case on Massey that the Judge
pronounced sentence of death. Then, at the last moment, there burst
into the court-house a witness who had found the cups that very
morning in taking down the rick. Whatever evidence had procured the
condemnation of Massey might well have seemed quadrupled by this new
and damning fact. But the inconsistent story makes the Bailiff exclaim
in anger: "Thou wretch, did I not tell thee not to touch that rick?"
Convicted thus by the words of his own mouth, the Bailiff was sent to
the self-same death as he had schemed for a fellow-citizen. The place
of his execution--an oblong recess in the wall, not unlike those in
which road-makers break stones--is still pointed out at the
"Friquet-au-Gibet"; and a rudely-scratched cross on the pavement near
at hand indicates the spot where the criminal received his last
Communion on the way to the gallows. Miss Edith Carey styles this
story "pure invention," and thinks that it "is probably derived from
a confused recollection of the doings and motives of the rival 'wicked
Bailiff' of Jersey, Hoste Nicolle." There was really, however, as Miss
Carey establishes, a Gaultier (Walter) de la Salle, who was condemned
to death in 1320 for having assisted in imprisoning a certain Ranulph
Gaultier in Castle Cornet, "and there wickedly killing him by various
tortures."
[Illustration: HERM AND JETHOU FROM GUERNSEY.
These two little islands add greatly to the picturesqueness of the
scenery of the eastern shores of Guernsey.]
Another dark picture, and unhappily more authentic, is the burning,
with attendant circumstances of extraordinary brutality, of three poor
heretic women, by order of Dean Amy and Bailiff Helier Gosselin, on
July 18, 1556. The mother, Katherine Cauches, was tied to a stake in
the middle, with a married daughter on either hand--Guillemine Gilbert
and Perotine Massey. An attempt was made to strangle them before the
faggots were lighted--a merciful privilege that was also extended to
women in executions for "petty treason"--but one of them, at least,
fell alive into the fire. This poor wretch, Perotine Massey, the wife
of a Protestant pastor, was delivered of a baby in the middle of the
flames. The child was rescued from the burning by a man called House,
but cast back again by order of the Bailiff. This repulsive
incident is preserved by Foxe, and is interwoven by Tennyson in _Queen
Mary_:
Sir, in Guernsey,
I watch'd a woman burn; and in her agony,
The mother came upon her--a child was born--
And, sir, they hurl'd it back into the fire.
St. Peter Port is an admirable centre from which to visit every
quarter of the compact little island; but, indeed, as already
adumbrated, there is but little in Guernsey (except for the
antiquarian) that is really worth seeing outside its capital, except
the south coast. St. Sampson's may be visited for its picturesque
church, which is one of the oldest and most interesting on the island.
The road by which we gain it is so ugly--one continued line of
houses--that no one need hesitate to use the electric tram, which was
one of the earliest of its kind in the British dominions. It is hardly
worth while to get out on the way to visit the poor remains of Ivy
Castle: the situation of the ruins is unusually unpicturesque, and the
ruins themselves are uninteresting. Opposite St. Sampson's itself,
across the busy little harbour, is the rather better ruin of Vale
Castle. This would be exceedingly pleasant to look on, were it not
for the mammoth granite-quarries that pave the streets of
Westminster, but effectually disfigure what were once the charms of
Guernsey. The Castle itself, like Ivy Castle, is little more than a
shell; in fact, the latter has the additional credit of what is
possibly a chapel, with a rudely vaulted stone roof. Ivy Castle,
moreover, boasts at least authentic pedigree, having first been
built--if the date be really right--by Robert, Duke of Normandy,
before the Norman Conquest; whereas of the origin of Vale Castle
practically nothing is known. Its ancient title, Le Château de St.
