ANDY
BY
ICO UNGMAN
LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
a
NORMANDY
A NORMAN PEASANT
TEXT BY|G. E. MITTON PUBLISHED BY ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK SOHO SQUARE • LONDON
Publlihed . . September 1905
PREFACE
PEN and brush are both necessary in the attempt to give an impression of a country ; word-painting for the brain, colour for the eye. Yet even then there must be gaps and a sad lack of completeness, which is felt by no one more than by the coadjutors who have produced this book. There are so many aspects under which a country may be seen. In the case of Normandy, for instance, one man looks for magnificent architecture alone, another for country scenes, another for peasant life, and each and all will cavil at a book which does not cater for their particular taste. Cavil they must ; the artist and author here have tried — knowing well how far short of the ideal they have fallen — to show Normandy as it appeared to them, and the matter must be coloured by their personalities. Thus they plead for leniency, on the ground that no one person's view can ever exactly be that which satisfies another.
G. E. MITTON.
Til
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
FACE
IN GENERAL . . . . . . • . i
CHAPTER II THE NORMAN DUKES ...... 18
CHAPTER III THE MIGHTY WILLIAM ...... 34
CHAPTER IV A MEDIAEVAL CITY ...... 56
CHAPTER V CAEN ........ 79
CHAPTER VI FALAISE . . . . . . . .93
CHAPTER VI I BAYEUX AND THE SMALLER TOWNS . . . .112
CHAPTER VIII THE FAMOUS TAPESTRY. . , . , ,129
Contents
CHAPTER IX
PAOK
AN ABBEY ON A ROCK ...... 140
CHAPTER X THE STORMY CdTENxm . . . . . 155
CHAPTER XI DIEPPE AND THE COAST .... 163
CHAPTER XII
UP THE SEINE . . .182
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
1. A Norman Peasant ..... Frontispiece
FACING PAOE
2. Cherry Blossom ..... 6
3. The Harbour at Low Tide, Granville ... 8
4. A Festival Cap ...... 10
5. A Seaside Resort . . . . . 12
6. Grandmother ...... 14
7. An Approach to the Abbey, Mont St Michel . . 22
8. Entrance to Mont St Michel .... 28
9. A Street, Mont St Michel .... 32
10. Harbour of Fe'camp ..... 36
1 1. A Road near Rouen ..... 44
12. Near Pont-Audemer ..... 46
13. Old Houses, Rouen ..... 58
14. A Street in Rouen ..... 62
15. The Towers of St Ouen .... 64
16. An Hotel Courtyard, Rouen .... 72
17. The Milk Carrier ..... 84
1 8. A Street Vendor, Falaise .... 94
19. A Little Norman Girl ..... 96
20. Rural Scene . . . . . .102
21. Starting for the Washing-Shed . . . 104
22. Lace Making . . . . . .no
23. An Ancient Inn Yard . . . . .114
24. Timber-frame House, Lisieux . . . .120
25. Valley of the Rille ..... 122
26. St Lo . . . . . . 124
xi
List of Illustrations
FACING PAOB
27. A Street in Granville ..... 126
28. The Spinning Wheel . . . . .134
29. Mont St Michel— Sunset .... 142
30. La Porte du Roi ..... 144
31. The Street, Mont St Michel .... 146
32. A View from the Top of Mont St Michel . . 148
33. A Holiday Head-dress . . . .156
34. Cherbourg ...... 160
35. The Gateway, Dieppe . . . . '.* 164
36. The Quay, Dieppe . . . . .168
37. Fishermen at Fecamp . . . . .174
38. Havre ....... 176
39. Quai Sainte Catherine, Honfleur . . . 182
40. Caudebec-en-Caux . . . . .186
The Illustrations in this volume have been engraved and printed at the Menpes Press.
Xll
CHAPTER I
IN GENERAL
IT is a task of extreme difficulty to set down on paper what may be called the character of a country; it includes so much — the historical past, the solemn and magnificent buildings, the antiquity of the towns, the nature of the landscape, the individuality of the people ; and besides all these large and important facts, there must be more than a reference to distinctive customs, quaint street scenes, peculiarities in costume, manners, and style of living. Only when all these topics have been mingled and interwoven to form a com- prehensive whole, can we feel that justice is done to a country. Yet when the scope of the book has been thus outlined, the manner of it remains to be considered, and on the manner depends all or nearly all the charm. It will not answer the purpose we have in view to follow the methods of guide-book writing ; that careful pencil-drawing, where each small object receives the same detailed recogni- tion in accordance with its size as does each large
I A
Normandy
fact, is not for us ; for it is essential that the whole must consist of wide areas of light and shade, to make definite impressions. Many people have passed through the country, guide-book in hand, have studied the style of every cathedral, have seen the spot where Joan of Arc was murdered, and where William the Conquerer was born, but have come back again without having once felt that shadowy and intangible thing, the character of Normandy, wherein lies its fascination.
It seems, then, that the only possible way to aim at this high ideal will be to exercise the principle of selection ; to choose those things which are typical and representative, whether of a particular town or the whole country, to describe in detail some points which may be found in many places, and to leave the rest. A town-to-town tour, with everything minute, accurate, at the same level, would be wearisome and unimpressive, however useful as a guide-book. Here we shall wander and ramble, selecting one or two objects for special attention, perhaps by reason of their singularity, perhaps for the opposite reason, because they are typical of many of their kind, and by this method we shall gain some general idea of the country, without becoming tedious by reason of too much detail, or vague for lack of it.
It has often been said that Normandy is a beautiful country, or as it is less happily expressed, "So pretty," and this is not altogether true; no doubt there are parts of Normandy which are
In General
beautiful, such as the banks of the Seine, and the country about Mortain and Domfront, but there are also parts as dully monotonous as the worst of Holland or Picardy. To know the country, one must see all kinds, and perhaps with knowledge we shall get to feel even for the plainer parts that affection which comes with knowledge of a dear but plain face.
The present chapter, however, is merely preliminary and discursive, with the object of giving some general idea of the country as a background before filling in the groups destined for the foreground. The place where the majority of English people first strike Normandy is Dieppe. The coast-line running north and south of Dieppe is famous for its bathing-places and pleasure resorts, and it will be dealt with later on.
The district lying between Dieppe and the Seine is known as Caux. The route from Dieppe to Paris is well known to many a traveller, and the feeling of anyone who sees it for the first time will probably be surprise at its likeness to England. If the journey be in the spring-time, he will see cowslips and cuckoo flowers in the lush green grass, amid which stand cows of English breed. The woods will be spangled with starry-eyed primrose and anemones, while long bramble creepers trail over the sprouting hedges. Even the cottages, red-tiled or thatched, are quite familiar specimens ; and it is only when some rigid chateau, in the hideous style most affected by modern France, built of glaring brick, and with an
3
Normandy
utter absence of all attempt at architectural grace, is seen up a vista of formal trees, that he will realise he is not in the Midlands.
Then we come to the banks of the Seine. Perhaps if one had to choose out of all Normandy, one would select the country lying within and around those great horse-shoe loops of the river as admittedly the most beautiful part. So full of interest and variety is the course of the Seine, that we have reserved a special chapter for an account of it between Havre and Vernon. However, beautiful as it is, this part is not quite so characteristically Norman as some other districts. The Seine itself, though it flows for so long- through Normandy, does not belong1 to it, but to France ; the people who live on its banks are more French than Norman, and we have to go farther westward to find more typical scenery. The country lying about Gisors, and between that town and the Seine, was called the Vexin, and formed a debatable ground on which many a contest was fought, and which was held by France and Normandy in turn.
To the west of the Seine the country varies. Some towns, like Lisieux, lie surrounded by broken ground well clothed by trees, while much of the district, notably that south of Evreux, is monotonous and almost devoid of hills at all.
We find here some instances of those long, straight roads which it seems to be the highest ideal of the Vicinal Committee to make. We shall meet them again in plenty elsewhere, but may as
4
In General
well describe them here. Take for instance that road running between Evreux and Lisieux ; it un- dulates slightly, and at each little crest the white ribbon can be seen rising and falling, and growing at last so small in the endless perspective, that it almost vanishes from sight. Six miles from any town a man is found carefully brushing the dust from this road, though what good he can possibly do by the clouds he raises with his long, pliant sweep is a mystery. On each side of the road there is a broad ribbon of green, and in this case it is overhung by a double row of trees that really do give some shade. The peasants walk in this green aisle, but even with the grass underfoot the patience needed to traverse perpetually such monotonous roads must be great ; it is the quality often found in those whose lives know little variety. Sometimes these high roads are planted with poplars, which mock the wayfarer, for like so many other trees in France, these poplars are stripped of all their boughs almost to the top, and the little tuft of light leaves remaining gives no relief to sight or sense on a glaring road under a summer sun ; oaks, horse- chestnuts, beeches — almost any other tree, and all seem to grow well — would have been far better for shade and comfort ; yet for one road planted with these umbrageous trees a dozen are lined by the scanty and disappointing poplar. Along them pass the market carts with hoods like those of a victoria; and even the drivers of slow travelling
5
Normandy
carts supply themselves with miniature hoods, exactly like those of perambulators, to cover their seats, for no one could endure the hours passed in the sun without some protection.
A great deal of Normandy is flat and bare ; the flint and trefoil style is common. Wide fields of mustard of a crude raw yellow, not golden like the Pomeranian lupin fields, are often to be seen. The flat landscapes are broken by a few stiff or scraggy trees, tethered cows, or cottages of lathe and clay; yet, we hear the song of the lark and scent the breath of roses, and in the spring and early summer orchards of cherry blossom make gleaming sheets of white on many a roadside.
The valley of the River Rille, up which Pont Audemer lies, is of a different style altogether, still it has characteristics in common with other districts. The valley is flat, and from it on each side so steeply rise the fir-crowned hills that in describing them one could almost use the word rectangular. Though the trees are fairly thick there is a ragged, unfinished, rather scrubby look, very often seen in Normandy.
If we spring westward now to Caen, we find the flat and bald landscape everywhere. The country is almost incredibly dull, and this is the reason why Caen, such an interesting town in itself, makes so small an appeal as headquarters. The long, straight roads radiate from it in all directions. Here and there there is a lining of trees, but
6
CHERRY BLOSSOM
In General
generally only a green ditch, waterless, and a line of cornfield, blue-green or yellow as the season may be, with perhaps a ragged fringe of gnarled apple-trees standing ankle-deep in the corn, and the wide sky, like a great inverted bowl of clear blue, fitting every way to the horizon. There may be fields of deep crimson trefoil to vary the colouring, or there may be fields yet unplanted in which the bare brown earth seems to stretch to eternity, and far away in the midst are the stooping figures of two or three men and women busily working with bent backs on a shadeless plain. Yet in this wide flat country there is a freshness and an openness that one might imagine could permeate the blood, so that the peasants who were born and reared here might suffocate and die in a mountainous country, as the mountaineers are said to pine and die in a plain. This flat plain to the westward of Caen, and sur- rounding Bayeux in the district of the Bessin, has been, so long as history has any record, a prime agricultural country with magnificient pasturage. The most notable points in the little villages which stud it are the wonderful churches, out of all pro- portion to the size of the hamlets they represent. Of course this feature is found all over the country, and in almost every small town there is a cathedral, so that one cannot but wonder where the money came from which built such glorious monuments to piety. The line going to Bayeux runs at about seven or eight miles from Caen, between two little
7
Normandy
villages, Bretteville and Norrey, which share a station between them. The church at Norrey, built in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, is a very model of architectural perfection and simplicity, the tall spire is something in the style of the marvellous St Pierre in Caen itself. Bretteville falls not far short of it, though the tower is after a different pattern. A very few miles on, at Andrieu, is a church with a splendid tower of the same date as Norrey, and about two miles south, at Tilly aux Seulles, a church of which the nave is eleventh century, the choir twelfth, the tower fourteenth, and the portal fifteenth, all in the artistic and finished style we associate with that period when there seems to have been nothing but good work. This group of churches is worth mentioning as striking, even in the profusion to be found in Normandy. Leaving Caen and going southward, we plunge before very long into the hilly country from which the Orne rises. This is known as the Bocage, a name which suggests rich foliage. The part of the country in which Mortain and Domfront lie has been called the Alps of Normandy, and certainly it can hold its own for picturesqueness. It is, however, comparatively little known ; the line of the quick-trip-man may touch Falaise, but it goes no further south. Yet even at Falaise one can see part of a ridge extending for many kilometres, a ridge which has been so magnifi- cently utilised as the site of the castle where William was born. The hills through Mortain and Domfront
8
THE HARBOUR AT LOW TIDE, GRANVILLE
•
In General
run parallel with this ridge, and are of the same description. Indeed the positions of the castles at Domfront and Falaise are very similar.
Turning now to a new district westward, we find a rugged granite coast, chiefly notable for the splendid views it affords of the bay of Mont St Michel and its famous rock, and on a wider scale of the Channel, where lie the lies Causey and lies Normandes (Channel Isles). There are here a group of fine towns, Avranches, Granville, Coutances, and St Lo. The first named is the capital of the Avranchin district, which stretches up to the little stream Couesnon, separating Normandy and Brittany. Thus we are almost at the end of a general topographical survey; there remains only that peninsula of the Cotentin, very little visited, and entirely off the tourist track, yet in itself delightful. The hills rise and fall, and are well covered with trees, which, though not of a great height, grow warmly and bushily. The roads are good, and the country is studded with ancient chateaux, now for the most part farmhouses, which shall have, as they deserve, a chapter to themselves. We have thus run very quickly over Normandy in a general survey, gaining some idea of the characteristics of the districts, and calling them by the ancient names they bore in the days of the Norman dukes.
In regard to the people, what there is to say has been said in the various local chapters. The quaint costumes, which are familiar to us from many a
9
Normandy
picture, are fast dying out ; in Normandy one sees less of them than in Brittany ; here and there, it is true, we find a local fashion in caps, as at Valognes ; and still on feast-days and fair-days some damsel appears in the wonderful erection of stiffening and beautiful hand-made lace which her grandmother wore, to be the envy of her neighbours ; but in an ordinary way these things are not seen. "On y cherchent vainement ces riches fermie>es de la plaine et du Bessin, dont les hautes coiffes garnies de dentelles et les bijoux Normandes attiraient tous les regards."
And what is said of costumes may be said also of customs. Le Hericher, who has made a study of racial characteristics, says that the Normans are not a people of imagination and idealism like the Celtic races. "II y a en Normandie deux localites ou on remarque une population exotique, exotique de costume, exotique de langue ; c'est Granville a quatre lieues de Cancale, son berceau, son point de depart ; Cancalaises et Granvillaises sont des sceurs separees pas un bras de mer. L'autre c'est le faubourg de Dieppe, celui des pecheuses, le Pollet. Ces deux localites ou la race est Celtique, se distinguent par un esprit pieux qui, comme cela se fait chez les Bretons, mele la religion aux actes de la vie civile et de 1'existence maritime." He adds, " Le Normand chante peu et ne danse pas du tout. Se voisin le Breton chante beaucoup, danse un peu."
10
A FESTIVAL CAP
Nevertheless a dancing-match may still be found in some obscure corners of Normandy.
The Norman has the love of country strongly developed and though settlers have gone forth to other lands, especially to Canada, the mother-country retains their hearts in a peculiar way. One of the most popular of the national songs carried overseas runs : —
" A la Claire fontaine,
Les mains me mis lave".
Sur la plus haute branche
La rossignol chantait,
Chante, rossignol chante
Puisque t'as le coeur gai,
Le mien n'est pas de m£me
II est bien afflige."
Longfellow's Evangeline is full of the spirit of the exile and his picture of the girl herself : —
"Wearing her Norman cap, and her kirtle of blue, and the
earrings,
Brought in the olden time from France, and since as an heirloom Handed down from mother to child through long generations,"
gives us a clear-cut vision of a type of Norman girl now growing every day more rare.
A great many people who could visit Normandy as easily as one of our own coast towns are deterred by the difficulty of knowing where to begin, and what route to take. Normandy is the easiest of all countries to visit. One may begin anywhere with the certainty of finding interest and enjoyment, especially those who are cyclists, for the roads are as
ii
Normandy
a rule excellent, much better than those in Brittany, and one may stay for a longer or shorter time with equal pleasure, for the country furnishes material for many a month, and yet much can be seen in ten days or a fortnight.
The best known starting-place, as we have said, is Dieppe, and of the hundreds who enter Normandy yearly, at least eighty per cent, come in by this gate. A very usual route for a first trip is by Rouen, Evreux, Lisieux, Caen, Bayeux, St Lo, Coutances, Avranches, and St Mont Michel, returning from St Malo. This for a preliminary survey is good, and having once been in the country it is almost certain that the traveller will go again, given the oppor- tunity.
There are of course many people who are content with the sea-coast, and wish to penetrate no further than Dieppe or Trouville, to mention the two largest of the coast resorts. There is much to be said for these places. There is a brilliance in the sunny air, a gaiety in the mingling crowds, a completeness in the round of amusements, and the opportunities for observing one's fellow-creatures, that are grand elements in the tonic of change. The bathing, the bands, the casinos, the toilets, are all excellent of their kind, and many a tired worker goes back to that office in the city, where his view is limited by his neighbour's window-reflectors, a new man for the busy idleness of a fortnight at one of these holiday resorts. Unfortunately for those who have not much
12
A SEASIDE RESORT
In General
to spend, the prices at the best hotels at these places in the season are almost prohibitive. However, the season is late, not beginning1 until July, and there are sunny months before that. There are also countless places along the coast less known, and having the primary advantages of the others ; where the sands are just as stoneless and shadeless, and where the sea-air is as fresh and the sky as blue, but where the hotels are not so exorbitant, and the villas and pensions are innumerable also. Such, to take only one example, are the places that line the coast near Caen.
But this is the merest fringe of the subject. One who has sampled the coast towns, and rushed over the main route above described, has hardly begun to know Normandy. He has endless choice left for future holidays. He may make his headquarters at Valognes to explore the Cotentin ; he may settle down at Domfront, and wander throughout that lovely district ; or he may devote himself to the country around Les Andelys and Gisors ; and every- where he will find opportunity for enjoyment.
