enlarge-imageDives-sur-MerDives-sur-Mer
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 itwith 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 thisparadoxical 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 edificedates 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.
enlarge-imageTower of Gens d’ArmesTower of Gens d’Armes
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.”
“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 scholarsof 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.
enlarge-imageCloister of the Capucin Convent, CaenCloister of the Capucin Convent, Caen
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 ormarteau, 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 setWith châteaux, villages, and village spires.”
“Richly setWith 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, whichis 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 ofNormandy which is unfamiliar and certainly very beautiful and quite unspoiled.
enlarge-imageTinchebrayTinchebray
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 dingytapisseriehave 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 ofthe 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.
enlarge-imageWalled FarmWalled Farm
Walled Farm
Arromanches-les-Bains is very pretentious, but of no interest whatever to the general traveller; though the artist, in spite of the distractionsof 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 finetables 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.
enlarge-imagePort-en-BessinPort-en-Bessin
Port-en-Bessin
Since this book does not pretend to survey the old province minutely, not all of these bywayscan be outlined here. Suffice to say that the chief towns of what one may be allowed to call South Normandy and those of the Cotentinpeninsula 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 NovembreMe semble aussi gai, quand je boisDans nos vieilles maisons de bois.”
“Dans nos vieilles maisons de bois,Le beurre est d’or, le cidre est d’ambre;Juin rit aux éclats; mais NovembreMe semble aussi gai, quand je boisDans 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.
enlarge-imageOld Wooden Houses, LisieuxOld Wooden Houses, Lisieux
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 somomentous 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.
enlarge-imagePlan 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 thevalley 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.”
enlarge-imageDonjon of FalaiseDonjon of Falaise
Donjon of Falaise
All good Normans, and some others as well, know the legend of the peasant maid, the gentleHerlève, 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 parurentQui si très beaux et si blancs furentQue ce fut bien au duc avisQue neige est pale et flor de lysEmerveille, li torna s’amor.”
“Des piès et des jambes parurentQui si très beaux et si blancs furentQue ce fut bien au duc avisQue neige est pale et flor de lysEmerveille, 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 itis 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 thereine-l’impératriceMathilde, 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.
enlarge-imageStreet under the Church of the Trinity, FalaiseStreet under the Church of the Trinity, Falaise
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 transformedby 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 hasbeen 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.
enlarge-imageA CotentineA Cotentine
A Cotentine
THECotentin peninsula is a great jutting finger of land which runs out into that part of the Atlantic which Frenchmen know as La Manche, and which Anglo-Saxons know as the English Channel.
It terminates in the Nez de Jobourg, a rocky formation which in its detached fragments makes up the Chausey Islands and the northernmost of the Channel Islands.
The chief places of note in the Cotentin are Cherbourg, Valognes, and the ancient cathedral towns of St. Lô, Coutances, and Avranches, which, with Vire, Mortain, Pontorson, and Granville, and on the north coast Isigny, Carentan, and Harfleur, form a practical list of its important towns and cities. It is a great grazing and pasture-ground, and the little cows of the Cotentin, like those of Alderney, Jersey, and Guernsey, are held in great repute.
The military port of Cherbourg, as it isknown to-day, is a lively up-to-date gateway for visitors to France, resplendent with hotels and all modern conveniences. It was not so in a former day, when a travelled Englishman said: “Cherbourg is not a place for residence longer than necessary. I was obliged to go to a vile hole, little better than a hogsty, where, for a miserable, dirty, wretched chamber, two suppers composed chiefly of a plate of apples and some butter and cheese, with some trifle besides, too bad to eat, and one miserable dinner, they brought me a bill of nearly thirty shillings.”
Things have indeed changed, if there was no exaggeration in the statement. Even the most modern and up-to-date hotel of a great provincial town in France now seldom charges one more than twelve francs per day.
There is not much of sentimental or romantic interest to be gleaned from a contemplation of Cherbourg, which, in the minds of most new-world travellers, is merely a landing-place whence one takes the train for Paris.
As a matter of fact, Cherbourg is a great military port, which had its inception a couple of centuries ago, when the French had no port for war-vessels between Dunkerque and Brest, the former capable only of receiving frigates.The deficiency was fatal to the French on more than one occasion in their little wars with England, so admirably supplied with a base at Portsmouth, inside the Isle of Wight, directly opposite the peninsula of the Cotentin.