Michel l'Archange, is perhaps responsible for the tradition that it
was built by monks from Mont St. Michel as a place of protection for
the neighbouring priory in case of a sudden invasion. From Vale
Castle, if we like, we may cross the island--here less than a couple
of miles broad--to Vale Church, built on the edge of what was once a
sea-creek, but has long since silted up, or been reclaimed. It is
pleasanter, however, to follow round the coast, past Bordeaux Harbour,
and across breezy L'Ancresse Common, especially as this takes us past
the L'Autel de Déhus, and the L'Autel des Vardes, the two finest
remaining dolmens in the Channel Islands. The finest of all is
supposed to have been that which was discovered behind St. Helier in
1785, and which was "unanimously voted" to the then Governor, Marshal
Conway, "in a moment of enthusiasm." The Marshal, unfortunately, in
another moment of enthusiasm, carried it off and re-erected it at his
country seat in Berkshire. These Channel Island dolmens are of wholly
different type from the familiar cromlechs of the mushroom pattern of
Kits Coty House, near Aylesford, or of Pentre Evan, in Pembrokeshire.
They are, in fact, considerable, stone-built, subterranean
burial-chambers, with traces in some instances of a long succession of
interments. The islanders call them "pouquelayes"; which is derived by
Miss Carey from either the Celtic _pwca_, a fairy, and _lies_, a
place, or from _pouq_, an excavation, and _lekh_, a stone. In this
connection it is interesting that they are supposed to be haunted by
fairies--one is called the Creux des Fées, and another the Roche à la
Fée--who are supposed to "bring ill-luck on those who interfere with
them, a fact which has saved many of them from the spoiler." "The
restorer, however," adds Mr. Bicknell dryly, "has unfortunately not
been idle, and the Little People do not appear to have found a
punishment to 'fit the crime' in this case." Unhappily the same must
be admitted in the case of the navvies employed on the harbour works
in Alderney, who "amused themselves by smashing up all the megaliths
that they could lay their hands on." Many of the relics from these
cist-vaens--bones and pottery--have found their way into the Lukis
Museum at St. Peter Port.
Vale church itself, not far from the Grand Havre, and in a flat,
unlovely neighbourhood, is possibly the most interesting,
architecturally, in the island. The chancel arch should be noticed,
with its chevron ornament; the chancel, vaulted in two compartments (in
contrast with the rude, pointed vaults of most of the other churches);
the piscina in the aisle; and the wall arcade. Another striking
feature is the brackets for images on the columns of the arcade,
between the nave and its aisle. A series like this is uncommon; though
there is a group of churches in West Yorkshire--sometimes supposed to
have been built by the Tempest family--Kirkby Malham is the
finest--which has traces of canopied niches in the same position. The
finest single niche that the writer knows of this kind is on the
south side of the nave in the fine, fifteenth-century church of
Lechlade, in Gloucestershire. Towards the west end of the churchyard
is another tumble-down dolmen. Thus Christians of the twentieth
century are buried in the same soil that received the bones of their
neolithic ancestors no one knows how many thousands of years ago.
[Illustration: A FIELD OF CHRYSANTHEMUMS IN GUERNSEY.
The climate encourages the growing of flowers, and the northern half
of the island is mostly devoted to this industry.]
Though Vale is not uninteresting, it is with a feeling of relief that
one turns one's back on this north corner of the island that once
perhaps was so beautiful, but is now so hopelessly spoilt. The glory
of Guernsey, as already stated, is now wholly confined to its south
coast. Moulin Huet is a gracious bay, too well known from photographs
to need further description; whilst the little Saints Bay to the west
of it--a shrine within a shrine--is almost equally charming. Westward
from Icart Point, itself a splendid promontory, the coast sweeps round
in another great curve to La Moye Point; beyond which, again, to
Pleinmont, at the south-west corner of the island, the cliffs, though
everywhere deeply indented, continue, on the whole, a more uniform
direction. The great hollow between Icart and La Moye Points is
apparently nameless, unless it be Icart Bay. There is no authoritative
Ordnance map of the Channel Islands, to which one might adhere
whether right or wrong; and the best map of Guernsey with which I am
acquainted, in the late Mr. C. B. Black's guide-book, gives the name
Icart to the eastern recess of the great main bay, and Petit Bot and
Portelet to the two small recesses to the west of it. Anyhow, Petit
Bot is the most secret and intimate of the three, and entirely
picturesque with its disused mill and martello tower. This is one of
the points on the coast to which the chars-à-bancs descend from St.