The difficulty in passingquickly through Normandy on a cycling or pedestrian tour is to get food when and where you want it. To make any progress at all in summer, it is necessary to start in good time after a substantial meal, then to take a very light luncheon, perhaps carried with one, and to arrive in time for a good dinner at the day's end. This is very difficult of accomplishment. Such a thing as that which an Englishman calls a good breakfast
13
is almost out of the question, and the probability is that the cyclist riding off the beaten tracks cannot get anything at all for the rest of the day ; for of all hopeless places for eatable food, the small villages in Normandy are the worst. Drink of some kind, vermouth, and the sweet syrupy grenadine, can be had at every little shanty, marked " Debit du Boisson," but there is nothing to eat.
I can recall one scene which could never have taken place anywhere save in Normandy. An old farmhouse with half-door, which, being opened, admitted one to an old room toned in browns of all shades, heavy beams, walls, and floor alike. A few boughs, green-encrusted, and sending up a thick smoke, lie on the open hearth. A little old dame, of any age one likes to guess, with wizened nut- brown face encircled by a spotless close-fitting coif, is the lady of the house. Her face is one to which Rembrandt alone could have done justice, with an expression at once kindly, dignified, and shrewd. On the rough table, hacked and hewed by many a knife, are set bowls of milk strongly tasting of wood smoke. Sour cream is spread like jam on slices roughly carved from a loaf the size of a bicycle wheel, and about as hard as deal wood. The cream is very sour, and a few lumps of sugar are served out with it to be grated over it. The old dame sits by with folded hands while the party laugh over their strange meal, but as the laughter con- tinues she grows slightly anxious, and asks to be
14
GRANDMOTHER
In General
assured that she is not the object of it ; a royal compliment in the best French at the command of the best linguist of the party chases away anxiety, and also for the moment dignity and shrewdness, leaving nothing but delight pure and simple on that dear old work-worn face.
It is the fashion to praise French cooking, but to an Englishman who has passed the day bicycling with nothing but a couple of soft-boiled eggs and some sour cream, there is something unsatisfying about the ordinary dinner menu at a French hotel. The monotonous soup, always maigre ; the dull variety of nameless white fish, which seems to be kept in stock as a staple; the little tasteless pieces of veal, all the same size and shape cut on a dish ; the leathery and half-raw mutton, also cut in the same way ; the very small variety of vegetables, and utter absence of attempt at sweets — is not an appetising menu. The French are apparently very conservative in their food. A traveller of eighty years ago tells us: "The breakfast at the table d'hote at Argentan, as at every other place where I stopped, was of exactly the same nature as their dinners. That is, soup, fish, meat of different kinds, eggs, salad, and a dessert with cider; no potatoes or any other vegetable but asparagus at any meal," and this would be a very fair account of an hotel menu nowadays. The worst fault seems to be monotony, always chicken, gigot, or veal. Of course, at the very first-class hotels, at places such as Dieppe,
15
where English influence has penetrated, things are certainly better, but in the ordinary best hotel in a second-class town, the food is very unsatisfactory, and the meat always tough and bad, in spite of the splendid pasture lands and the fine fat beasts one sees grazing; good beef is very rare, and good mutton unknown. In this respect Normandy seems to have been unvaryingly the same, for the traveller above quoted writes also : " With occasional exceptions, the meat in this part of Normandy (Caen) is of inferior quality, more particularly the mutton, which is generally as lean and tough as an old shoe." So often has the praise of French vegetables been repeated, that one has learned to take it as an axiom, until one goes and finds out for oneself. The truth is there is less, not more variety, than with us ; such a thing as a good spring cabbage is unknown, and cauliflower is served only augratin. Yet the hotels have improved enormously in many points in the last seven or eight years. They have their advantages, and in some ways every French hotel, even the poorest, can beat its English compeers. The great advantage of cheap wine is felt at every hotel in Normandy ; the question of what to drink at dinner, usually such a difficult one, is solved for you. On the table, almost every- where, are red and white wine and seltzer water "compris"; and at every hotel, without exception, cider, varying it is true greatly as to quality, can be had for the asking.
16
In General
The hotels are also cheap. At those of the first class, i franc is the average charge for the petit dejeuner meal ; the dejeuner is generally 3 ; and the dinner 3. 50 ; while the room may be taken at an average price of 3 francs. Therefore a full day at an hotel usually costs 10.50 francs, or en pension 10 francs, equalling between 8 and 9 shillings ; but at fashionable coast resorts in the season 15 francs per day is the lowest rate, and in the out-of-the-way districts, and off the beaten tracks, 7 and 8 francs a day are the usual charges. At any rate, in Normandy one is free from the ridiculous impost called "attendance," which entails an additional is. 6d. a day in many English and Scotch hotels, while tipping is expected just the same.
Many of the hotels have a forbidding aspect outside ; until one is used to it, it is a little damp- ing to enter under a low archway leading to a stableyard, but the entry is often the worst part of it. An Englishman touring through the country will find as a rule he is able to find without difficulty quarters which possess all requisites though not luxuries.
CHAPTER II
THE NORMAN DUKES
NORMANDY is probably at the same time the best and the least known place on the Continent to Englishmen : the best known, because the most accessible ; the least known, because, beyond the fact that the Duke of Normandy conquered Eng- land in the year 1066, and that it is in consequence from Normandy that our line of kings is derived, the average Englishman knows little or nothing of its history or associations. Ask him plainly : What is the extent of Normandy ? and he will answer vaguely, " It is the north of France." So it is, a part of the north of France, but not the whole. As a matter of fact, the term Normandy has now little geographical meaning. Normandy is not a province for practical purposes, nor does it carry any civil boundaries marking customs, or law, or government. Normandy embraces the departments of Manche, Orne, Eure, Calvados, and Seine Inferieure; that is to say, it reaches from Eu and its port Le Tr^port on the east ; to the stream Couesnon, which flows into the
18
The Norman Dukes
English Channel a little beyond Mont St Michel on the west ; and southward it just takes in Alen9on, dips down to a point near La Fert6 Bernard, returning with a wavering north-eastward line across the Seine at Vernon, and by Gisors to Eu aforesaid. It answers also to the modern dioceses of Rouen, Evreux, S£ez, Bayeux, and Coutances. The Archbishop of Rouen still keeps the title of Primate of Normandy, otherwise the name has gone out of formal use, and Normandy is merged in France.
Yet it is extraordinary with what tenacity and affection Englishmen regard a name which links the dwellers in the land to them as kin, and it is still more extraordinary how, after centuries of submer- sion, beneath a rule entirely French, the kinship makes itself felt in manner and character as well as in memory. The qualities of the sturdy northmen whose bravery and roving dispositions led them to lands far from their own, and made them at home everywhere, still exist in their descendants, as the colonies of England testify. When the Danes had settled down upon the north of France "they were," says Freeman, "no longer Northmen but Normans ; the change in the form of the name aptly expresses the change in those who bore it." Yet many and many a vessel full of vikings discharged itself on that land without making any impression, until one came bearing the mighty Rollo, who was destined to stay and make a permanent mark.
19
Normandy
The France of those days, torn by dissensions, was not the homogeneous country we now know. Long before Csesar first conquered Gaul, and in the time of his successor Augustus, Lyons was the capital ; then came the Germans and Goths, who began to over- run the land, and a little later the low German tribe of the Franks came also ; they were destined to give their name to a land alien from their own, just as the modern name of Scotland was brought over the sea originally by the men of Ireland. It was in the beginning of the sixth century that the greater part of Gaul lay under the dominion of Clovis, King of the Franks. Yet after his death, in accordance with the German custom, the kingdom was divided among his sons, one province being Neustria, which included what we know as Normandy, and endless struggles ensued, until in the middle of the seventh century arose the great Charlemagne, who ruled by his might over all central Europe, now divided into many nations. But in the struggle between his grandsons, his great dominion was split up, one grandson taking what is now Germany, another Italy, and the third, and most powerful, Charles the Bald, holding France. He had for his kingdom "all Gaul west of the Scheldt, the Meuse, the Sadne, and the Rhone ; it ran down to the Mediterranean, and was thence bounded by the Pyrenees and the Atlantic." Brittany was still savagely independent, however, and the northern coasts of Neustria were ravaged by the Northmen. The county of Paris became part of the
20
The Norman Dukes
possessions of the duchy of France, and Robert the Strong, made duke by Charles the Bald, was set to fight against the northern marauders, who had penetrated even to Paris. But the descendants of the great Charles were weak and feeble, and as his house declined that of Robert the Strong grew, culminating- in his great-grandson, Hugh Capet, who, on the death of the last of the direct line of degenerate Carlovingians, became king of the France that we know.
But before Capet had succeeded in seating himself on the throne, the Northmen had settled permanently in France. In the reign of Charles the Bald's grand- son, Charles the Simple, Rollo or Rolf, the North- man, had established himself at Rouen, and the king had made terms with him, giving him his daughter to wife, and granting him a tract of land from the Epte to the sea, with Rouen as its heart. This was in 912, and is the first recognised settlement of the Northmen. Rollo himself is a fine bold figure, only surpassed by one other among his descendants. His frame was gigantic, and when in full armour no horse could carry him. He seems to have combined, with the strenuous virile qualities of the northerners, the capacity for organisation and settled government belonging to a later period, and a more civilised people. He embraced the faith of his wife Gisella, and was baptized under the name of Robert, though it is as Rollo he will be known and remembered. He was the founder of Normandy, and under his
21
Normandy
government, learning and industry sprang up and flourished. His followers received the softening influences of the French, and the French language began to be spoken in Normandy.
The first Normandy was, as has been said, the district lying around Rouen, but in 924 the district of Bayeux was added to it, hereafter to become a stronghold of the older language and customs against the Frenchified influences of Rouen. Freeman says : " Nowhere out of old Saxon or Frisian lands can we find another portion of continental Europe which is so truly a brother land of our own. The district of Bayeux, occupied by a Saxon colony in the latest days of the old Roman empire, occupied again by a Scandinavian colony as the result of its conquest by Rolf, has retained to this day a character which distinguishes it from any other Romance-speaking portion of the Continent."
As we have seen, at the time of Rolfs settle- ment in Neustria there were two powers in France, the King of France, Charles the Simple, and the powerful Duke of the French, who included in his dominions the future capital, Paris. It was to the King of France that Rolf did homage as overlord ; and the story goes that the proud Northman, on being told to kiss the monarch's foot by way of homage, deputed one of his men to act as his proxy, and that this man, no humbler than his master, contemptuously raised the king's foot to his own mouth, thereby oversetting the monarch. The story
22
AN APPROACH TO THE ABBEY, MONT ST MICHEL
The Norman Dukes
is probably apocryphal, but it has lived with odd persistence.
Rollo died in 931, and a few years after his death his son William Longsword had the satisfaction of adding to his lands the district of Cdntentin, includ- ing the peninsula and the land as far south as Granville. He obtained this additional land when he was suppressing what was called a revolt of the Bretons — for the Dukes of Normandy held shadowy rights over Brittany, rights which they were never able to enforce. By his new conquest the Channel Isles were included in Normandy, and oddly enough it was thus they became attached to the English crown, for when the Norman dukes, as kings of England, lost all their other French possessions, they retained the islands. William Longsword was of a softer mould than his father, and from what can be gathered from the chronicles of the time he was a man of a thoughtful cast of mind, serious and gentle, a character rare enough in his age. He was succeeded by his son Richard, who, of all the Norman dukes except the Conqueror himself, is the best known to English people from Miss Yonge's charming story, The Little Duke, in which it is to be feared she regards both father and son through a haze of idealisation ; but it is indeed difficult if not impossible to make sufficient allowances for the radically different cast of thought in a bygone age, and to draw men as they really were. Richard the Fearless reigned for more than fifty years, and it
23
Normandy
was ten years before his death that Hugh Capet combined in himself the power of the kings and dukes of France, and became the first king of con- solidated France. Richard had been sent as a lad to Bayeux, in order that he might be brought up under the influences of the country of his ancestors instead of becoming too much Frenchified ; but he was of a vigorous disposition, and there seems to have been no reason to believe that he would have suffered unduly from any softening influence.
Nothing is more striking in the early annals of France than the succession of weak rulers she produced ; occasionally there arose a man of capacity and power, but his sons were invariably weaklings. France does not seem to have been able to carry on a strong ruling race. In contrast to this, note the towering figures of the Norman dukes — the gigantic Rolf, the wise William Longsword, Richard the Fearless, Robert the Devil, William the Conqueror — all men of exceptional power and capacity. The infusion of Norman blood seems to have given just that basic power of endurance needed in the Teutonic nation. Richard the Fear- less was succeeded by his son Richard the Good, and he by two of his sons successively, another Richard, and Robert the Devil or the Magnificent (see p. 34). It was Robert's son William, who, left as a child to his inheritance, became the most famous of his race. No story of romance or legend is more wonderful than that of the Conqueror. At
24
The Norman Dukes
present we leave it aside to form the theme of a separate chapter, so as not to prolong1 too far this sketch of Norman history, which is necessary for any understanding of the topographical allusions.
With the Conquest, Normandy began to sink in importance ; as in the case of a mother who has brought forth a son, destined to wield power and occupy positions far beyond her capacity, she herself took a secondary place. To be the independent King of England was grander than to be Duke of Normandy subject to the kings of France, and it needed but a generation or two to make the English forget the fact of their being conquered, and to look upon Normandy as a appanage of the English crown. It was a strange position altogether; the best blood of Normandy was emptied into England at the Conquest ; abbots, warriors, nobles, men of learning and men of birth settled in the new country and became the English, and England found herself so much Normanised as to be transformed.
It is customary to consider that the history of Normandy ends with the conquest of England, being thenceforth merged in that of the greater country ; but though the importance of Normandy as a country was lessened by the union, her history is by no means identical with that of England. Normandy several times enjoyed a sovereign prince altogether distinct from him who wore the crown of England, and this state of affairs began immediately after the death of William the Conqueror, who left
25
Normandy
the duchy to his eldest son Robert, while the second son William became King of England. Of Robert we know chiefly that he suffered from an incurable "mollesse," and further, as regards personal details, that as "Jambes cut cortes, gros les os," he earned the nickname of Court-hose. This son of a famous father and admirable mother, was a libertine, given over to pleasure, incapable of taking decisive action, one of those weak characters on which experience cannot engrave permanent lines, but withal full of the courage of his race. He was, however, unable to hold what had been left him. William had prophesied that his youngest son Henry should be greater than both his brothers, and Henry soon began to fulfil the parental prophecy by seizing and holding for himself the Cotentin peninsula, and with it the lordship of Mortain. Nothing is more signifi- cant of the grasping natures of the trio of brothers than the way in which they changed over, first one couple joining against the remaining one, and then almost immediately breaking up for a fresh com- bination. William and Henry warred against Robert ; Henry and Robert combined to thwart William ; William and Robert mutually agreed to keep Henry out of the succession, and so on ; exactly as self-interest dictated for the moment. Finally William came uppermost, and Robert submitted, and henceforth practically held his duchy at the pleasure of his brother. It was Henry's turn to be the "odd man out," and he fled before his
26
The Norman Dukes
elder brothers, taking refuge in Mont St Michel, where they both besieged him. He had to submit, and, yielding up the fortress, retired a penniless adventurer. But in some way he afterwards regained the whole of the Cotentin. When the crusading mania began, Robert was seized with it ; under his rule Normandy had been wretchedly governed, and little he cared. For a comparatively small sum he mortgaged his duchy to his brother William the Red, for six years, and went off to the Holy Land. Normandy was probably the better for his action. In returning from the Holy Land, he managed to occupy a year in the journey, and on the way he married Sybilla, daughter of Count Geoffrey of Flanders. He had already, it may be stated, two sons and a daughter, who seem to have inherited the best of the traits of his house. One of the sons, Richard, while on a visit to his uncle William in England, was accidentally killed in the New Forest.