To remedy this defect, a môle was planned to be thrown across the open bay to Cherbourg, but this proved so great an undertaking that the plan was modified in favour of a system of artificial banks or bars. There were two entrances for ships, each commanded by a fortress which it is said was equipped a century ago with an apparatus for launching forth red-hot shot.
On one of these bars, ultimately covered by the sea, was placed the following inscription:
“Louis XVI.—Sur ce premier cone échoue le 6 Juin 1794, a vul’immersion de celui de l’est, le 23 Juin 1786.”
With the completion of the new harbour works, the hitherto dull city of Cherbourg took on a new lease of life. New streets and new houses were built; but, in spite of the present-day signs of progress and activity, there is little here to appeal to the imaginative person.
The undertaking was a prodigious one for the time, and the famous dike or breakwater was only recently completed, at a total cost of 62,500,000 francs. It took more than fifty yearsof constant labour, and four million cubic feet of stone, and encloses an area of a thousandhectares.
Cherbourg has one valuable architectural monument, the fourteenth-century Church of the Trinity. It was consecrated in 1504 and restored in our own day. The interior has really fine decorations.
The Henry Art Museum, named after its founder, contains a rather bulky and ill-assorted lot of paintings of no particular merit or fame, except a Van Eyck, a Poussin, an alleged Murillo, and a few minor works of the Dutch and Italian schools.
The suburbs of Cherbourg, toward the tip of the peninsula, form one of the most unspoiled and little travelled corners of modern France.
Near Cherbourg on the peninsula of the Hague, in the parish of Greville, is the hamlet of Gruchy, the birthplace of the painter Millet. The house bears an inscription on a tablet and is not difficult to find, if one can only thread his way through the tangle of by-roads which lie westward beyond Landemer, eleven kilometres from Cherbourg. It is an artistic shrine of real interest; and tourists, when at Cherbourg, are advised to explore this wonderful“land’s end” of Normandy, and pay homage to the birthplace of Jean François Millet.
enlarge-imageMillet’s Home, GruchyMillet’s Home, Gruchy
Millet’s Home, Gruchy
Perhaps no modern picture is really so familiar to our eyes as “The Angelus” of Jean François Millet, the struggling peasant painterof Normandy. Those two figures, man and woman in the bare field, with the village church peeping over the horizon, are “hung on the line,” so to speak, in the mind of every one who has seen them.
Millet waged a long battle for art against poverty. At times he would exchange six drawings for a pair of shoes, or a picture for a bed. He faced starvation, and was not moved from his purpose of painting the truth as he saw it. Even his greatest pictures left him in poverty. He said: “They wish to force me into their drawing-room art to break my spirit. But, no, no; I was born a peasant, and a peasant I will die. I will say what I feel.”
Certainly when one is before his birthplace at Gruchy, it is not difficult to realize that at least there were no foppish or foolish influences at work in his youth, and that it was natural perhaps for him to carve out his future from the bald truth, as he saw it, in such pictures as “The Angelus” and “The Man with the Hoe.”
There is a neglected corner of France in the extreme northwest of the Cotentin peninsula, beyond Cherbourg even, and known locally as the Hague. Cape Hague, the Hague lighthouse, and the Nez de Jobourg form a trinityof attractions for the traveller jaded with the stock sights of conventional watering-places.
It is but a short thirty kilometres from Cherbourg,en routeto nowhere, unless one is heading for America, and is known to Frenchmen as the most isolated spot of all the mainland of France. “One must not look there,” they say, “for the wonders of art or civilization, for vegetation, the life of the casino, or thetables d’hôteof the towns.”
Instead all is rock and sand and cliffs and zigzag paths cut in the steep escarpment, against which the sea batters tumultuously throughout the year.
The landlords have not spoilt this region with Restaurants de Paris or Hôtels d’Angleterre, and, accordingly, it is one of the few accessible and delightful spots where the lover of nature sees it as God made it. What accommodation there is in the neighbourhood does not rise above the dignity of modest tavern; but one will get such repasts of sea foods as would make the fortune of the proprietor of a Parisian restaurant could he but serve them as well and as cheaply.
Habitations of all sorts are rare, and roads and railways less prolific here, perhaps, than in any other part of France. No railways, post-offices,or telegraphs, save the line that runs to the signal-station at the Hague lighthouse. But it has its advantages as a place of resort, nevertheless.