Peter Port; and the drive down the glen by which we approach it is
delightful. The next calling point is Le Gouffre, just beyond La Moye
Point, which here runs out into the sea in long ribs of warm red
granite. Here the cars generally halt for a couple of hours, whilst
the tripper feasts on lobster in the pleasant little inn. The Gouffre
may be taken as roughly the centre of the grand seven miles of cliff
line of this splendid south coast. The section hence to the west is
less frequently explored, though the picturesque cave of the Creux
Mahie, again roughly halfway, is often paid a visit, and is well worth
visiting. Pleinmont and Torteval come into the "Toilers of the Deep";
and this corner of the island, the farthest of all from St. Peter
Port, is luckily less injured than the rest. The north-west coast of
Guernsey, from Pleinmont Point to Vale, past the huge sweeping
hollows--some of them singularly symmetrical--of Rocquaine, Perelle,
Vazon, and Cobo Bays, is chiefly a matter of rocky beach and of slight
elevations shelving down in gentle declivity to the sea. The
glass-houses, moreover, which have languished much at Torteval,
flourish again in amazing vigour as we draw near Cobo Bay. There are
two points of interest, however, in this corner of the island that
justify even the dull, direct journey by which we approach them from
St. Peter Port. The first of these is the little Chapel of St.
Apolline, which is stated in all the guide-books, on documentary
evidence, to have been founded by Nicolas Henry in 1394, or
thereabouts. Even documentary evidence, in architectural matters, is
not always to be trusted. Only the day before writing these lines the
writer was re-visiting the Lady Chapel at St. Albans Cathedral, which
is said to have been built--again on documentary evidence--_circa_
1310; though the Inventory lately published by the Royal Commission on
Historical Monuments adds cautiously: "The tracery of these windows
... is very advanced in character for the date." The tracery, indeed,
is so advanced, if the date be really right, as hopelessly to confuse
all previously held notions as to the systematic evolution of English
architecture. That the building was at any rate finished by this date
is altogether incredible. I notice that the late Lord Grimthorpe, in
his pugnacious little handbook, after setting out the evidence from
the Abbey Records, adds significantly, "but the style of the windows
suggests a much later date." And the case is much the same with this
Chapel of St. Apolline. On October 13, 1392, Nicolas Henry received
permission from the monastery of Mont St. Michel, in Normandy, to
alienate certain fields to provide an endowment for the Chapel of
Notre Dame de la Perelle, _which he had recently erected_; and in an
Act of the Royal Court, dated June 6, 1452, we come across the phrase,
"La Chapelle de Notre Dame de la Perelle appellée la Chapelle Sainte
Apolline." Certainly the identification seems complete. On the other
hand, the writer believes that no one visiting this chapel who has
previously read Professor Baldwin Brown's beautiful volume on Saxon
Architecture--and it so happened that the writer paid his first visit
to the Channel Islands almost immediately after its perusal--can fail
to detect in this building quite a number of _criteria_ that are there
set out as indicating, at any rate in England, a pre-Conquest era of
building. Unfortunately I have kept no note of these features, but the
impression then made on my mind is vivid. I may, of course, be wrong;
but it seems to me at least possible that we have here the solitary
survivor--far older than the Fishermen's Chapel at St. Brelade's in
Jersey--of those many chapels that are known to have been built in the
Channel Islands in the eighth and ninth centuries by the successors of
St. Magloire.
[Illustration: THE COUPÉE, SARK.
A romantic and almost terrifying pathway among the precipitous rocks
of the island.]
The other point of interest in the neighbourhood of L'Erée is the
rocky islet of Lihou, approached by a causeway across the sands, or
more properly the rocks, but only at low tide. Here are the scanty
fragments of the Priory and Chapel of Notre Dame de la Roche,
apparently a cell to the monastery of Mont St. Michel, which seems to
have had so much to do with the spiritual matters of the Channel
Islands. The tide at St. Michael's Mount is said to rush up across the
level sands more quickly than the fleetest horse can gallop, and
visitors to Lihou will be well advised to remember that here again
its onset is unexpected and swift. At L'Erée village is another
dolmen, the Creux des Fées, to which passing allusion has already been
made. St. Peter's Church in this neighbourhood--in full, St. Pierre du
Bois--is perhaps the handsomest, though not necessarily the most
interesting, of all the twelve churches in the island, and exhibits
some Flamboyant work of a very pleasing character.