Sybilla attempted to reclaim her husband from the crowd of bad companions who gathered round him on his re-entry into Normandy, and when Robert was tired of her, as he soon became of everything, he found this inconvenient, so in less than two years she died suddenly of poison. Robert had returned too late to put in a bid for the throne of England ! which was already occupied by Henry ; but the death of William freed him from any obligation to pay back the debt on his duchy, and Sybilla's
27
Normandy
dowry went in other directions. Henry now made a treaty with his brother, by which he delivered up the Cdtentin, but kept Domfront and Mortain. How- ever, becoming once more embroiled with Robert, he quickly won for himself the whole duchy, clinch- ing- the matter at the famous battle of Tinchebray, whereby the process of his father was reversed, and the King of England now conquered Normandy as the Duke of Normandy had then conquered England. After the terrible death of his son near Barfleur, Henry set his heart on the succession of his daughter Maude, who had been married first to the Emperor of Germany, and afterwards on his death, evidently by her father's choice, to Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou and Maine, one of the most powerful of the rulers who might have opposed her succession in Normandy. Yet Maude never ascended the throne that her father had so care- fully guarded for her. It is true that a claimant who might have proved very formidable, William, the remaining son of Robert, had died seven years before his uncle Henry, but there remained the two sons of Adela, daughter of the Conqueror ; of these the younger, Stephen, was determined to oust his cousin. During the weary civil war that followed, Normandy was many times traversed by one party or the other, but on the whole the country declared for Stephen. The Count of Anjou was an hereditary enemy, and the Normans did not relish the idea of being governed by him in his wife's name. When at last, after the
28
ENTRANCE TO MONT ST MICHEL
The Norman Dukes
death of Stephen's son Eustace, it was settled that Henry should be recognised as next heir to his cousin, the land enjoyed peace. With the accession of Henry a fresh era began, for the new king held in France not only Normandy, but in right of his mother and his wife, Touraine, Anjou, Maine, and Acquitaine — together more than half the country — a formidable vassal for the French king! Henry was tenacious of his rights, and it was only as his turbulent sons grew older, and displayed to the full those unfilial dispositions so common in their race, that he consented to divide some of his possessions among them, to be held from him as lord. His gifts were many times changed, but it seems certain that Richard had ruled in Acquitaine as an independent sovereign before his father's death, while Geoffrey, by his marriage with Constance, heiress of Brittany, became Duke of Brittany. Henry gave to his youngest and best loved John the title of Count of Mortain, and with it the vicounty of the Cotentin ; and in 1181 he made his eldest son, Henry, Duke of Normandy. But Henry the younger did not long survive, dying at the early age of twenty- eight, after rebelling against his father almost con- tinuously since his attainment of manhood. There- fore, at the death of the king, Richard came to the throne. John still continued ruler of Mortain and the Cdtentin under his brother, and these dominions gave him an opportunity for putting in practice those treasonable conspiracies by which he hoped to throw
29
Normandy
off Richard's yoke, and become an independent sovereign. Richard, however, was too strong for him ; he marched into Normandy, and speedily showed himself master. Thereupon John came humbly to ask forgiveness at Lisieux. The story goes that Richard, with the open-minded heartiness which won him so much more love than his worse qualities merited, exclaimed that he forgave him freely, and set his behaviour down to bad influence, as he was only a child. As John was then six-and- twenty, this reason must have galled him had he possessed an atom of pride, but we have reason to think he did not. While Richard was otherwise engaged in the Holy Land and on the Continent, John made a second attempt to win his realms, which was brought to an end by a knowledge of his brother's death. He heard this while at Carentan, and gleefully hastened to take advantage of it. True, there was still a boy to be reckoned with, young Arthur, son of his dead brother Geoffrey — a boy who was already Duke of Brittany, and who inherited to the full the proud fierce temper of his mother Constance. But John had two points in his favour : first, that in the old days a brother was often considered to have a better right to a throne, especially if he were a man, than a nephew who was still a child, and this idea had not altogether died out ; secondly, the Normans of all people would have been the last to yield homage to the duke of the hated Bretons, their nearest
30
The Norman Dukes
neighbours, with whom they had been perpetually at war, and for whom they felt a fierce jealousy. On the other hand, Arthur had a powerful ally in Philip, King of France, who saw that it would be much more to his own advantage to have a weak boy as ruler of Normandy than a man equal to himself in cunning and craftiness. Therefore Philip helped Arthur, and even promised him his little daughter in marriage. But unluckily for the boy who was the principal actor in the drama, he fell into the hands of his uncle, — some say he was captured by treachery while asleep, — however that may be, he was in John's clutches, and little chance was there for him to get out again. This was in August 1 202. John carried his prisoner at once to one of the strongest castles in his dominions, namely Falaise. Arthur was now between fourteen and fifteen years of age, and John, reckoning without that stubborn courage of nature which the boy inherited, attempted to make him abdicate his rights, in vain. Finding this hopeless, he hurried him away to Rouen, there to dispose of him finally. Arthur's incarceration at Falaise is dealt with in the chapter on Falaise, and his captivity at Rouen is treated in the chapter on Rouen. The fury of the Bretons, who saw the last of their ruling race, a promising boy, thus foully murdered by the duke of the Normans, their life-long foes, may be imagined ; it hardly needed the French king's call to arms to make them rise in their wrath and flood in upon the neighbouring towns of Normandy. The conduct of John after
31
Normandy
this displays a pitiable weakness. He alone of all the Conqueror's line showed a lack of courage ; others had been weak, vacillating, unfilial, cruel, vicious, but it remained for John to combine all these qualities in himself. His movements were like those of a timid animal who knows the huntsmen are closing in on him, but has not courage to make a dash through the ring. He hurried from Rouen to Caen, from Caen to Brix, and Brix to Valognes. Back again to Caen, and then to Domfront. He returned to the Cotentin, and at last embarked at Barfleur without striking a blow to save that land, which he had not hesitated to gain by murdering a boy, when he thought there was no personal danger in the action. He did indeed return in 1206 for a short time, but never in such a spirit as to make the retrieving of his dominions possible. Meantime the Normans did not submit so quietly ; they could not endure the entry of the Bretons, and sternly defended themselves at Mont St Michel, which was set on fire, and at Caen ; but it was of no use ; the Bretons, after a triumphal progress, met the French king, who had received the submission of Caen as well as Lisieux and Bayeux, and thus with hardly a struggle there fell into the hands of France that territory which she had so long and so jealously regarded. If ever a king deserved to lose his land, it was the craven John.
By a curious oversight in the ratification and the submission which followed this conquest, the Channel Islands were overlooked. It has been suggested
32
A STREET, MONT ST MICHEL
The Norman Dukes
they were simply forgotten ; if so, the event proved fortunate for them, for they have remained ever since in the happy independence granted them by England. The title of Duke of Normandy was dropped by Henry III., John's son, at the Treaty of Saintes in 1259, when it was agreed that Acquitaine should remain an English possession, and the title was afterwards borne by a scion of the ruling French house. But the tale of Normandy's wars is not ended. For in the time of Edward, that monarch was set upon recovering not only the territory lost by his grandfather, but, if possible, the French crown for himself; he landed at Barfleur, and, quickly subduing the Cdtentin, passed on to St Lo, Coutances, and Caen, taking towns and seizing vast quantities of precious stuffs wherever he went. These triumphs were followed by the famous battles of Cre"cy and Poitiers, and the historic siege of Calais. However, his conquest left no permanent mark on Normandy, for by the Treaty of Bretigny in 1360, though he received much else, he resigned Normandy with his claim to the French crown, and it was reserved for his great-grandson, Henry V., to recover the duchy by the sword. This he actually did, after a brilliant series of victories ; so that in the years 141 7 and 1418 Normandy became an appanage of the English crown, but under the rule of the weak Henry VI. his father's conquests lapsed, and by 1450 Normandy was once more included in the dominions of France, never again to be severed.
33 c
CHAPTER III
THE MIGHTY WILLIAM
WILLIAM'S father was the fifth Duke of Normandy, and if the story of how he attained that dignity be true, certain it is that his nickname " Le Diable" was more fitting than the other, "Magnifique," which he earned by his lavishness. His elder brother, Richard, was Duke of Normandy when Robert set up the standard of rebellion at Falaise. But Richard was no weakling, and did not suffer the disaffection to spread ; he appeared before the walls with all the forces at his disposal, and soon com- pelled his younger brother to sue for peace. Then an arrangement was made by which a certain grant of land was conferred on the rebel, while the castle of Falaise, a powerful stronghold, was recognised as the property of the reigning duke. To celebrate the occasion the two brothers repaired in amity to Rouen, and there in the castle fortress, then standing on the site of the markets near the river, a banquet was held, to cement the new friendship
34
The Mighty William
and understanding-. But suddenly Richard turned pale and sickened, and before nightfall he was dead. There was little doubt that poison had been in his cup; put there by whom but the man who was now duke, and held the power of life and death in his hands! None dare speak to accuse him, and, like many another in the Dark Ages, he reaped the full reward of his crime in perfect security. There were others of his family alive, uncles as powerful, and, had occasion arisen, doubtless as unscrupulous as himself; but Robert was on the spot, he held possession, and apparently without a word being- raised in protest, he occupied his murdered brother's place. An illegitimate son of his brother's, named Nicholas, he placed in the abbey at Fecamp to be trained as a monk, a method often made use of by half savage kings to soften youthful rivals, still susceptible of being taught the hollowness of worldly ambition and the wickedness of rebellion against authority. It may be thought that this youth can hardly have been regarded as a serious rival, but in those days the marriage-tie was not deemed essential to inheritance. From William Longsword every Norman duke so far had been born out of wedlock, and though they had been legitimatised afterwards by some ceremony between their parents, this was rather a concession than a necessity. It is said that Nicholas entered with zest into his holy vocation, and was himself the architect of the first church of St Ouen at Rouen,
35
Normandy
of which there remains only the beautiful apse, known as the Tour aux Clercs. He was fourth abbot, and was buried in the church.
What always strikes one as remarkable in reading history, is the youth of the principal actors. Robert was but twenty-two when he murdered his brother for the ducal crown. Falaise was one of his favourite seats, the hunting was good, the country pleasant, and the security of the stronghold reassur- ing. Once, as he returned from hunting, he had espied a tanner's daughter, of rare beauty, washing clothes in the little stream that runs beneath the mighty rock ; when he looked out of the high narrow window the next day, he had no difficulty in recognising the same girl again ; and subsequently he introduced himself to her in the guise of a lover. Tanning was looked upon by the Normans as being a very low trade indeed, and though Fulbert, the Conqueror's grandsire, added to it the avocation of brewing, he could never shake off the odium which clung to his name on account of his principal business. The base - born brat of the tanner's daughter would hardly be considered at first as even a pawn in the great game of statecraft. But the boy was dear to his father's heart. His mother, Arlotta, was taken into the castle, and there was none to rival her, for Robert was not married. Yet strangely enough he did not make her his wife, and so render brighter the prospects of the sturdy boy, whom he regarded with much affection.
36
HARBOUR OF FECAMP
The Mighty William
He could not bring- himself to recognise Arlotta even by the sort of ceremony his ancestors had considered sufficient; his pride was too great to give the tanner's daughter a right to share his throne, and he preferred that his son should start more heavily weighted for the race than he need have been. When Robert made up his mind to go on a crusade to the Holy Land, the position became one of great difficulty ; he was worse than childless, and men began dimly to foresee that this only son of his would prove a heavy stumbling-block in the way of any other succession. But Robert's selfish- ness being immeasurably stronger than his paternal love, he departed, leaving it to be well understood that in case of accidents William was to be his heir. But there were a number of the descendants of the great Rollo still alive, strong men, soldiers, nobles with retinues of their own, and each and all put his own claim prior to that of this nameless boy. Looked at thus, it seems little short of miraculous that William should ever have raised himself to the throne at all, a more wonderful feat than even his conquest of England in later years. The boy was but eight when, after various warning rumours of failing health, the news came definitely that his father was dead. Duke Robert had left him in charge of Alain, Count of Brittany, who, though a relative, could not himself hope to ascend the throne, and the choice was wise. Alain fulfilled his trust loyally, and the exceptional talent and
37
Normandy
courage of the young duke seem from the first to have attached to him a number of nobles, so that his position 'gradually gained solidarity, though the marvel that he should have escaped knife or poison in an age where such means of riddance were fre- quently employed remains the same. Full credit for his safety at this dangerous time must be given to the nobles of the Cotentin, especially to Neel of St Sauveur, who is mentioned again in the chapter on that district. The bitterness of the stain upon his birth was early felt by William, and there are instances in his career which point to the smarting of a hidden sore shown by a man ordinarily self- possessed. His treatment of the burghers of Alen9on, because they had openly taunted him with his birth, is one case in point ; the other is his own unexampled domestic life, which stands out in strong contrast with those of his predecessors ; he seems early to have made up his mind with iron will that what he had suffered through his father, none should suffer through him.
At thirteen he took upon himself responsibility, and really began to rule. His mother had been separated from him, and had no share in the government. She had married a knight named Herlouin, by whom she had two children, of both of whom we hear much in history. The elder, Odo, became Bishop of Bayeux. He it was who encouraged his half-brother's troops at Hastings, going before and calling them on. As Odo's dealings
38
The Mighty William
had more to do with England than Normandy, we may dispose of him here in a few words. After the Conquest, vast wealth and many estates were bestowed upon him ; he was viceroy in William's absence, and second in power to the king himself. His overweening1 pride made him overbearing ; he aspired to sit on the papal throne. William, discover- ing in him many treasonable practices, kept him prisoner at Rouen. On his half-brother's death, however, he once more became prominent, led insurrections against his nephew William the Red, and joined with Duke Robert in his fraternal wars. At last this turbulent, vigorous, astute man went crusading with Robert, and died at Palermo in
1097-
Arlotta's other son, Robert of Mortain, was a loyal brother; he prepared a hundred and twenty ships for the great flotilla, and lived peaceably during the Conqueror's lifetime, though he too warred against William the Red. He is mentioned again in con- nection with Mortain.
The generally received opinion of William the Conqueror in England is, that he was a stern and cruel man ; stern he certainly was, stern with the sternness of strength which serves as a shield against familiarity, and enables its possessor to go straight on his own ^way, regardless of unfavourable opinions or specious arguments.
"This King William that we speak about," says the chronicler, "was a very wise man, and very rich ;
39
Normandy
more worshipful and strong than any of his fore- gangers were. He was mild to the good men that loved God, and beyond all metes stark to them who withstood his will. Else, he was very worshipful." This is the testimony of one who was almost his contemporary, and who had nothing to fear from him, nor aught to gain by praising him.
The idea of William's cruelty is based on his harrying of Northumberland, an act that could never have originated in the mind of a soft-hearted or imaginative man ; but William's bent was not toward cruelty, and considering the age in which he lived, the well-authenticated cases which we have of his clemency are remarkable. When he was only twenty, an age when if there be any hardness in a man's nature it is at its worst, unsoftened by personal experience of sorrow, he spared the lives of those of his vassals who had risen against him not openly but with treachery. The manner of it was thus. Guy of Burgundy, William's first cousin, entered into a conspiracy with many of the most powerful nobles of Normandy to assassinate the duke. It is easy to be seen what was Guy's motive ; though he could only claim through his mother, he meant to make himself Duke of Normandy ; but it is more difficult to see what the others expected to gain by a move which proposed to substitute one duke for another. It was not the first time that rebellion and revolt against the duke had risen, but it was the most serious plot, and the turning- point of William's career.
40
The Mighty William
So secretly had the conspiracy been planned that he was all unaware of it. He was at this time in his twentieth year, and, as Wace tells us, "the barons' feuds continued ; they had no regard for him ; everyone according to his means made castles and fortresses." Up till now William had lived, but he had not been master. "Affrays and jealousies, maraudings and challengings " had continued in spite of him, but this deadly conspiracy was to bring matters to a head in a way its projectors little thought. William was in the castle of Alleaumes close to Valognes ; he had retired for the night, when he was awakened by the agonised entreaties of the court fool, who told him that the nobles were even now on the point of arriving in order to seize him unprepared, and murder him. William must have had great confidence in his jester, for he rose straight- way, and apparently without waiting for attendants saddled his horse, and rode off into the dark night. The whole story is mysterious ; were there then no men-at-arms to guard the duke, no attendant to go with him ? would it not have been safer to barricade the castle rather than to have fled alone ? Whatever the cause, William's midnight ride is a matter of history. There were no smooth, easy roads then ; the country, from various accounts in charters and deeds of the tenth century, was covered with woods, and much waste ground ; and, as we know, wolves abounded, for much later (1326), forty-five wolves were taken in the district of Coutances, twenty-two in
Normandy
that of Carentan, and nineteen in that of Valognes, in the Easter term alone. The young1 duke could only have had the stars to guide him, and safety was far off. He meant to get to Falaise, where he could feel tolerably secure ; but even as the crow flies Falaise is over seventy miles from Valognes, and the way would be difficult to find. The account of this dramatic episode is circumstantially given by the old chronicler, who tells us that even as William left the town he heard the clatter of the enemies' horses entering it. The enemy, .finding he had fled, and knowing they had implicated themselves far too deeply to think of pardon, set off in hot pursuit, and the duke was only saved by hiding in a thicket, whence he saw them go by. He did not follow the direct route, but kept along by the sea-coast, until the next morning on a worn and jaded steed he found himself at Ryes, between Bayeux and the coast, where he revealed himself to the lord of the manor- house, a man named Hubert. Hubert promptly rehorsed him, and sent him on his way with two of his own sons as guides. Thus the duke managed to reach the stronghold of Falaise in safety.
Later on William constructed a raised road, running through the country in the direction of his flight ; it ran from Valognes to Bayeux and thence to Falaise, part of it may still be seen between Quilly-le- Tessin, Caitheoux, and Fresni-le-Pucceux. It is said that it was the forced task of the very conspirators who had compelled the fight, an instance of grim justice !
42
The Mighty William
The malcontents must have trembled when they knew that their powerful overlord was free, and fully aware of their guilt ; there was no escape now, open revolt was their only chance, so they gathered their forces and attacked Caen.
William, for his part, collected his men, and leaving a garrison in Falaise, marched to Rouen ; but too much depended on a battle, to risk it against a greatly superior and better prepared force. He resolved on a stroke of policy, no less than to call for protection from his own overlord the King of France, who had formerly been his invader and enemy. King Henry responded to the appeal, possibly feeling that Normandy might slip from him altogether, and France itself be menaced, were the handful of nobles to win power by their swords.
Then was fought, at Val-es-dunes, about nine miles from Caen, one of the most memorable battles in the history of Normandy.
A picturesque incident marked the beginning of the battle. A splendid company of knights, carrying devices on their lances, were seen in the forefront of the nobles' ranks, and William, advancing, cried out that they were his friends. The leader, De Gesson, was so much touched by this, that though he had banded himself with the insurgents, and taken a fearful oath to be the first to strike William in the m£lde, he satisfied his conscience by one of those transparent evasions common to
43
Normandy
superstitious ages, and considered he had redeemed his word by striking William gently on the shoulder with his gauntlet, and then immediately transferring himself and his followers to the side against which he had come out to fight.
It is said the army of the nobles numbered 20,000, but figures seen through such a distance of time have generally suffered from a little exten- sion. The fight was fierce, and hand to hand ; battle-axes and swords played greater part than arrows. It is impossible to better the picturesque account given by Wace. "There was great stir over the field, horses were to be seen curvetting, the pikes were raised, the lances brandished, and shields and helmets glistened. As they gallop they cry their various war-cries : those of France cry ' Montjoie ! ' the sound whereof is pleasant to them. William cries ' Dex Aie ! ' the swords are drawn, the lances clash. Many were the vassals to be seen there fighting, Serjeants and knights over- throwing one another. The king himself was struck and beat down off his horse."