The beautiful meadows of Urville and St. Martin are brilliant with their carpets of flowers in spring-time, as green and fresh as if they were in the south, and the hills between which tiny rivers flow into the Atlantic or the Manche are as shady with leaves as Vallombrosa. Suddenly all this changes as if by magic. The little river valleys become shelving red and brown rock and yellow sand; and the prairies end in a sheer fall of chalk-white cliff, tremendous to contemplate.
Cape Hague is the name of all of that tiny peninsula which forms the northwest extremity of the Cotentin; and its minor topographical formations, the cliffs of Gréville, the Creeks St. Martin, Jobourg, and Vauville, are only known to the native.
The great highway stops abruptly at a height of 180 metres above sea-level, just above the immense moors of Ste. Croix-Hague and Jobourg, with a view of the sea on three sides.
In clear weather one may see the English coast through the glass of the keeper at the lighthouse, and at one’s very feet, almost, arethe jagged fangs of rocks which surround the Channel Isles, showing plainly how intimately they were once connected with the French mainland.
This highroad runs straight away from Cherbourg to the Nez de Jobourg, which is itself a high promontory of granite, carved curiously by the waves into grottoes, which are one of the principal curiosities of the region.
After one leaves the highroad, the only progress is on foot; even bicyclists had best leave their machines behind, and, as for automobilists, why, the chauffeur will doubtless not object to a repose in the tonneau, with nothing but the lap of the waves and the cries of sea-birds to disturb him.
The little zigzag paths and tracks will require all the attention and energies of the most sure-footed as he explores the region. But so much the better; for the picturesqueness and desolation of it all will amply repay one for his pains.
Between Cherbourg and the extremity of the cape is Querqueville. The road undulates, with occasional views of the great harbour and shipping of Cherbourg until one passes the fortifications on the moor of Ste. Anne.
Here in the open country one may see a tinychurch, one of the oldest places of worship yet standing intact in all France. The choir is in the form of atréfle, and is a rare archæological curiosity.
To the right, half-hidden in a deliciously shaded vale, is the Château of Nacqueville. Its amiable guardian will permit you to examine it if you happen to be a member of the Touring Club of France.
The little village of Urville is hardly more than a score of coquettish-looking little houses, charmingly disposed along the shady roadway. Here on a great sandy beach the English disembarked in 1758, when they besieged Cherbourg and invaded the Cotentin. Certainly they chose a most suitable spot; but all is peaceful now, and the only invader one is likely to see is an American or an English artist, who has set up his easel far away from the madding throng.
A little farther on, beyond the village of Laudemer, is a little hotel, all white and high up above the rocky escarpment which pares off toward the sea. It is the Hôtel Millet, founded by the brother of the painter of “The Angelus.” Truly we are now in an artists’ paradise, and, if not wholly an undiscovered land, it is a region not yet overrun with the conventionaltourists. True, Barbizon is better known than Hague, but it is no more entrancing. In mid-August you will hardly find a dozen guests at thetable d’hôteof Hôtel Millet.
Far away extends Cape Levi, and the Gatteville lighthouse is just discernible.
The isolated villa of Valtelles is camped securely upon a rock dominating the sea below, and a little thread of a foot-path marks the daily tramp of the coast-guard and the custom-house officer.
At the opposite corner of the Cotentin peninsula is the little maritime port of Barfleur, of 1,200 inhabitants. It would perhaps hardly be remembered to-day were it not for the celebrated naval battle of Barfleur. The town is quite worth the visiting for its own quaintness and charming situation, but is usually passed by.
The Gatteville lighthouse is one of those wonderful monumental lighthouses which the French are so fond of erecting. This really great work lies just to the northward of Barfleur, and is a vast granite pile some ninety feet in circumference at its base, half that at its summit, and has a height of two hundred odd feet above its already imposing foundation.
The rays of its great electric lamp shine outover the waters of the Channel for ninety kilometres, over fifty-five miles.
From the top of this great tower the view is of great extent, embracing the whole peninsula of the Hague; and, at night, one may clearly see the great light at St. Catherine’s on the Isle of Wight.
At Brix, a small town of two thousand inhabitants, between Cherbourg and Valognes, is a fine church built from the remains of an old fortress. This will, or should, recall the fact that Brix was the native town of the illustrious family of Bruce which gave to Scotland Robert the Bruce.