But in the end William and his ally triumphed, and the nobles fled in confusion from the field. Yet, when he seized the arch-traitor Guy of Burgundy, he treated him as we have said with extraordinary leniency, and except for taking from him the territory which had enabled him to play such a part, he suffered him to go unpunished, and even provided for him otherwise. This treatment
44
A ROAD NEAR ROUEN
The Mighty William
bore fruit, for Guy became a good subject, and led troops at Hastings with distinction. The other leaders were deprived of their estates, and one was imprisoned, but none were executed, while the smaller men escaped scot-free. When the duke had come to his full stature he was a mighty man, some say seven feet in height, and unwieldy in bulk ; none could wield his axe ; in battle, horse and man went down before him, cloven by the strength of his mighty arm. And not alone in strength was he more than a match for his fellows, but let a man as much as whisper treason, and he heard of it ; those who plotted were reached surely by that penetrat- ing power, and lived to rue their folly. He was a kingly man, born to rule.
But though the victory at Val-es-dunes made him duke de facto, his work was far from being done, insurrection continued in other parts of the duchy, and shortly after he was called to subdue Alen^on, which held out against him. "He found the inhabitants all ready to greet him : calthrops sown, fosses deepened, walls heightened, palisades bristling all around ... to spite the Tanner's grand- son, the walls were tapestried with raw hides, the filthy gore-besmeared skins hung out, and as he drew nigh, they whacked them and they thwacked them; 'plenty of work for the tanner,' they sang out, shouting and hooting, mocking their enemies " (Palgrave).
Then in an ineffectual sortie some of the towns-
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men fell into William's hands, and terrible was the vengeance which fell on them for their savage joke. Their eyes were spiked out, their hands and feet chopped off, and the mangled limbs were flung into the town. Soon after, no doubt awed by an anger so much fiercer than they had reckoned on, a cruelty so merciless when aroused, the people made terms, and William, victorious, once again returned to Rouen.
The next rebel was William's own uncle, of the same name as himself, his father's half-brother. He trusted to the strength of the castle of Arques, near Dieppe, which had been given him by his nephew. But the young duke was in the heyday of his vigour. The news was brought to him at Valognes at midday one Thursday, and by Friday evening he was before the gates of Arques, having come by way of Bayeux, Caen, and Pont-Audemer. The castle was stoutly defended, and so impreg- nable by position, that the only method was to sit down before it and wait ; a method adopted with complete success, though the arch-traitor himself managed to escape and fly. Many other smaller risings occurred which kept the great Conqueror in practice, and then came the second great battle in Normandy, that of Mortemer, at which he was not present himself. He had shown his diplomacy in using the King of France as an ally against the men of the Cotentin, now it was the same King of France, Henry, who, being jealous of the power of
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NEAR PONT-AUDEMER
The Mighty William
this great vassal, fomented insurrection among- his subjects and entered that part of the duchy known as the Vexin, in a hostile spirit. To the French, the Normans were even yet pirates, and pirates they continued to be called until the end. Wace says that the Frenchmen would call the Normans "Bigoz," a corruption of their war-cry, "By God," from which comes our word bigot ; and they would ask the king, "Sire, why do you not chase the Bigoz out of the country? Their ancestors were robbers, who came by sea, and stole the land from our forefathers and us."
So the French marched as far as Mortemer, and began to pillage. But after pillage came revelry, as it so frequently does, and the Normans, who had been watchful but unseen, fell upon the French and routed them hip and thigh. With the blithe exaggeration of days before statistics were known, the old chronicler says, "nor was there a prison in all Normandy which was not full of the French- men. They were to be seen fleeing around, skulking in the woods and bushes, and the dead and wounded lay amid the burning ruins, and upon the dunghills, and about the fields, and in the bye-paths."
As we have said, at this battle William personally was not present, and the French king was not taken prisoner.
Record states that William broke into poetry, apparently the only time he was so seized : the
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very words of his poem are preserved ; here is a verse of it : —
" ReVeillez vous et vous levez Guerriers qui trop dormi avez Allez bientot voir vos amys Que les Normands ont a mort mys Entre Ecouys et Mortimer La les vous convient les inhumer."
After this, negotiations were concluded, and the French prisoners restored ; nevertheless the French again soon after entered Normandy, and ravaged the country, even so far as the coast. The River Dive, lying to the east of Caen, is considered the dividing line between Upper and Lower Normandy, and it was at this river that William came up with the main body of the French, including the king himself. William's strokes generally owed as much to their policy as their strength, and this time was no exception. He waited in ambush until half the French had crossed the stream, and then falling suddenly on the remainder, cut them off, and totally routed them. Those in advance, taken in the rear, fled in confusion, and vast quantities of spoil fell into the duke's hands, though the French king himself escaped. After this, peace was con- cluded at Fecamp.
But still fighting did not cease. The Counts of Anjou had been a perpetual thorn in William's side, and the most formidable of all was Geoffrey Martel, who seized Maine, and held it as well as his own territory; but buoyant with victory, the
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The Mighty William
Norman troops advanced upon the principal city, Le Mans, and took it without difficulty, and Geoffrey Martel was quieted for a while; he died four years before the Conquest of England.
But now we must turn for a moment from William's battles to his domestic life. His romantic marriage is an outstanding incident in his career. He did not marry until he was twenty-six, a con- siderable age for a king. But in that as in other matters he had a mind of his own, and one lady and one only would satisfy him, and she kept him waiting for seven years. She was his own first cousin, Matilda of Flanders, daughter of Baldwin V., Earl of Flanders, but neither she nor her relatives cared for the match. There are various tales concerning her, one of which says she was already a widow when William expressed his preference, and had two children of her own. Another story says she favoured another suitor, who, however, was perhaps well advised in declining the perilous position of husband to the lady of William's choice, however flattering that lady's preference for himself. After waiting with more or less patience for seven years, William took summary methods. He went to Bruges, where his ladylove lived, and meeting her as she returned from church, rolled her in the mud of the street, humiliating her in the eyes of all, and ruining her gay and beautiful clothes. This Petruchio-like method served the purpose. In a very short time
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Matilda consented to marry the man who had shown her his determination in so unequivocal a manner. This particular marriage seems to have been a brilliant exception in an age when marriage vows were held in scant respect. Yet, when he won Matilda's consent, all William's troubles, in regard to the alliance, were by no means at an end. By the tenets of the Church to which he and his bride belonged, they were within the prohibited degree of consanguinity. This difficulty was sur- mounted by their gaining absolution on the condition that they erected two religious houses at Caen, houses which stand to this day, and are mentioned more particularly in the chapter on that city.
It was two years before his marriage that William had paid that celebrated visit to England in which had probably originated his intention to become lord of that country in due time. But it was not until he was thirty-six that he received the return visit from Harold, when he extorted from his un- willing guest the oath on which he based his right to the English throne. The story of Harold and of the Conquest is told in connection with the famous tapestry, one of the most marvellous con- temporary records ever a nation possessed. We resume the narrative here when William, as King of England, in March 1067 returned to Normandy, bringing with him the harmless Edgar Atheling, also the earls Edwin and Morcar, and the arch- bishop Stigand, probably less with the intention of
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The Mighty William
treating them as guests than with the idea of leaving no head for a revolt behind him in his new country. He held festivals at Rouen, Caen, Fe"camp, and Falaise, a kind of triumphal progress in fact ; and then returning to quell the revolts which had broken out in England in his absence, he took with him Matilda, and they were jointly crowned at West- minster. But his triumphs were soon to be dimmed by sore domestic worry. During his frequent absences in England he left Matilda in charge of Normandy, and with her he associated his son Robert. But Robert was rude and unfilial ; he grasped at power on his own account, and his mother, with that weak affection so often shown in a mother toward her first-born son, aided and sympathised with him. One great source of quarrel between the young prince and his father was the government of the country of Maine. Robert had been affianced to the young Countess of Maine, who had died before the marriage ; he held, therefore, that he ought now to rule there independently, while William, who had subdued the country by his sword before he took possession of the young heiress and betrothed her to his son, held it for himself, and the subject was the cause of endless recrimination between the king and his eldest son. Besides Robert, he had had three other sons, but the next, Richard, " had been killed in some mysterious manner, which seemed to make people loath to speak even of the circumstance" (Palgrave). He
Normandy
seems to have met his death in the New Forest, where also were killed William the Red and one of Robert's sons. William, afterwards known as Rufus, was six years his eldest brother's junior, and Henry was several years younger still. There were also, at ages varying between the brothers, five daughters. Cecily, of whom we hear at Caen, as first abbess of her mother's foundation ; she became eventually Abbess of Fecamp. Constance, married to the Duke of Brittany. Adeliza or Agatha, first betrothed to Harold, and afterwards, much against her will, to the King of Galicia ; but she was never married to him, dying on the journey to Spain. Adela, who married Stephen of Blois, and whose son afterwards became king of England ; and Alice, who died young. Others add Constance and Adelaide, but five daughters and four sons are enough for any man, and the existence of the other two seems mythical. Various insurrections and petty wars vexed William's later days, but still his hand was strong, his courage unfailing. He forgave his eldest son's disloyalty more than once, only to find it break out again. At last, after wandering in exile for several years, Robert fixed himself in the castle of Gerberoi, on French soil, whence William assailed him, having his two younger sons with him. In one of the desperate sallies of the besieged, father and son engaged in a hand-to-hand conflict, and being disguised by heavy armour, neither knew the other. At length William, being wounded, cried out,
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The Mighty William
and in a moment his son, struck by remorse, raised his visor and fell on his knees asking- forgiveness, sobered by the thought of the terrible crime of patricide of which he had nearly been guilty. Yet the reconciliation was hollow, and the father and son were never at heart friends. It was nine years after this that the end came. Philip, now King of France, seized an opportunity to make inroads on Normandy, and a mocking speech of his about William, who had grown corpulent and unwieldy, was repeated to the English king. But his spirit was the same ; embittered by personal troubles, lonely in the estrangement and loss of her who had been his faithful companion through life, though not old in years- — for he was only sixty — yet old with the turmoil of a fierce, hard life lived from the cradle, he still had the fire of youth, and he returned a furious answer to Philip's taunt.
"The harvest was ripening, the grape swelling on the stem, the fruit reddening on the bough," when William entered the fertile land where he was to meet with death. He seized the town of Mantes, belonging to the French king, and soon the place was in red ruin. A mass of flames mounted high in the sky, the inhabitants lay wounded to death or fled in terror, and the king himself, in spite of his great bulk and increasing infirmity, superintended the work of destruction ; then suddenly — one has heard the story from earliest childhood — his fine charger, treading unexpectedly on a hot cinder, started
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violently, and flung its rider violently against the high-peaked saddle of the country — William had received his death-blow. There was little left to follow. He was carried by easy stages to his capital city, Rouen, and there laid in the abbey of St Gervais. And we may read of his lonely end in the account of the city of Rouen. But even after his death, the solitude which had attended the end did not desert him ; of all historical funerals ever recorded, that of this great man is the most terrible.
The body was conveyed at the cost of a private citizen on its journey to Caen. Some say that his youngest son Henry followed it to Caen, but it seems hardly likely, for in that case there would have been no need for a subject to defray the expenses, as he undoubtedly did. The corpse was taken to the church in the abbey of St Etienne — the abbey that, so light-heartedly years before, William had erected in penance for his marriage. Yet the mischances were not at an end. As the procession passed along the narrow street, a cry arose that the town was on fire. Down went the bier, and off went the crowd in search of this new sensation. It was not until the fire was quenched that the funeral was resumed. As they prepared with all due solemnity to lower the body into the grave, one stepped forward, crying, " I adjure ye that ye inter not William in the spot where ye are about to lay him. He shall not commit trespass on what is my right, for the greater part of this church is my right and of my
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The Mighty William
fee, and I have no greater right in any of my lands. ... By force he took it from me, and never afterwards offered to do me right." He who had never dared to rebuke William publicly for "offering that which cost him nothing," after his death was very bold. "All marvelled that this great king, who had conquered so much, and won so many cities and so many castles, could not call so much land his own as his body might lie within after death."
The claimant was appeased by money, and after a further mishap too terrible to relate, those who had fulfilled their duty left the body of the king.
But even then his dust was not suffered to rest in peace, for in 1562 his tomb was broken into by the Huguenots, and again by the mob in 1793, and the remains disturbed. All that was preserved was a thigh-bone, a mighty bone, showing by its measure- ments the size and strength of the man, and this was reburied, and now lies before the altar, where a long inscription records the burial-place. It is the same as the original epitaph, though new cut :
" Hie Sepultus est invictissimus Guillelemus Con- questor Normanniae Dux, et Anglae Rex Hujus ce domus conditor qui obiit Anno MLXXXVII."
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CHAPTER IV
A MEDIEVAL CITY
ROUEN is surrounded by high hills, and can be seen lying on the margin of the river in the aspect of a toy city. In this there lies one great advantage, namely, that she is not easy to forget. Perhaps the remembrance of any place is sharpened more by having seen it whole than by any other circumstance. If this be impossible, one's mental pictures are often blurred or only partial. Into what, for instance, does the remembrance of Caen resolve itself? Fragmentary peeps, or at best, the view from the railway, where the town is seen on edge, a thin line, above which spires rise irregularly. At the mention of the word Rouen, on the contrary, what a vision leaps up in the mind, a wonderful glittering picture of spires and bridges, of shining water, and piled house-roofs, of islands and tall chimneys !
France has an excellent plan of tucking away her chimneys and other unsightly commercial accessories on one side of a river, leaving her residential quarter
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A Mediaeval City
free from smoke ; so it is here. To southward, in the Faubourg- or suburb of St Sever, lie the working quarters, with all the smoke — which, however, never seems so smoky as in England — the noise and din of men who manufacture. On the islands, as in an intermediate quarter, are the houses of the workmen, and on the northern shore is the grand old city.
We have spoken previously of the difficulty of putting on paper the soul, character, entity — call it what you will — of a country, and the same thing holds good of a city ; but in the case of such a city as Rouen, how is the difficulty increased ! There is one obvious note, however, which must strike anyone at once, and that is that the town is French, not Norman — thoroughly French ; and the difference between it and the towns further westward, if not so marked as in the days when little Richard of Normandy was sent to be educated at Bayeux, is still noticeable. The modern houses are, of course, severely French, the people in the streets are French, the shops are French, and the whole tone of the life is French altogether.
Secondly, Rouen is, as might be expected, a city of contrasts, the broad boulevards have cut deeply into her, but the change is superficial, not radical, she is still to all intents an ancient city, — a mediaeval city to which a certain trimming of the latest fashion has been added. Electric trams run along the boulevards, but the parts between the boulevards remain mediaeval. Let anyone who
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doubts it go to a topmost room in a block of buildings, say between the Rue Jeanne d'Arc and Rue de la Republique, and, craning his neck out, " see what he will see," — a grotesque and curious medley of chimneys, leaning walls, slanting house- roofs, and old-fashioned projecting stories, mingled in an inextricable fashion. The crooked buildings seem to have grown on to one another and stuck there, in the manner of cowries and periwinkles on a rock. There is hardly a line exactly horizontal or perpendicular ; it is difficult to tell where one house begins or the other ends ; to pull down one would be to have all the others tumbling about one's ears. High up are tiny platforms with doors opening on to them ; the roofs are broken by many a quaint dormer window ; the whole could only be swept away by a great fire, such as came to London in 1666. Then above and about these roofs and gables and angles rise wonderful towers containing some of the best work that man has done : the towers of the great Cathedral, or one of the famous churches.
There are streets in Rouen which might have come straight from mediaeval London. Such is the Rue St Remain, near the Cathedral. Here there are rows and rows of timber framed, heavily projecting houses with small quaint windows. In a courtyard beneath the very shadow of the Cathedral is a delight- ful row, with a carved stone parapet running across the frontage, and the oddest mixture of lines and angles and irregular windows ever seen out of a
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OLD HOUSES, ROUEN
A Mediaeval City
picture. In almost every side street may be found traces of the ancient city. In one corner there are grotesque figures carved on the supports of a house bowed out with age, in another we see suddenly a bit of stone carving1, worn and defaced with continual rubbing, where the women of Rouen fill their cans at a fountain as their mothers and grandmothers have done before them. Here a low dark arch like a cathedral crypt is used as a small vegetable shop, and in it a pleasant blue-bloused man and comely woman pass their time contentedly though their heads nearly touch the roof; there an arcade betrays what has once been a chapel, but is now a yard filled with lumbering omnibuses. One of the most delicate and fanciful of frontages, belonging to an old house, was preserved at the time of the demolition which took place at the making of the Rue Jeanne d'Arc, and re-erected beside the Tower of St Andr6, of which the body, by the way, was sheared off at the same epoch. It has often been overlooked, this pretty bit of work, which must have occupied a man's time and thoughts and skill for many months, because it does not face the street, and is partly concealed by the church tower. A tiny bit of-railed- in garden — that is to say, some gravel and a couple of seats — surround the tower, and even this wee spot has its "gardien" to accompany visitors to the summit, if they wish to ascend.
For its size, Rouen has singularly few of those open spaces of greenery, those charming public
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gardens, which, as a rule, form one of the best features of a French town. There is a little public garden to the east, and Solferino is certainly delight- ful with big shady trees and a neat bit of water; but it is small. There is also the garden to the east of St Ouen and the Hotel de Ville, but the combined area is not great. In the streets of Rouen, too, there are few trees. We see none of those bright bursts of greenery overhanging walls unexpectedly, and telling of quiet gardens within enclosing gates, that one finds frequently elsewhere ; it is a towny town.
The chief jewel of Rouen is of course the Cathedral, which in its bewildering variety and transition of styles, has a character of its own sufficient to stamp it permanently on the memory. I confess that to me personally, variety has an infinite charm ; I remember far more readily and with greater appreciation a building where the slow growth throughout ages has ensured variety, than one where absolute harmony proclaims its completion to the pattern of a plan. After all, nothing in nature is uniformly monotonous ; we do not see an oak or an elm with boughs at precise angles on each side, and the trees, such as the poplar, which approach most nearly to uniformity, are by no means the most beautiful.
The strange unlikeness of the two towers, and the centre tower crowned by the iron fleche, is sufficient to ensure attention from the most casual
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A Mediaeval City
observer. One of the western towers has fretwork windows, bossy pinnacles, and an octagonal coronet ; and the other is much less beautiful, and has less decorative lines, terminating in the ugly, high, slate-roofed gable tower. Yet it is better than if it had conformed ; the two together are perfect. The plainer one to the north is the Tour de St Romain, which dates from the twelfth to the fifteenth century, though with considerably more of the earlier date. The other is called the Tour de Beurre, because built from the produce of the sale of indul- gences to eat butter in Lent. It bears its date, namely, the latter half of the fifteenth century, in every line of its decoration.
We wonder what the ancient church that stood on this site in the tenth century was like ; massive and grand no doubt, carrying out in stone the character of its founder Rollo, who was baptised in it before its completion, receiving the name of Robert. The edifice was not finished for many generations, and when it was, a grand ceremony took place in which Rollo's great descendant William figured. But a hundred and fifty years later, when Henry II. held Normandy and England, this church was destroyed by fire.
The rebuilding was begun very shortly after- wards, and the main part of the mighty fabric as we see it dates from then. The main part — but each succeeding century added something, stamping its hall mark on its style, so that one may say
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here is the work of the fourteenth century, here the fifteenth, here the sixteenth, and — in the iron fthke rising high and not ungracefully — here the nineteenth.
The decorated frontage with its three doors was considered by Ruskin the most exquisite piece of Flamboyant work existing. The intricacies of the detail are inexhaustible ; and above the centre rises a fine wheel window of the type that mediaeval craftsmen loved.
But there are other doorways rich in detail also. Of these the northern, the " Portail des Libraires," was so-called because the courtyard before it was once filled with booksellers' shops, in the same way as the space round our own old St Paul's in London. This is a most impressive entrance, and the innumer- able sculptured figures which decorate it are repre- sentative of Ovid's Metamorphoses. It was begun in 1280 and finished in 1470. The southern door has also its own name : it is the Portail de la Calende.
The great drawback to the Cathedral is the difficulty of seeing it at a "middle" distance. From afar it rears itself with splendid majesty over the house roofs, but nearer it is too much hemmed in and enclosed by houses. One has no place to stand in such a position as to see it in right perspective.
The interior is graceful enough, and the delicate arcade running round choir and transepts is attractive. One great defect, which at the same time is a curious
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A STREET IN ROUEN
A Mediaeval City
feature, is the cutting in two of the nave arches by a sort of false story with a second and shorter arch over the primary one. The effect is unpleasing and inharmonious. How infinitely more graceful the arcades would have been if allowed to rise to their natural height, may be gathered from the instances in the side aisles.
The dust of Rollo and William Longsword lie within the great walls, while an empire mightier than ever their wildest dreams foreshadowed, governed by their descendant, covers half the earth, and its sons and daughters come to do homage at the cradle of their kings. There is here also the heart of Richard Cceur de Lion, though Richard himself lies at Fontevrault.
The churches in Rouen are almost innumerable, and in many, notably St Patrice and St Vincent, the glory of the old stained glass in the windows is a great attraction. But out of all the two which every visitor goes to see are St Maclou and St Ouen. St Maclou is quite small, but no one who has seen, under favourable conditions, its curious convex western fa£ade will ever forget it. The fine, deeply recessed doorways, with their magnificent carved doors, are unique. The stonework is like lace ; and the stone is of that variety which shows artificial shadows in its stains. The whole appearance is so original, so unlike the conventional western facade, that the beauty is heightened by the rarity which tends to emphasise the impression. The interior is disappoint-
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Normandy- ing, and there is a mass of metal high over the altar, which looks as if it might suddenly descend, and cause ruin to all beneath. St Ouen is the fifth church on the same site. It can be observed at leisure from the green garden that lines its sides, and it is wonderful, with its coronet tower and flying buttresses. It was built in the first half of the fourteenth century and restored in 1846, when the western facade was added ; and if possible it is better to make a detour to avoid the western fa9ade, or the memory of an almost perfect piece of work will be blurred. It was in the garden beside St Ouen that two scaffolds were erected on the 24th of May 1431. On one was placed Joan of Arc, strictly guarded by armed men, and on the other stood the dignitaries and judges who had gathered to hear her recantation. This and her submission she formally made, saying all that her persecutors wished, but afterwards, having fallen back into her "errors" and announcing that saints still visited her and voices spoke mysteriously, she was adjudged a witch, and condemned to death.
One of the oddest bits of Rouen, and one which it is to be hoped will be long cherished, is to be found in the Rue de la Grosse Horloge. The great clock itself is a marvellous work in gilt, standing on a low, heavy archway which bestrides the street, as Temple Bar bestrode Fleet Street before a utilitarian age hustled it away. In London, the only specimen of this kind of gateway, suffered to remain over a public street, is the gateway of St John's, Clerkenwell.
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THE TOWERS OF ST OUEN
A Mediaeval City
La Grosse Horloge conceals an older clock of the fourteenth century, and itself dates from 1529, when it was put up on the newly completed arch. The inner part of the arch is highly carved, the chief figure being the Good Shepherd. Close at hand is a strongly built and well-designed tower or belfry, begun in 1389 and finished about a hundred years later. It contains a deep-toned bell, from which the hour of curfew sounds sonorously every night. This bell, whose name is Rouvel, is cherished by the citizens, as in times of danger and distress they have been summoned by its tongue echoing over the walls and roofs for many a hundred years. In 1382 a new tax on merchandise was imposed by the French Government, and its first enforcement was demanded at Rouen. The people rose in revolt, named one of themselves king, and made him solemnly revoke the tax. The procession gathered as it went, mockery turned to riot, blood was shed, and condign punish- ment followed. The Duke of Anjou, at the head of troops, marched in the king's name to the city to enforce order, and as it was Rouvel who had called the men of the city to rebellion, he commanded that the belfry should be destroyed. So it was ; but the citizens preserved their bell, and very soon after began building a new tower for him, so Rouvel's deep-throated notes still vibrate every night.
It is not however the clock, the arch, and belfry that constitute this one of the most quaint and picturesque corners in Rouen, though they all add
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to it. There is also a fountain, begun in 1250, and decorated with a large stone bas-relief in the reign of Louis XV. There is a tiny house of carved wood- work that looks as if it were glued to the wall behind. There are many other quaint houses near at hand, and if one had to choose a sample of the old city one could not do better than select this bit. Take it as we may see it any day from the western side. There is the heavy arch, with its sombre shadows beneath its broad curve ; there is the wonderful glittering clock, which may perhaps catch the rays of the declining sun. Rising high at the corner is the solid tower with its cupola. We may people this background with figures to fancy. A group of loungers there is sure to be, the men in caps and a few of them in blouses, though the blouse is not so ubiquitous in the town as in the country ; perhaps a neat little shopwoman comes tripping by, with her hair screwed up on the top of her head in a glossy tight knot ; an old country-woman passes her, wear- ing a close-fitting coif-like cap, and bearing on her shoulders a wooden frame from which are suspended baskets of ripe strawberries. Then out of the dark- ness of the arch, starting dazzlingly into the sunshine, there comes a lithe slim figure, robed from head to foot in a sheet of white muslin : it is a young girl returning from her First Communion. The loitering vendors with barrows stop to look at her, and the tourists from England, of whom there are sure to be two or three, for the Hotel du Nord is just the
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A Mediaeval City
other side of the archway, turn to stare also. Such is a slight sketch of the best-known corner in Rouen.
But besides her mighty Cathedral, her wonderful churches, her street vistas, and her quaint corners, Rouen has much to show. We have not yet touched on her Renaissance palaces, and her historical memories, to say nothing of the twenty-six other fountains with which she is credited, and her busy quays.
To take the Renaissance houses first. There is a magnificent "hotel," standing- in a part lying west of the Rue Jeanne d'Arc, which has also a little group of associations of its own. Here, where the great iron-bound markets stand, Joan of Arc was burnt to death, after which her ashes were cast into the river. In these days when the thought of the public hanging of a notorious criminal turns us faint and sick, we can hardly, even in imagination, fancy a great crowd gathered to watch the agonising torture and death of an innocent young girl.
It was thought for long that Joan was burnt in the open space near by the Place de la Pucelle, and here stands a grotesquely hideous statue of her, the very epitome of all it should not be ; but it is now fairly certain that the place of her last agony was on the site of the market. Facing the statue is the entrance gate of the beautiful house of which we have spoken, the Hotel Bourgtheroulde, now the " Bureaux du Comptoir d'Escompte." The house was begun in 1486 by Guillaume le Roux, Lord of
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Bourgtheroulde, and was decorated by the most famous of the Renaissance architects, Jean Goujon, to whom almost as impossible an amount of work is attributed as to Grinling Gibbons. The decora- tion in the courtyard is a splendid example of the period, and can hardly be overpraised. Under the five broad windows on the left hand, run large panels, with scenes of the meeting- between Francois, King of France, and Henry, King of England ; for the mansion was not finished until 1532, a date when that meeting was still one of the greatest of political events. Above the windows the artist has given his fancy full rein, and in the symbolical scenes and strange beasts we find a representation of the "Triumphs" of Petrarch. All the uprights and lintels of the windows are richly carved. In the corner is a hexagonal tower, and in this the carving is in marvellously sharp and clear preservation, treated with a certain flatness of the most prominent surface, difficult to describe, but very effective and original ; the scenes are pastoral. There are two splendid windows on the frontage beyond, rising into high, pierced pediments, with pinnacles and tracery, and on this side also is exquisite carving.
The Earl of Shrewsbury was lodged in this house when he came as Ambassador from Elizabeth to invest Henri IV. with the Order of the Garter.
Another magnificent example of Renaissance work in Rouen is the Palais de Justice, begun in 1499, on the site of the Jewry. It was meant to be partly the
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Exchequer and partly the Exchange. Unfortu- nately, the worst end — the west end, which is of eighteenth-century sham Gothic, unmistakably so, even to the merest novice in architecture — is that most frequently seen, as it faces the open space in the great Rue Jeanne d'Arc, whereas the really fine court has to be sought for down a side street.
Lying northward, hidden away by houses beyond the Solferino Garden, not far from the great buildings of the Mus£e and the Library, is a solitary relic, namely, the round tower called Tour Jeanne d'Arc. It is not very attractive in appearance, being a solid cylindrical mass of masonry capped by projecting wooden battlements and a conical slate roof, both of which were added in restoration. The battlements are interesting, as they are of the ancient sort, formed to protect the defenders, who poured down boiling lead or showered stones upon their attackers.
It was not in this tower, however, that Joan was kept a prisoner from December 26, 1430, to May 30, 1431, but in another which stood near the top of the present Rue Jeanne d'Arc. Both of these towers belonged to the great castle begun by Philip Augustus in 1205, when he had at last snatched Normandy from England, and was feverishly anxious about the safety of his new dominions. Before beginning his own castle, he destroyed all that remained of the old castle built by the Norman dukes, and now his own has followed the same fate, and has vanished, excepting the Tour Jeanne d'Arc,
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an interesting1 relic, dating far further back than most of the ancient building's we have seen.
Joan was brought to the tower, still standing, on the gth of May, for an examination before her accusers, and the torturer was held in readiness to prompt her replies did she fail in answering". The very room in which she stood is here to be seen ; though it was in the chapel of the archbishop, near the Cathedral, that her death-warrant was signed. When Joan was in Rouen the oldest of the timber houses must have been fresh and new, the Palais de Justice and Hotel Bourgtheroulde had not been begun. The oldest parts of St Ouen stood, and St Maclou was incomplete. Could Joan but have looked on into the future and have seen the finest street in Rouen called after her name, have known that her memory was regarded as that of heroine and martyr, how astonished she would have been.
The thought of Joan and the various scenes in which she played a central part, conjures up many other historical memories also.
Rouen is rich in such pictures, not the pictures painted by human hands and representing imaginary scenes, but living pictures which, though lacking the cinematograph, have nevertheless remained indelibly fixed in the great drama of history. The earliest of all is the vision of a dying man, royal in position and by nature a king, alone, forlorn, and stripped of every vestige of glory.
From the day when he had been a boy amid the
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turbulence of a headless court, had heard men whisper this and that, and look aside at himself with significance, he had ever stood out by virtue of some compelling power, which, even while he was still undeveloped, drew the force from the strong and made it a weapon on his behalf. Yet now, perhaps, those weary eyes, fast closing, saw more plainly than ever before. The dominions he had gained were but as the shuffling of a pack of cards in a game, his clemency, his loyalty of life, outweighed all the deeds that men called great.
He was only sixty, but his life had begun so young that it seemed long since that first wild dash at Val-es-dunes, where he had settled himself on the ducal throne and given the outward sign of his mettle, to the day when, soured by the loss of the wife who had been to him the true mate, lonely, in grim dignity, he had irritably replied to the coarse jest of the King of France by a red-hot retort which had cost him his life.
Now there stands a modern church on the site of the abbey of St Gervais, in which William then lay. It stands a little away from the din of tempestuous Rouen, and beneath it is the oldest crypt in France, the crypt of St Mellon. Dimly through the dying Conqueror's brain scenes would flit ; in them he himself would be always the most prominent, the principal figure ; and now an end
Hark! what was that? The tones of the bell in the Cathedral of Rouen were wafted across in at the heavy unglazed window ; it was the call for prime, at
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six in the morning', and as the slow strokes fell on his ear William recognised in them another call ; he offered up a prayer, and died.
Yet, by a strange mischance, those who would have honoured the mighty dead were not present. The pious Anselm had been summoned from Bee ; but travelling was slow, the prior was ill, and he had not arrived. William the Conqueror's best-beloved and ever favourite son had hasted to seize on that inheritance which his father had hardly dared to leave him, except provisionally ; Henry had disappeared on a similar errand, though some say he returned in time to accompany the body on its last journey ; between Robert and his father no love had lain, and Robert was missing.
A living dog is better than a dead lion ; and living dogs there were at hand. Within an hour of his death, the Conqueror's body had been stripped of all that was valuable, even the hangings of tapestry in the chamber had been seized, and the craven souls who had trembled at the flicker of the king's eyelash in life handled him contemptuously in death.
A whole day he lay there, alone and untended. Then the news spread abroad, and bishops and barons gathered together. The body was placed on a bier, suitably draped, and with a great procession was carried to Caen, as had been commanded, passing down the Seine in its route. And to Caen we must follow it for the last terrible scenes of that drama, for it is with Rouen only we are now concerned.
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AN HOTEL COURTYARD, ROUEN
A Mediaeval City
The picture of William dying is the first of those connected with the town which can never be forgotten. Another of a different sort calls us for a moment to the river-side. By 1090, Robert, the Conqueror's eldest son, had so misruled his duchy that there was a prominent party in Rouen which held it would be better to apply to William the Red, who, though cruel enough, was a strong and able governor. At that time Henry Beauclerc was in league with his eldest brother, and the two together entered Rouen, and established themselves in the tower by the river, which was indeed the only part of the city where they could feel safe. This tower had been built by Duke Richard (996) on the right bank of the Robec, near the Seine, to replace that of Rollo, which was falling to pieces. An affray succeeded the brothers' entry, in which Beauclerc led his men through Rouen, and engaged in combat with the leading citizens. The place was turned into a shambles, the narrow streets ran red, and many peaceful citizens were involved. Meantime Robert had retired to a little abbey near the city, where he awaited the result in fear and trembling. Henry captured the principal leader of the town party, who was named Conan, and brought him captive to the castle. Robert there- upon returned, and vindictively declared that he would not kill the traitor, but condemn him to a far more hideous punishment — perpetual imprisonment, which in those days of noisome, airless dungeons
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was equivalent to perpetual torture. Henry, however, had no mind to do the thing-; he thought death was preferable from many points of view; notably, because a dead man is forgotten, and provokes neither sympathy nor reprisal. Therefore, with cold brutality which equalled that of the occasional streaks of hardness to be found in his otherwise great father, he dragged Conan to the top of the tower, and pitched him straight over the ramparts. "The mangled corpse, contumeliously dragged amidst the soaking filth from end to end of the town, gave insulting warning to his compeers and townsmen" (Palgrave).
This is the record of the Conqueror's sons.
More than a hundred years later, this ancient castle or tower was the scene of a tragedy so dark and mysterious that it has never been wholly penetrated, and some hold that it cannot be proved to have taken place at Rouen at all ; but our greatest dramatist notwithstanding, the evidence against Rouen is pretty strong, and though we can never know the method of young Arthur's death, there is little doubt that here by the Seine he was murdered. There are various suppositions as to the manner of his death ; some, with Shake- speare, believe that he fell from the tower walls in attempting his escape, but if this were so we may be pretty sure that John would have made the most of it to absolve his craven soul from the accursed stain resting on it, which made him
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abhorred of his contemporaries. The commonly received theory is that John took the boy out in a boat and stabbed him with his own hand. This does not seem impossible, for notwithstanding1 the cheapness of assassins in that day, it may be remembered that John had already been disobeyed once when he gave orders for Arthur's mutilation, and he may have dreaded a like result, for even in those days, to kill a helpless boy of fourteen was a crime not lightly to be bought. By whatever means it was effected, no trace remained of Arthur, who suffered his last agonies of terror or revolt alone and helpless, and with the added hideousness of enduring his death at the hands of a near relative.
Every vestige of the old castle has now dis- appeared, and on its site there stand market buildings round three sides of a square. On the south side is a curious double cupola — an arch over an arch — called a chapel, the Chapelle de la Fierte", and this is associated with a strange custom, which must originally have had its rise in that solemn scene when the crowd called, "Not this man, but Barabbas!"