Valognes, the ancient Alaounia of the Romans, and a strong fortress in the middle ages, is a small town, though it is the principal one of its district. It possesses a library of twenty thousand volumes and a handsome church of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which is said to have the only Gothic dome in France.
There are a number of magnificent old houses which have come down from the time when Valognes was a viscounty.
A great cattle market is held here every Monday, and the great establishment which packs and exports the butter, eggs, and cheese of the neighbourhood is a sight worth seeing.
The remains of the old fortress-château of the middle ages, now moss-grown, still exist in the suburbs of Alleume.
Carentan is an unassuming little town in the midst of the butter farms of the Cotentin. With Isigny it leads the butter market of France so far as its first blends are concerned. Due to the prosperity arising from its milk products is a fine, rebuilt fifteenth-century church, and there are many memories of the ancient importance of the town. Edward III. of England burned it in 1346, some days before the eventful battle of Crecy, and in 1679 a conflagration destroyed over five hundred houses. Besides being the greatest centre for the trade in butter in all Normandy, it is also the centre of the region which raises the half-breed trotting-horse.
Carentan is connected with the sea by a canal eight kilometres in length, and there is considerable small coasting trade with neighbouring ports.
Isigny, like Carentan, is noted for its cream and butter. Isigny butter is the name given to the product of all that region of Normandy lying between Bayeux, Barfleur, and Coutances.
The grain elevators and the cattle market are truly the sights of the town on market-days,and all else pales before the importance of this trade.
Grandcamp, beneath which are the celebrated Rocks of Grandcamp, is a summer resort and a tiny fishing port.
It has a real artists’ resort in its Hôtel de la Croix Blanche, whose dining-room is a veritable picture-gallery, with landscapes and seascapes by Boutigny, Gagliardini, Mathon, Bonne Maison, and others.
In reality there is no port here at Grandcamp, only a sloping beach upon which boats are drawn as they fetch and carry from the vessels which anchor at some distance from the shore, beyond the bank of wild fairylike rocks at the base of the little cliffs.
St. Lô is of ancient Gallic origin, and was once called Briovera, which in the Celtic tongue signified Bridge-over-the-Vire, as the little stream which passes by the foundations of the town is called. St. Laud or St. Lô, Bishop of Coutances, came here to preach evangelization. Soon after his death personal relics of the saint were brought here, and finally the ancient town took his name.
The religious history of the town is most profound, and as a place celebrated in warfare St. Lô ranks among the most important inLower Normandy. The Catholics captured the town in 1574, after the Calvinists had been its masters for a dozen years, and massacred three thousand of its inhabitants.
During the Revolution St. Lô was called the “Rock of Liberty.”
The very beautiful Church of Notre Dame, theci-devantcathedral, is admirably placed on the edge of the table-land overlooking the valley of the Vire. Before it became a cathedral it was an ancient collegiate church, but this fine Gothic edifice as seen to-day dates only from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries.
Its towers quite rival, and are reminiscent of, those of either Chartres, Séez, or Senlis, and are far more beautiful and imposing than those of any church of its rank in all Normandy.
There is also a fifteenth-century open-air pulpit, almost a unique attribute of a great French church, which is artistically charming. From it were, and still are, read publicly the acts of episcopal jurisdiction.
In the Rue Poids-de-Ville, at No. 4, is the fifteenth-century Maison Dieu, a fine stone structure richly ornamented with stone sculptures.
On the square before the cathedral one notesa charming statue of a water-carrier, depicting the local custom which has not yet died out here. To-day even one may see these sturdy Cotentin maidens carrying their picturesque water-jugs in exactly the same pose as depicted in the statue itself.
From St. Lô to Coutances is thirty kilometres by road. The city is an ancient bishopric, and its great cathedral is one of the most imposing and celebrated of those of the second rank in all France.
Anciently known as Cosedia, the city became in time known as Constantia, after, it is believed, Constance Chlore, who fortified it and made of it a stronghold long before the end of the Roman occupation of Gaul.
The city was taken and retaken in the course of the wars which continued during the lives of the sons of Norman William, in the Hundred Years’ War, and in the other religious wars.
During the massacres of St. Bartholomew it was saved through the moderation of its governor, the Count of Matignon.