Once a year, on Ascension Day, the Chapter of Rouen Cathedral were allowed, by the " Privilege of St Remain, " to release a prisoner condemned to death, and the list of such releases runs from 1210- 1790. The ceremony took place at this little chapel ; it was performed with great solemnity, and was witnessed by a vast crowd. As it was always
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necessary in mediaeval times to have some legend to account for the origin of any custom, a legend was forthcoming, as follows : — A mighty dragon dwelt in the marshes by the river, and devoured all whom he could catch. The saint Remain, however, lured him from his place of security by the bait of a condemned criminal, and then made the sign of the cross over him, after which he had no difficulty in leading the beast captive to the town, at the end of his stole. Therefore, in memory of this great deliverance, a condemned criminal was freed each year.
Among historical scenes it is impossible to forget the terrible siege of 1417, when stern-faced Harry of England sat down before the walls and waited. His fleet was to the north, his army had crossed to the south, so that Rouen was cut off from assistance from Paris and left to her fate. The citizens made desperate sorties now and again ; they could make no impression on the mighty force opposed to them. It was the end of July when Henry appeared, and by the time winter came, the horrors of starvation were at their height. A scene which has been enacted in other sieges, and more than once depicted with ghastly power upon canvas, now took place. Fifteen thousand "outsiders," countrymen who did not belong to Rouen, but had taken refuge inside her walls, were turned out, and on the bitter icy slopes, between the full-armoured English and the rigid
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walls, they writhed in agony, tearing up the very earth to still their craving1, and dying raving mad, or of utter weakness. It is said that 50,000 persons died before New Year's Day, when envoys were sent to ask terms of the English. But it was not for another ten days that terms were agreed upon as follows : Life to all but nine persons whom Henry chose, was granted, and an enormous price was fixed as ransom. Then Henry received the keys, and until 1449 the town remained English. The Duke of Bedford ruled here as regent during the infancy of King Henry VI., and he was succeeded by the Duke of Somerset, under whom the final surrender took place. He was supported by the veteran Talbot, Earl of Shrews- bury, who had seen a hundred fights ; but well they knew that the case was hopeless. Fortress after fortress had fallen before King Charles of France, and in the town itself was a strong party in favour of France. At length Somerset made a disgraceful compact with the French before his gate, by which he surrendered the town, and delivered Talbot and other officers up as prisoners. He also pledged the English to surrender Honfleur, Caudebec, and Arques, and to pay 50,000 crowns. Charles VII. entered on the loth of November 1449. It would be impossible to give the slightest sketch of Rouen without mentioning the names of the great among her sons. Greatest of all is Corneille the poet, born in 1606, in a house standing on the
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site of No. 4 in the present Rue Pierre Corneille ; Maupassant and Hector Malot owed part of their education to Rouen ; Flaubert was born at Rouen in 1821 ; and the roll of lesser names contains many which, if not known across the Channel, are representative of good work to their own countrymen. Such is Rouen, a city with as many facets as a jewel, each one of which contributes something to the perfect whole. We can see her as a city of magnificent churches, a city of famous Renaissance building's, a city of narrow, crooked, winding streets, cobble-paved, and lined by mediaeval timbered houses ; we can see her in the light of an historic past, or as a wideawake city of the present day, with trams running along broad thoroughfares, with spacious quays and busy trade ; she is a medley of the past and the present, and the one or the other is seen as it is sought. But there is one thing to be noted, she is not a city of the Normans, those Norman dukes who held her as their capital seem to have been utterly effaced ; there are but few fragments surviving from their time, and those either difficult to find, or so much incorporated and overlaid with later work, that for all superficial purposes they are obliterated : in Rouen the magnifi- cence of mediaeval times has made an ineffaceable impression ; she is a mediaeval city if you will, or a modern city, or both together ; but above all things she is thoroughly French, and not Norman.
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CHAPTER V
CAEN
THE admirers of Caen rank it high. Mr Freeman says: "Caen is a town well-nigh without a rival. It shares with Oxford the peculiarity of having no one predominant object. At Amiens, at Peter- borough— we may add at Cambridge — one single gigantic building lords it over everything; Caen and Oxford throw up a forest of towers and spires without any one building being conspicuously predominant. It is a town which never was a Bishop's See, but which contains four or five churches each fit to have been a cathedral."
It is quite true that in the richness of its churches Caen rivals Rouen. And if we except the splendid abbey of William and Matilda which flank each end of the town, most of these churches belong to the fifteenth century, and show the marvellous combina- tion of grace and strength, of richness without tawdriness, in which the workmen of that date were unrivalled. After its churches, the most notable
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feature in Caen is its collection of Renaissance dwelling-houses, called hotels, which are to be found here and there — but not always conspicuously — in its streets. Beyond the churches and hotels, Caen is not otherwise a mediaeval town ; though many of the streets are narrow and old-fashioned, they do not contain anything like the same number of carved and timber-framed houses as are to be found at Rouen. There are a few of these to be seen, lying for the most part in the narrow streets at the west end of St Pierre. The Maison des Quatrains in the Rue de Geoles is one which visitors most frequently find ; it is a large timber house in excellent preservation, but of plain design ; on the tower in the court is the date 1541, though the house itself is older than this. A far more fascinating example is to be seen in the little steep street going up to the castle. This house is small, and no line is in its right plane ; it looks as if it would very soon fall down altogether, yet it is carved everywhere," with human figures and faces, all animated by that diablerie and wicked mirth which the carvers of the Middle Ages seem to have been able to pour forth from their tools at will.
Beautiful bits and picturesque corners are to be found in Caen in plenty, as in every continental town with a long history, but they are different in kind from those we see in Rouen. The most beautiful part of all the town is to be found around that famous church, St Pierre.
Shady horse-chestnuts in all the glory of delicate
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foliage and fresh pink flower, show up in contrast with the towering fret- work pinnacles of the church. Close by, a tram crowded with people going home from work stops for a moment, to fill up every foot of space on its two cars before it winds slowly away, toot-tooting to clear the lines.
The pavement near at hand is covered with flower- pots in bloom, azaleas, roses, cinerarias, pelargonium, and fuchsia, showing flashing lights like those of some rich window of stained glass, and the foot traffic flows round about the impediment tranquilly ; for in all foreign towns every shopkeeper seems to have a prescriptive right to the bit of pavement before his door.
In front of the church is a space of green grass, with seats and a cool basin of water. The evening sun, which has now left in shadow all the base of the masonry, picks out the lines and curves and angles of the parapet and the buttresses above, those wonderful flying buttresses with bossy pinnacles ; it shows up the stiff, eternally yearning gargoyles, and the red-tiled roof. High above, up against the brilliant clearness of a pale-blue sky, swallows skim and wheel around one of the most graceful and perfect spires ever man devised or wrought.
Opposite to the church, in the depth of grey evening shadow, is the great Hotel de Valois or Escoville, a Renaissance palace, built early in the sixteenth century. The lower part is occupied by a row of shops ; above rise small engaged pillars,
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between which are the lofty windows, now cut into two stages. In the courtyard all is gloom and dirt ; a huge scaffolding covers most of the building, and grimly down from those once princely walls look the gigantic statues of David and Judith, each carrying the gory burden of a head !
Above, but difficult to see without a crick in the neck, is a lantern tower in two stages, recalling a little the famous domes of Chambord. There was formerly the figure of a white horse carved on the stone above the principal door, and the symbol exercised greatly the imaginations of antiquarians, some of whom went so far as to see in it the Pale Horse of Revelation. In some lines written on the hotel by M. de Brieux, we read : —
" Lorsqu'on porte les yeux dessus chaque figure, Qui lui sert au dedans de superbe ornament On croit £tre de$u par quelque enchantement A cause des beaute de leur architecture."
The house was built in 1585 by Nicholas de Valois, Sieur d'Escoville, the richest man in the town, who died even as he entered into possession ; for, the first time he seated himself at table in his new dwelling he was choked by an oyster, at the early age of forty-seven. This hotel, with many other buildings in Caen, is attributed to Hector Sohier, the architect of part of St Pierre, and it is supposed that he carried on the two great buildings that faced one another — the church and hotel — partly at the same time.
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In most Norman towns the first object for which the visitor seeks is the cathedral, and the second the castle. Caen has no cathedral ; and though it has a castle, no one can see it, for it is used as a barracks, and entrance is forbidden. In any case the castle is not at all evident; it stands on no great elevation, and has to be sought for by a narrow back street. Yet it has seen many a spirited historical feat, and been through not a few sieges. From time im- memorial a fort of some kind has stood upon the site, but it was William — the great William — who founded the present building. On his death the castle formed one of Robert's most important strong- holds, and it was from thence he started out on his crusading expedition. On his return he made Caen his headquarters, and added greatly to the fortifica- tions in prospect of being attacked by his brother Henry. Yet when Robert was overthrown at Tinchebray, these very defences fell into Henry's hands, and served him against whom they had been intended. That the town was of great importance then, was shown by the fact that when Henry established two permanent exchequers, one for England and one for Normandy, it was at Caen and not at Rouen the latter was placed. Caen was one of Henry's favourite residences ; here was born his eldest son Robert, afterwards Earl of Gloucester, whose mother was Nesta, the Welsh girl who managed to hold the king's affections so long. In days when loyalty was a rare virtue,
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Robert proved himself throughout his life a loyal brother, and the Empress Maud owed much to his strong arm and good faith. John took refuge at Caen after the murder of his nephew, but he soon had to retreat, and the city opened its gates to Philip Augustus in 1204. However it was not destined to remain consistently French, for it was besieged by Edward III. in 1346, when, according to Froissart, the town "£tait grosse et forte, pleine de tres-grande draperies et de toutes marchandises et de riches bourgeois et de noble dames et de belles e"glises." After a stern resistance this rich prize fell into the hands of the English, who pillaged it for three days, and reaped a magnificent harvest of "draperies" and other goods, so that many stout ships were sent laden across to England. It how- ever reverted again to the French, and was subject to another siege under Henry V., when, with the rest of Normandy, it remained attached to the English crown from 1417 to 1450. It was at this time Henry founded the famous university, which continued to flourish throughout the change in the town's ownership. After 1450 the castle was twice besieged by the French themselves, during the Protestant wars.
So much for a rough sketch of its history. But Caen belonged far more than this to the personal history of William the Conqueror, who had par- ticular reasons for loving it. When he and Matilda, his wife, had agreed to rear two abbeys in penance
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THE MILK CARRIER
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for the sin of having married though they were first cousins, it was at Caen that they established their twin abbeys, one at the north and the other at the south end of the town.
William's abbey indeed was begun in 1066, the year in which he had established himself as supreme in a wider sphere than Normandy, and he doubtless returned to the scene of the work with none the less interest because of his larger experience. There is a little vagueness about the date when the sister abbey was actually begun ; some say in 1062, which would make it slightly in advance of St Etienne, and it seems to have been consecrated in 1066, while St Etienne was not consecrated until 1077, when the ceremony was performed by Lanfranc, who had been brought from Bee to be the first abbot, but had been rapidly advanced to the Archbishopric of Canterbury, which at the time of the consecration he had held for seven years.
The opening ceremony was an occasion of great solemnity, and the king with his queen and eldest son Robert, then in early manhood, were all present. The church was not at first exactly as we see it now, for the two mighty western towers, grandly simple, had no spires, which were added in the fourteenth century. In William's time also the church was shorter, ending in an apse. The present choir dates from a couple of centuries after that fine opening scene, and is of the Pointed, not the Roman, or as we call it, the Norman, style like the nave.
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Could William, when seated on his throne, with his wife and son by his side, overlooking that vast crowd of nobles, knights, and commoners, to whom his lightest word was law, have gazed ahead into the grim mystery of the future, he would have seen a far other picture. A lonely death, with his son a traitor, and himself deserted, at last to be hastily and ignominiously buried by the charity of the monks, whose munificent patron he had been. Could he have seen such a vision, the realities of power and place might have seemed less pleasantly substantial to him !
None of the Conqueror's sons are buried in the abbey, though the bones of the youngest, Henry, rested for nearly a month before the high altar, waiting for a favourable wind by which they could be taken over to England for burial.
Close by the abbey William built a palace, where now stands the Ecole Normande ; nothing of the palace remains, though a later building which succeeded it has been partly adapted for the school.
The earlier kings of the Norman race seem to have resided at palace or castle indifferently while at Caen. The abbey grew and flourished. It was at the height of its power in the twelfth century, but was totally ruined in the religious wars at the end of the sixteenth.
The large building, called the Lyc£e, to the east of the church, dates from i726,:and a Gothic hall,
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used as a gymnasium, dating from the fourteenth century, is considered to have been once part of the abbey.
Matilda's Abbaye aux Dames, or St Trinite", has one great advantage over St Etienne — it can be seen to advantage from the broad open space which lies before it. The church, like the other, has two western towers, but they are more decorative, not so grand and stern as those of St Etienne, and show a charming and original feature in the row of oval openings beneath the parapet. The windows are long, narrow, and round-headed. Matilda's church, as well as William's, is one of the purest remaining examples of Norman work. The husband and wife were parted in death : he lies at St Etienne, and she here. Their love was genuine in an age when wedded love was a rarity, more especially with kings ; but they were bitterly estranged in their quarrels over their sons before the end came. Matilda died four years before her husband, and her grave may be looked on with reverence as that of the ancestress of all succeeding sovereigns who have held the English crown.
The city hospital buildings, dating from 1726, occupy the site of the convent which Matilda founded for gentlewomen of the highest rank, and of which her own eldest daughter, Cecily, was the first abbess. It is said that she was dedicated to this office at the time of the consecration of the church
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in 1066, when she can only have been about twelve or thirteen years of age.
After the two great abbeys, and perhaps before them, in the minds of many, comes that jewel of the fifteenth century, St Pierre, of which the exterior has already been slightly described. The chief feature is the towering spire, so pierced as to give a fairy-like appearance of elegance, and yet so firm in its lines as to produce a powerful impression of strength. This spire was built in the beginning of the fourteenth century, on the foundation of an earlier one. The nave followed, and the choir was completed about 1521. But in spite of the two centuries over which the building spread, the whole design is emphatically of one style and time, of which it forms one of the most brilliant examples. In the two disused churches in Caen, St Etienne the Less and St Gillies, we may see the same design and style in the pierced parapet, the flying buttresses, and the decorated pinnacles ; though parts of these churches are of the twelfth century. This is not so notable in St Gillies, but in St Etienne the Less, in spite of the growth of weeds in all the crevices, in spite of discolourment, and filled-in windows, in spite of bars and general decay and disuse, we have a most beautiful church, and one that almost any English town would consider its most precious possession.
There are many other churches which might be mentioned, but we have space only for one, because
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of its peculiarity. St Sauveur consists of two churches, which were originally built side by side, and now, with the partition wall removed, form one! Not far from St Etienne is St Nicholas, belonging to the eleventh and twelfth centuries ; and in the Rue St Jean — down which the station traffic passes — is the church of St Jean, dating from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
After the churches in interest come the Renais- sance hotels, of which we have already described the principal one ; of the others, there are two connected with the name of Etienne Duval de Mondrainville which cannot be overlooked. These are to be found in the little narrow street running behind St Sauveur. Etienne de Mondrainville was born in 1507, and was for a long time one of the most important personages in Caen. He twice made a fortune, and was twice ruined by the jealousy of his comrades. He was an energetic man, and pushed his trade to an extent which at that time was remarkable ; he carried on trade with Africa and America, and his staple was corn from Barbary.
The smaller of the two houses he built stands in a little courtyard. The carving, the miniature tower, and the dormer windows are all charming, and are enhanced by the bit of green in front. In 1550 the Chambre de la Monnaie was moved here from St Lo, and the house retained the name. Across the street is the larger house of about the
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same date, now a printing" establishment. It was built in 1549, and the cupola and lantern, columns and dormers, all bespeak its date. Etienne died in 1578, leaving two sons, one an abb6 and the other a soldier. The Hotel de Than, in the Rue St Jean, is another house of the same date, telling of the wealth and opulence of the burghers of Caen after the city had recovered from the effects and uncertainty of the English occupation, and become once more French.
From all that has been said, it may be gathered that there is much to see in Caen, and yet the account is fragmentary, and has not told the half. There are other churches not mentioned, other hotels to be found in dark courtyards and down unpromising tunnels ; there is the famous Maison des Gens d'Armes, built in the reign of Fra^ois First, only a mile or so out on the Ouistreham Road, and there are countless other features that would take long to discover, but are well worth the explorer's trouble. By the river Orne there are wide quais and boulevards, and the great race-course fringed with trees. In the centre of the town is the pleasant and well-kept Place de la Republique, once the Place Royale, a name still retained by the principal hotel, which stands at one end. Here there are the usual flower-beds, and seats, and trees, and on the west side rise the large and fine public buildings, the Hotel de Ville, including the splendid public library, the inevitable Muse"e, and behind is the Prefecture. From all of which it may
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be gathered that Caen is a town which in no way neglects the interests of her citizens. Yet with all these manifold attractions, with her many advantages and her historic past, it is impossible to deny that a slight feeling of dulness broods over Caen. It is indescribable, it is unanalysable, but perhaps it may be due to what I have before called the spirit of a town ; perhaps Caen as an entity lacks originality, or else why is it that English visitors who go there, full of intelligent appreciation, who see much, and who acknowledge the intrinsic interest of what they have seen, leave at the end of two days, feeling glad to go?
Malherbe the poet was born at Caen in 1555, and it is impossible to quit the city without mention- ing the name of Charlotte Corday, who, though not a native, passed her girlhood here with an aunt. The house in which she lived has disappeared, but No. 148 Rue St Jean stands on the site of it. She came here after being educated in a convent, and seems to have been left much to herself, spending her time in reading such works as those of Voltaire.
After the downfall of the party of the Girondins in 1793, some of the leaders came to Caen, and Charlotte attended their meetings. It was at this time she conceived her courageous idea of going to Paris to assassinate Marat, who typified all that was worst in tyranny. She obtained a passport in which she is described as being twenty-four years of age, only 5 feet i inch in height, with chestnut hair and
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grey eyes. Her face was oval, her forehead high, her nose long, and her chin dimpled. The quiet determination with which she executed her project, and the absence of all revulsion after it, put her on the same level as the other great heroine, Joan of Arc. A country which has produced two such women, may well take high rank.