The cathedral sits upon the crest of a hill three hundred feet above the surrounding plain, and is, in every respect, an exceedingly beautiful structure, with its two great towers rising to a height of nearly 250 feet. There isalso a great octagonal tower at the crossing, from which may be had a magnificent view of the surrounding country, south to Avranches and Granville and, perhaps, on a clear day to Mont St. Michel, and westward to the isles of Jersey and Guernsey.
Coutances has another remarkable old church in St. Pierre, fitted with pews, seldom seen in Normandy or indeed in France. It is a rebuilt fifteenth-century structure showing many Renaissance interpolations; but, on the whole, it is imposing and pleasing.
St. Nicholas is another ecclesiastical shrine with a tall square tower reminiscent of an English parish church. Its chief distinction lies perhaps in the great monocylindrical columns which divide the arcades of the nave.
The public garden of Coutances is an exceedingly ample and beautifully disposed park for a town of but seven thousand inhabitants.
The aqueduct of Coutances, to the west of the town, was one of the most remarkable works of its time. The Romans built more magnificent ones, and many have been constructed in later days; but the pointed and buttressed arches of the thirteenth-century Coutances aqueduct, now almost entirely disappeared, must remain always one of the chief works of its kind.
On the coast, midway between Coutances and Avranches, is Granville. It once had the reputation of being a vile, ugly, ill-built hole, whose only gaiety was due to the triflers on market-day. To-day the description does not fit, though it is gay enough in all conscience, and at all seasons, with its steamer traffic, its fishing, and summer visitors, for four months of the year. Before one is the Bay of Cancale, noted for its oysters; and in the far distance is St. Michel’s rock, with its satellite of Tombelaine. Down at the head of the bay is the gateway into Brittany, through the episcopal town of Dol, itself a queer, sleepy old place, with a street of decrepit houses, over which artists rave, and a grim weather-beaten cathedral, which looks like the bastion of a fortress.
Just off the shore from Granville is a group of nearly three hundred fanglike rocks which protrude toward the sky at low water, and are known as the Chausey Isles.
They seem a worthless pile of rocks at first glance, but when one recalls that Paris draws its supply of flagstones for its sidewalks from these granite protuberances their mission is seen to be an economic one.
To the west of the Chausey Isles are the very rocks described by Victor Hugo in his “Toilersof the Sea.” Still further from the mainland are the Minquiers and the Grelets, which at high water are, for the most part, hardly more than pin-heads above the level of the sea.
On the principal isle of the Minquiers, scarce a dozen feet above sea-level, is a little hamlet of a few huts and cabins of refuge built by the fishermen of Jersey and Guernsey.
Granville is indeed a city of sturdy sailors and men of affairs. It is situated at the very tip of an abrupt promontory, picturesque in the extreme, known as the Rock of Granville. The upper town and the lower town each adds its own variety of life; and there is no city in Normandy where one may observe more contrasting features than here on this rock-cut town overlooking the blue waters of the Manche.
The place is a summer resort of the very first rank, and its hotels are all that the most fastidious could require, in spite of which there still hangs about it all an atmosphere that has not yet become vitiated by the conventions of society. The tides of the ocean here rise and fall to greater heights and depths than on any other part of the European coast, and the sea is the great and abounding attraction of the city, which has twelve thousand inhabitants.
As early as the twelfth century a chapel was built upon the projecting rock; and from it and its influences grew up the present city. For many years the city was held by the English, but was retaken by the Normans in 1441, at whose head was Louis d’Estouteville, governor of Mont St. Michel. In 1695 it was bombarded by the English, and Louis XIV. ordered the fortification to be demolished.
In 1793 Granville opposed, with a courageous resistance, the Vendean army of twenty thousand men, commanded by La Rochejacquelin, who was forced to raise the siege.
Again, in 1803, the English bombarded the town, but with little effect.
Granville was the port of departure for a great number of privateers, who did considerable damage during the struggles between the French and English.
The Church of Notre Dame is Granville’s most interesting monument. It is built upon the point which culminates in the celebrated Granville Rock, and preserves many details of its ancient Roman construction. In its ensemble, however, it is highly florid Gothic, its later additions coming well down into the seventeenth century. In the interior is the Chapel of St. Nicholas, containing numerous donationsof fishermen and sailors,—gilded anchors, models of full-rigged ships, and similar gifts.