CHAPTER VI
FALAISE
ALTHOUGH Falaise is not a typical Norman town — for it has too much character of its own for that — there are certain features here which are to be found in nearly all the other towns in Normandy, such as the long narrow streets, roughly paved with cobbles, and the irregular houses, most of which are neither very old nor very new, but just softened by time.
To linger in the streets is to get many a peep which, transferred to canvas, would give lasting pleasure. In one place we see long narrow passages running between houses ; the black shadow is in contrast with the yellow sunlight on the pavement beyond, and at one end there falls over a parapet a mass of glorious deep-tinged lilac. Surely lilac never grows elsewhere as it grows in Falaise! In another place there is a tiny court, with an indescrib- able medley of steps, grey stone, worn beams, gable ends, and child life. We come suddenly upon a tiny chapel with a bit of ancient moulding that proclaims
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its hoary age ; it is perched upon a rock, up the steep sides of which straggle staring yellow wallflowers, brilliant blue forget-me-not, and stiff tulips of various colours.
One of the most striking bits of Falaise is the quiet square before the Hotel de Ville, where grass grows between the cobbles, overshadowed by the mighty figure of William on horseback, many times life-size. Round the pedestal are graven his ancestors, the previous dukes, men to be reckoned with, one and all, but not one to compare with their great successor, whose magnificent energy and power the artist has succeeded in transfixing in metal.
On one side, aslant to the square, is the church of La Trinite", a curious church, built without any rules ; and at its east end bestriding a street, with a delight- ful disregard for the change of level. It has a fine porch, and admirably carved buttresses, and over a great part of it runs that profusion of carving which the ancient craftsman seems to have thrown in for sheer love of it. The tower, however, is a note of ugliness, interrupting much pleasant quaintness. This is not the most notable church in Falaise ; that honour is claimed by St Gervais in the widened space in the middle of the main street, and St Gervais is all glorious without but disappointing within, where its dull lines are devitalised by the terrible mockery perpetrated in the name of decoration. Outside, however, the warmly tinted sandstone, carved in every fantastic semblance, rises grandly against the
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A STREET VENDOR, FALAISE
Falaise
clear blue sky. Particularly noticeable are the gargoyles, turning this way and that, and the wonderful moulding round the tower windows. The restoration has affected notable improvement on the exterior, clearing away all the old houses which clung like barnacles to the walls.
If one could only reverse the wheel of time and see the church as it looked at its great dedication festival, when, glittering in the smartness of work fresh from the chisel, it was dedicated in the presence of Henry the First of England! Would the workmen differ greatly in type, we wonder, from the group who now sit lazily sunning themselves on the steps ? The pre- sent men, who are in blue blouses, are spare, not large of limb, with faces the colour of their own house-tiles, with sharp thin features and keen eyes ? The cloth- ing of the poor in Falaise is not so picturesque as in many parts of Normandy — the blouse is here as everywhere, but there is nothing else striking in the costume of the men, and only the older women wear caps, and those of a very simple sort ; the young ones go about with heads uncovered, and hair neatly coiled up in a little top-knot, after the usual manner of the French.
One of the most attractive views in Falaise, is that to be gained by standing on the raised road that leaves the town direct to Caen, and looking east and west. In the deep fosse, where once a mighty river must have run, there is now only a dirty ditch, which serves the women of Falaise for
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a washing-place, as it did nine hundred years ago. On either side rise neat trimly-kept gardens, terrace upon terrace, rich in greenery. In fact, the masses of green foliage which break up any general view of Falaise are among its principal charms. The influence of environment is seen in character, for even the smallest and poorest cottages have their window- boxes and flowerpots, and the neatness of the gardens is a sight to marvel at ; even the wee children love flowers. In the shops, especially the butchers', where least of all one would expect to see them, one finds great bowls and pyramids of flowers, so large that they could hardly be encircled by both arms ; these are made up of lilac, rhododen- dron, pale pink peonies, tulips, and forget-me-not, and are such Gargantuan bouquets as would make sunshine in any London house.
A rough and narrow track leads along the northern side of the river opposite the castle. This is a very poor part of the town, where one small room serves for bedroom and living-room for a whole family, and the dark nut-brown interiors are in striking contrast with the blaze of sunlight outside. The children are mostly healthy, sometimes strikingly so; and among them it is difficult to pick out any special type ; bright brown eyes and sepia locks are seen side by side with hair perfectly flaxen in colour and eyes of palest watery blue ; both types alike greet the "English" as a friend, for too many English are seen here to allow them to be awesome,
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A LITTLE NORMAN GIRL
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and perhaps also the little ones learn with their earliest history there is a bond of kinship between them and these strange people who come from across the sea. From nearly every house comes the quiet hum of a hand-machine, wherewith men and women knit socks and other garments ; this sound mingles with the splash and thud of the women busily washing clothes in the little narrow ditch, kneeling in their wooden tubs, arms in ice-cold water, and backs bent in the occupation which seems to take up far the largest proportion of a French peasant- woman's day.
There are little bridges over the water, and foot- paths winding in and out, and above all is the clear vivid sky of a May day. If we went on a little further until we were almost beneath the perpendicular walls of the castle, we should come all at once on two things, which would carry us back into the far past, for a large tannery still spreads irregular build- ings on the very place where once rose the tannery of William's maternal grandfather. Its presence is quickly felt, and we can see the peasants coming away from it laden with the little "cakes" of waste bark called "mottes," which are used for fuel, and so oddly resemble peats. Not far off a sound of voices and splashing of water will bring us to a strange place, the town washing-shed, where, with the dim light from the roof gleaming on the soapy green water, and the time-worn posts, we shall find a score of women, perhaps some of them actual
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collateral descendants of Arietta's, slapping and splashing the soiled linen with as much heartiness as ever did the girl who was to become the mother of a line of kings. It is the same spot, the same stream, whose name is Ante, only the place is now roofed over instead of being open to the sky, as it was in Arietta's day. We leave the valley and wind upward past some tumbledown cottages of picturesque lath and plaster ; past others with such a solid foundation of stone showing in the low doorways, that they seem as if they might well have stood since the Conqueror's day. On and on until we reach a lane, with high hedges and lush rich green grass, and pass out at last on to a flat tableland, where the purple-red orchis stand up like little tin soldiers in the grass, and heather and gorse grow everywhere. We are upon Mont Mirat, and at one end is a clump of grey rocks close by a group of windswept firs ; quite suddenly, at our feet as it were, a familiar object greets us, startingly close; it is the flat cap of the Talbot tower, and as we near it, we see the whole castle appear, and realise we are on the other side of the ravine, on a level with the tower, which is in reality some distance away, but which, in the brilliant clearness of the atmosphere, looks as if a well-thrown stone might easily strike it. The jack- daws wheel and scream around the walls, and their shadows flit after them, growing, fading, disappear- ing with infinite fantasy. And the castle is a vision of light, bathed in the rays of a westering sun ; it
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appears as a perfect mass of yellow, from the deep dead gold of the streaks of lichen to the palest biscuit colour of the patches on the walls, fading to dun and sepia in the shadows.
You can still see in the castle the room in which the mighty William is said to have been born, though all probability points to his birthplace having been in the valley below. The room shown is in no sense a royal apartment ; it is a little, dark, dungeon-like chamber, airless and lightless, built in the thickness of the wall ; but sleeping accommodation was not made much account of then. In any case, the castle and the valley on which we look were the earliest associations of William's childhood. Here he lay an unconscious babe, when, as we are told by Wace, he was visited by two of the premier barons in the land, one of whom exclaimed pro- phetically, "Par toi e par ta ligne sert la mienne moult abaisse."
Here in that varied childhood, passed partly in the unsavoury tanyard with his grandfather, partly in the castle with the stern-faced man who caressed him, and whom he was told to call father ; eyed askance by the richly-dressed young nobles ; hugged by the simple-minded Arlotta, he grew up. Gradu- ally a knowledge of his own peculiar position, of his royal but sullied birth, of the battle before him, must have forced themselves into the mind of a boy far more thoughtful than his years ; and by the time he was eight, at an age when most boys
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have hardly begun to think, he had to take up his stern inheritance.
There is no doubt that spring is the time to see Falaise — spring, when the trees are at their freshest and richest, undimmed by dust or heat. By standing on the highest part of one line of rocks, we can see behind the castle in miniature the church of Guibray perched on a hill, its conical spire showing up against a distant line of horizon, so straight, so blue, so misty, it might well be the sea.
The town itself shows as a mass of roofs, varying from brick red to slate blue, but mostly the colour of rust ; these are strangely high-pitched to an English eye, and show well amid the mass of complementary green, in which there are darker touches in the copper beeches and cedars here and there — a magnificent panorama, with enough sentiment and history about it to keep it from the insipidity of mere beauty, and nothing more.
Only second in interest to the story of William's precarious boyhood, is the tale of that other boy, Arthur, the young Duke of Brittany, who, at the age of fourteen, was brought to Falaise a prisoner in the hands of his treacherous, crafty, and unscrupulous uncle, John. The room in which Arthur was confined is still pointed out near the supposed birthplace of William. It was in August that he came here, and often must he have looked out over the wide horizon, wondering if his
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faithful Bretons would come to his rescue. All through the winter he remained a close prisoner ; but he won the sympathy of his gaoler, Hubert, and when John, finding him obdurate in his refusal to sign away his rights, gave the cruel order that he should be so maimed as to render him incap- able of ruling, Hubert tacitly refused to obey it, pretending to the king that the boy had died, and even arranging a mock funeral. It seems odd, that having got so far he could not manage to compass Arthur's escape altogether ; but when matters had reached this point ''the fury of the Bretons became boundless, and Hubert soon found it necessary, for John's own sake, to confess his fraud" (Miss Norgate). This incident showed John that if he were to rule in peace he must use sterner methods, and Arthur was, at the end of January, removed to Rouen, from which time we hear no more of him.
A good deal of the castle which still stands is of the thirteenth century, and there is no reason to doubt that it was within these very walls the proud boy ate out his heart in loneliness and captivity.
A word must be given to the famous General Talbot, first Earl of Shrewsbury, whose name is kept alive in the great donjon which he built. He held the castle as governor during the English occupation under Henry V. and VI., and his deeds are scattered broadcast in the annals of the continual fighting of the period. We hear of him at Dieppe,
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in Anjou, and in Maine, and his name became a synonym for dash and daring. At the age of more than seventy years he was slain in actual warfare at Castillon!
There is one other association of a generation preceding that of John which cannot be wholly omitted. It was at the Castle of Falaise that William the Lion, King of Scotland, did homage to King Henry of England, acknowledging him as overlord, and thereby regaining a limited freedom.
The castle can be visited at any time, and though there is not much to see — the keep being a mere shell, and the chapel not now shown — it is worth going over for the sake of the superb views which its situation commands. It is said that Rollo built a fort on this site ; and certainly if he ever saw it he must have done so, for a more perfect position for a fort can scarcely be imagined. It was in this building or its immediate predecessor that Robert was besieged by the brother he afterwards so traitor- ously murdered. It is probable that Robert himself built up and restored the castle after his accession to power. A good deal of what stands, however, dates from much later, including Earl Talbot's tower.
Beside the memorable siege under Henry V. of England, Falaise has been retaken more than once, notably by Charles VII., commanding in person in 1450; and by the French king, Henri IV., in 1590.
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RURAL SCENE
Falaise
In the neighbourhood of Falaise there is some of the most attractive scenery in Normandy. It is true that the main roads, which stretch out from the town like the rays of a starfish, are not interest- ing. They are of the typical green-bordered, poplar-lined kind. But the side roads are very different. Take, for instance, the direct route between Falaise and that other castle - fortress, Domfront. Here there are woods of straight- stemmed beeches and proud oaks covering acres of rounded hills that fold softly, contour on contour, revealing at last a distance seemingly infinite in its horizon. Wide, splendidly engineered roads sweep in flattened curves down the hillsides to the brown river, amid its brilliant grass, and rise again as smoothly. Every vista shows some picture ; perhaps a tiny church perched on the top of a hill, its spire rising sharply, or a tall, stern Calvary set against a background of firs. The number of these Calvaries bearing recent dates, would seem to show that [faith still shines brightly among the country people, whatever may be the trend of thought in the large towns.
The road passes many a typical Norman village of the poorer sort — villages where the houses are made of lath and plaster or lath and mud, and are set about anyhow and anywhere, rather as if they had come together from some neighbourly instinct than had been regularly built as a village. They stand often in a little plot of ground, worn and poor
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enough, but made shady by the apple and pear trees. The umber of the simple cottage walls, and the peculiar dead colour of grass in shade, make a particular effect. Under the trees the mother of the household sits sewing, as often as not with a child beside her.
The women do a great deal of the work. Far out on a country road one overtakes an old, wrinkled, shrivelled woman, whose right place is surely not far from her hearthstone, trudging along with a great scythe over her shoulder. The market carts one meets on the roads are driven by women more often than men ; women tend the cows as they feed quietly by the wayside; women do the work in the fields ; they do the milking, frequently also in the fields ; where the great glittering copper jugs may be seen, standing on the grass, shining in the sun ; the women make the butter ; and when one thinks that to all this are added the multifarious duties of maternity and housekeeping, there is little wonder that Norman women have small time to think of their personal appearance, and are usually far from beautiful, though their brown shining faces gener- ally have that comeliness which the content of a well-filled useful life gives. On the roads all over Normandy one meets with donkey carts, for donkeys are more largely used than with us, and they form a contrast to the fine team of great horses over which the carter cracks his whip, and whose height is greatly increased to the eye by the monstrous
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STARTING FOR THE WASHING-SHED
Falaise
sheepskins, dyed dark blue, with which their collars are nearly always adorned. In some parts the collars themselves are resplendent, painted red and yellow, and bells jingle at every step, making a team of horses as striking an object as a show. Yoked oxen of massive build are still occasionally seen, notably in the country about Gisors.
The situation of the castle at Domfront is curiously like that of the castle at Falaise; both stand on a spur of cliff, separated from a similar spur by a deep ravine in which runs a tiny stream. But at Domfront the scene is more striking, for the rocks are higher, the ravine is narrower, and the great masses of strata, inclined at an angle of 45°, would fit into one another if pushed together like two pieces of a child's puzzle. It seems almost incredible that water can have exercised such immense corrosive force, the appearance is rather as if a giant hand had chiselled out the rocks, for their masses would require no less than a Titanic agency, yet we know that from time immemorial that little stream the Varennes has run in this cleft.
The peculiarities of the situation are best seen from the fir -crowned, heather - covered heights opposite ; and it is the situation that makes Dom- front, for the castle is a mere ruin, picturesque enough, and giving an excuse for the public garden that runs around its base, but not in itself interest- ing. The site is grander far than that of the famous Chateau Gaillard, grander even than that of Falaise,
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for the sheer height is stupendous ; no wonder Domfront was a strong castle and house of defence to him who held it.
The view from the plateau is limited only by vision. A single hill to the south-west stands out above the plain. In the immediate foreground, just below, are a few toy houses, and a tiny, neat church, cruciform, and bearing Norman date in every line of its architecture. It was only ten or eleven years junior to the chateau in its first building, and has long outlived it. The man who built both chateau and church, Guillaume de Belesme, sleeps within the latter. He had not held the chateau so much as forty years, when a stronger William than he, the mighty Conqueror, swooped down upon him and drove him out. Of another Belesme, a scion of the same house, we shall hear else- where.
William's successors retained the castle in their own hands, and Henry II. here received the nuncio sent by the Pope to reconcile him and Becket. In the religious wars of the sixteenth century the castle was seized and held by the Protestants, and only taken after a bitter siege; otherwise it has not much recorded history. It is peaceful enough at present, surrounded by a charming garden, where one may wander at will, gazing out over the widespread view, watching the swallows wheel and skim far below, and hearing the song of countless birds, which, here as elsewhere in Normandy, build pre- 106
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ferably in the neighbourhood of man to escape their more dreaded foe, the magpie.
There is an old rhyme which says : —
" Domfront, ville de malheur Arriv6 a midi pendu a une heure."
Though the reason why the town should have earned so unhappy a reputation is lost in the mists of antiquity.
The neighbourhood of Domfront is full of interest : westward lies Mortain, which has a bit of ruined castle, speaking of the building destroyed by Henry I. after Tinchebray. Mortain is interesting because of its counts. The first of any general interest is that Robert, half-brother of the Conqueror, son of Arlotta and Herlouin, who took great part in his brother's conquests, and accompanied him to England, being the first Norman to receive a grant of land after Hastings. He was made Earl of Cornwall, and received also large estates in Devon, Somerset, and Yorkshire. The title had previously been held by the Comte de St Sauveur, and it was after his rebellion it was joined to that of Mortain, and the two went down the ages together. John Sans Terre, when only a little boy of eight, became Count of Mortain and Vicomte du Cotentin. Though the first Count Robert is known chiefly as a rather rough soldier, he was a large benefactor to the Church, founding the abbey of which, as usual, the church remains, and but little else. The parish church
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of Mortain is due to a later gift of the same patron.
Mortain abounds in beautiful peeps ; its irregular rocks stand up in fantastic shapes amid numbers of trees, and the broken ground makes great variety of scenery. It is chiefly celebrated, however, for its waterfall, notable only in a country where such a possession is literally unique. The Great Cascade, as it is called, is about sixty-five feet high, and should be seen in wet weather if possible, or the glory of Normandy's only waterfall will be sadly discounted. Northward is Vire, with a ruined castle, which was rebuilt in the twelfth century, and demolished by Richelieu's order in 1630. But the fine gateway with its tower belfry is what everyone goes to see at Vire.
Not far from Vire is Tinchebray, the site of the brothers' struggle. This battle is mainly of importance because it indicated a curious reversal of that at Hastings. Then a Norman duke had conquered England, at Tinchebray an English king conquered Normandy. Freeman says "the fight of Tinchebray really was a battle, one of the very few pitched battles of the age," and he decides that it must have been on the flat ground near the station that the historic contest was fought, when Robert fell into the hands of a brother some eight or ten years his junior.
If instead of coming north- west ward from Domfront we had gone north-eastward, we should have come to
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a district not so beautiful in natural scenery as that about Mortain, but in itself well worth study. Argentan has the donjon of an ancient castle, a fifteenth-century church, and several other points well worth attention. The two small places of Exmes and Almeneches are associated with the name Robert of Belesmes, who seems to have been a monster of cruelty. He is said to have plucked out the eyes of a little godson ; and refused ransom for prisoners, as he preferred holding- them for the pleasure of torture. His unfortunate sister Emma was abbess of Almeneches ; and in 1 102, when Robert had been driven out of England, he descended upon her abbey and burnt it, meantime occupying the castle of Exmes.
At one time he had in his possession the strong- holds of Alengon, Belleme, " Domfront, St Cevery, Essai, La Motte, Pontorson, Mamers, Vignes, and very many more."
Robert had been in every Norman war occurring since he was of an age to bear arms, and his personal vigour had made him worth something to the cause he espoused. He married Agnes, daughter and heiress of Guy, Count of Ponthieu, the same into whose hands Harold had fallen, and he subsequently became Count of Ponthieu ; also, he succeeded his brother as Earl of Shrewsbury, in England. When he was tired of his diversions in Normandy, he returned to England, seized and held his forfeited castle of Shrewsbury, until he was forced to surrender, and a
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second time exiled. He came to a fitting end, for having, by joining in the rebellion of Fulk of Anjou against King Henry of England, proved himself a traitor, he had the audacity to go as an envoy from the French king to Henry, who, with poetical justice rather than in accordance with the laws of nations, seized him and kept him a prisoner, out of the way of further mischief, until his death. The little town of Belleme, twelve miles south from Mortagne, was the original home of the family from which this promising branch sprang. The highest part of the hill is crowned by houses, but beneath there are still under- ground vaults, and wall foundations belonging to the mighty castle of the Bellemes or Belesmes.
At St Saturnin, near S£ez, in this district, Charlotte Corday was born, but her later life was so closely associated with Caen, that she is there mentioned more fully.
Westward is the large town of Alen^on, which marks the border of Normandy in this direction. Alen9on has been famous since the reign of Louis XIV. for its beautiful point lace, and the industry is still carried on, though to a less extent than before. The lace is made of pure linen thread, worth ^100 per lb., and is composed of ten different stitches, which are specialities done by different workers.
The usual earning for this highly-skilled labour is about is. a day. The castle of Alenson was destroyed, all but the keep, by Henri IV. of France.
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Of the famous siege of Alen^on we have already spoken.
Here must come to an end this rather rambling chapter, designed to cover a district which, with the exception of Falaise, is comparatively little known by the English visitor to Normandy.
in
CHAPTER VII
BAYEUX AND THE SMALLER TOWNS
SOME old established shops there are, with prestige so secure that they do not have recourse to the art known as " dressing the windows "; it is the customers who seek them out, not they who try to attract the customers. Something1 of this kind may be said of Bayeux, for of all simple unpretending towns it is the chief; anyone who entered the long straggling street unforewarned, would imagine that he was in some humble village, and yet Bayeux ranks high among Norman towns. After Rouen, admittedly the capital, and Caen, so much larger than herself, she assuredly, for importance, antiquity, and all those things that go to make the fame of a city, comes third.
The first sight of the cathedral strikes one with astonishment ; it is so composite, so decorative, that it takes one's breath away. There is a feeling of hopelessness — one will never be able to understand it. And even after some study it remains almost
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impossible to analyse the architecture as one generally can analyse a cathedral, setting- down the nave to one age, the choir to another, and perhaps the western towers to a third.
The great central tower rests on a square decorated platform, and is carried up two lantern stages above it ; the top one is surmounted by a copper cupola. The upper stage was added in 1860, and is unfortunately quite ugly. Features which add much to the appearance of the exterior are the richly decorated portals ; that of the south transept is carved with figures representing scenes in the life of St Thomas a Becket, who at the time it was done had been dead for more than thirty years, and was among the most popular of saints. The great portal at the west end, however, surpasses it in beauty ; in it are no less than five doorways, dimin- ishing in size from the centre ; and seen beneath the fine western towers, it forms a feature in a view of the exterior by no means the least attractive.
The oldest church on this site was burnt down in 1046, and rebuilt by Bishop Odo, Arietta's son by her second marriage. It was consecrated with great ceremony in the same year as St Etienne of Caen, and in the beginning of the next century again suffered by fire. But the greater part of the cathedral as we see it, dates from the reconstruc- tion in 1205 by an Englishman named Henry Beaumont, and as has been said, the tower was only completed recently.
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It is well to enter from the west, and to seat oneself at the very end of the nave, in order to observe best the cathedral's greatest peculiarity, namely, the strange carving on the spandrils and interstices of the pillars. The patterns vary from diaper work to overlapping scales, and clothe the walls richly. Between the arches are shields with the strangest collection of figures, a dragon, an Anglo-Saxon man, and other devices, showing a wide range of thought on the part of the sculptor. The pillars themselves, which rise into Norman arches, are all of one pattern, what may be called the fascicle or bundle of small shafts forming one whole. As in every church whose growth ran throughout several centuries, the Early Pointed style caps the Norman work; and here pointed clerestory windows rise above those splendid arches. The arches are decorated with various devices, among which we see an unsurpassed example of the beakhead moulding. The choir stands over the crypt, and both the transepts are on the lower level — a beautiful idea, which gives an appearance of loftiness and elegance in looking up toward the east. The vista is, however, unfortu- nately blocked by a heavy altar at the chancel step. This peculiarity in the level of the choir, and the fantastic carving in stone, are the two most notable features in the building, as the stained glass is not very attractive.
It was in this great church that William wrested
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AN ANCIENT INN YARD
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from Harold the deadly oath on which he partly based his own right to the throne of England — an oath extorted by fear and partly by fraud, and the breaking of which, by even the most malevolent of Harold's foes could hardly be accounted to him for wickedness. The scene is depicted in the Bayeux tapestry, fully described in the next chapter.
On this same wide green space there is a statue to Alain Chartier the poet, a native of Bayeux, the "most distinguished Frenchman of letters in the fifteenth century," who also bears the reputa- tion of having been the ugliest man of his time. He was born at Bayeux between 1380-90, and became highly popular by his verse. Margaret, wife of the Dauphin, is said to have kissed him as he lay asleep, for the sake of all the beautiful things that had proceeded from his lips ; and it is probably the record of that kiss rather than his poems which has kept his memory alive.
One of the charms of Bayeux is the number of its famous old carved houses, which more than anything else carry us back into the streets of the past. One of the most notable of these, with innumerable statues on its frontage, is to be seen in the Rue St Malo, another, plain but very sub- stantial, and having several features of its own tending to give it individuality, is in the Rue St Martin.
This is at the corner of the main street, and turning up it we may go to the open space where
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the market is held. If we are fortunate enough to visit the town on a Saturday, we shall see this long, narrow, cobble-paved street literally flecked with the little tight white caps, which are all that remains of the national headdress. These are not worn by very young girls, but are assumed after the first communion, when the child is supposed to have become a young woman. The fact of wearing the first "bonnette," as the cap is called, is very serious, and not to be lightly considered. The invariable style is that the hair should be neatly parted in the middle and smoothed back, flattened down, while a tight-fitting bit of muslin is drawn over the head and set into a band of muslin, which is again mounted on one of plain black velvet ; the only jaunty part of the headdress is the white muslin bow at the back, which bobs up and down like a rabbit's scut, and when a number of women are talking together, the bobbing sometimes becomes quite laughable.
The rest of the women's costume is of the usual peasant type, stuff jacket-bodices or blouses ; full, all-round stuff skirts, well off the ground ; check aprons of blue, or mauve, or grey, and among them all there is a strong family likeness. We see the same good-humoured commonplace face again and again ; there is shrewdness in the keen eyes and sensible mouths, health in the smooth brown-red cheeks, and a certain comeliness notwithstanding the homely features. One feels sure that if one asked
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a question an intelligent answer would be given, for these women habitually use their brains as well as their hands in all their daily occupations. Here and there one sees a young girl with a much fluted upstanding edging to her cap, and perhaps a pair of white muslin strings elaborately tied under her chin, but where such a one appears she is recognised as being uncommonly fashionable, and respectfully admiring glances follow her self-conscious figure.
The men in this district have a great partiality for pearl buttons about the size of a sixpence, with which they stud the fronts of their smocks, some- times in double and treble rows. They are big, broad-shouldered fellows these brothers by blood to the men of the Cotentin, and are more akin to ourselves than to the Frenchmen of Rouen, for the Danish blood and speech lingered on in Bayeux when the west of Normandy had been Frenchified.
The market is surrounded by a thick hedge of limes, and here is sold the usual assortment of everything in daily use, from boots to bonnet pins. The only thing which would strike a stranger as novel are the enormous masses of butter, fitted into cylindrical hampers, and so heavy that it takes two men to move them at all.
Later on the crowd thins down, and a steady stream sets in toward the station. The women laden with enormous baskets carried by leather straps, and sometimes holding large red cotton umbrellas, compare notes as to the day's events.
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At the station nearly every one, man and woman alike, invests in a paper for Sunday reading before they disperse to their homes on the flat plains of the Bessin. Some to go to homely cottages, others it may be to those castles fallen from their high estate, such as Argouges, once the fortress-dwellings of the highest nobles in the land.
Less than ten miles westward from Bayeux is Formigny, one of the historic battlefields of Normandy ; it ranks with Val-es-Dunes, Tinche- bray, and Mortemer. It was in 1450, when all Upper Normandy was already in the hands of Charles VII. of France, that a desperate effort was made to save Lower Normandy from the same fate. The English landed at Cherbourg and marched on into the Bessin ; they were met and defeated at Formigny, and the battle was the final stroke that severed Normandy from England.
In a book like the present it would be as difficult as it would be futile to attempt to give in detail an account of every town. Those already described give the atmosphere of the country, and to go further would be wearisome, or lead to repetition, for in many of the towns the same features reappear. In Lisieux, prettily situated amid its broken green hills, we have a fine cathedral, which shares to the full in that irregularity so often found in Norman churches. One tall spire springs from a platform base, and its companion ends in a conical stumpy gable. The manufacturing part of the town lies
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mostly south of the railway, and the wonderful carved wooden houses which attract visitors from all parts reproduce the best features of those already noted elsewhere.
In a town like Evreux, we may see the narrow streets and cool green sun-shutters, with the stately cathedral rising1 over the roofs, its grey majesty softened to beauty by the lace-like fret- work. Down by a canal-like feeder of the river I ton, in a part reminiscent of the Cambridge "backs," is the Allde des Soupirs, under whispering" limes ; by the river also are the washing-sheds, with tiled floors, where women and girls wring and beat and twist all day long, chattering the while, as if the perpetual dipping of hands and arms in the ice- cold water and the bending of backs were a mere game. Under the limes on a market day the usual Norman crowd can be seen. The prevailing tone of colour is blue — blue blouses, blue bodices, blue check aprons. Now and then a gendarme strolls down the centre, looking like a gorgeously coloured fly in his bright uniform. All the promenaders passing1 to and fro are in list slippers, which speaks volumes for the dryness of the climate ; and none of the women wear hats, and only a few caps or folded cotton handkerchiefs.
The typical Norman town is for the most part irregularly built ; we do not find the formal squares and straight streets to be met with in Touraine. There is almost always a cathedral, varying a little
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in its beauty, but at the worst wonderful. There is very often a barracks, and an open dusty space for the drill ; and the other public buildings, the Prefecture, and Palais de Justice, if the town be the centre of its district, the Hotel de Ville, the public library, the Muse"e, the Mairie, according to its status. There is generally a river, sometimes very small, and an open space or two wherein wayfarers may sit.
We may spring northwards to Pont Audemer, where we shall find some features in common with many Norman towns, and some peculiar to itself. We may go there on a Monday, for Monday is market day, and we shall find the wide street before the splendid old church filled with stalls' — indeed, here, as ever in Normandy, the wonder is, where everyone is a vendor, who buys ; perhaps it is a disguised form of barter. The men are good-looking as a rule, though the strong admixture of French blood has produced a race in which there are few of the characteristics of their countrymen further west. One sees all sorts, of course, but the type which might be selected as predominant is that of a slightly built, fairly tall man, with straight marked features, abundant hair showing strong tendency to curl, on head and lips ; dark eyed and dark complexioned, good-looking, merry genial fellows, they are a sun- loving race. It makes a splendid picture this open-air market. The church with its great tower at the west end, carved and enriched, speaks of the
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richest period of the fifteenth century. By the grand western door are many decorative niches for saints, now empty.
Perhaps the western sun has fallen sufficiently to cast the long shadows of the odd medley of houses facing the cathedral over the rough cobbled street, and thereby to render the contrast of all that gallant fretwork, picked out, illuminated, and gilded by his splendour, all the grander. Within, the church is magnificent — and heartrending. Surely never in any other Catholic church, where loving hands are usually ready to perform devout offices, was more dirt seen.
There is rich stained glass of the fifteenth century in the side aisles. But for those who prefer their architecture unembellished, there is plenty here. The chancel was built at least two centuries before the nave, and is plain indeed. Heavy and solid arches, comparatively low, and somehow lacking the grace that usually appertains to this style, enclose the chancel. The singularly low central arch is not in line with the nave.
The main street crosses a narrow bridge, beneath which the quickly running current of the Rille or Risle flows. Both above and below, there is such a medley of picturesqueness and decay as surely never was seen more condensed before.
Gable-ended, timber-framed houses, with pro- jecting stories, overhang the flood ; beams discoloured and all but fallen to pieces, jut out in all directions ;
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here the red brick walls catch a glimmer of the departing sun, there the flap of a bit of wet linen reveals a kneeling woman in one of the little washing- places on the lip of the river. Here a thatched gable projects like a huge hood ; there black darkness shows a tiny court.
Some fifteen miles from Pont Audemer, in the valley of the Rille, are the ruins of the famous Abbey of Bee, which takes rank with the Jumieges and Fecamp, and others of their class. There is no remnant of the first great abbey ; what are called the monastic buildings, date from the seventeenth century ; they are now used as a depot for military stores. The tower and part of the church, rebuilt in the fifteenth century, are, however, standing, but the greater part of this magnificent building "one of the finest of its kind in France," was over- thrown at the Revolution. Bee is so closely associated with the names of its two great abbots, Lanfranc and Anselm, successive Archbishops of Canterbury, that it is impossible to pass them over here without mention. Lanfranc was an Italian, born at Pavia in the first years of the eleventh century. He had a genius for attracting and influencing young men with a desire for learning, and his following was soon a large one. He crossed over into France and settled at Avranches, where he founded a college. In the course of a journey to Rouen he was seized and robbed in the woods near Jumieges, and was left bound to a
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tree for the whole night. In the morning when released, he found, not far off, a humble abbey which had been raised by the piety of one Herlouin. He was greatly influenced by this incident, and abandoned his scholastic career to become a monk. But his great genius for teaching could not be hidden ; scholars flocked to him, and as all the money he earned by this avocation went into the common fund, the monastery grew and flourished. But the holy man had a bitter tongue, and he made enemies who maligned him to Duke William, so that at last he was sentenced to banishment. The well-known story goes that Lanfranc, stumbling along on a worn old horse, met the duke, who caused him to be upbraided for not having already gone ; he made answer in all good humour, that if the duke would give him a better horse he would depart faster. William was pleased with his ready wit, and did not forget him. While in Rome, the prelate was able to be of some service to his royal master in pleading his cause with the Pope, who was angry with William for marrying his cousin, and when the two great abbeys of Caen were built in expiation of this fault, Lanfranc was installed as first abbot in St Etienne. He then became Archbishop of Rouen, and after the Con- quest, Archbishop of Canterbury. During his rule a fire destroyed the cathedral at Canterbury, and the rebuilding was due to him. In the new cathedral he crowned William II. in 1087. Two years later
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he died. His great successor, Anselm, was some thirty years younger; he was also an Italian, born at Aosta ; he followed very closely in Lanfranc's steps, going first to Avranches, and then to Bee, where he succeeded Lanfranc in the abbacy. It was he for whom William cried in his last illness ; but Anselm was also ill, and could not travel speedily, and the king was dead before his arrival. He was forced by William II. to accept the Archbishopric of Canterbury, but he shrank so much from the office that it is said the pastoral staff was actually thrust into his hand, and his fingers savagely closed upon it so that he could not drop it. His quarrels with William II. belong to the history of England. He died in 1109.
Passing now to the west of Normandy, we find St Lo, Coutances, Granville, and Avranches forming a group with features in common. They are all picturesque, all worth seeing; but with the excep- tion of Avranches, poised upon its rock, there is no peculiar feature which, like the Bayeux tapestry, the carved houses at Lisieux, and the twin abbeys of Caen, draws visitors. St Lo is on different levels, and the river Vire which flows through it is of a considerable width for a Norman river, therefore pretty peeps can be seen in many directions. There is, of course, a cathedral, dating from thirteenth to fifteenth centuries, and also an old church, named, so the story goes, in accordance with the advice of St Thomas a Becket, who was passing through
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ST LO
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the town while it was being built. He suggested it should be dedicated to the first saint who should shed his blood for the Church, and as he was himself murdered shortly afterwards, the dedication was made to him.
Not far from St Lo is the Forest of Cerisy, mentioned in connection with the Chateau of Bur. At Cerisy an abbey was founded by Robert, father of the Conqueror, and the church, which still stands, is in use, a plain and grand building resembling St Etienne. Coutances has also a cathedral and an ancient church. Its name is derived from Constantia, which we see in slightly different form in the Cdtentin, derived from the adjective Constantinus, which occurred in its descrip- tion, "pagus Constantinus." Coutances is the seat of a bishopric, and its bishops played no small part in the stirring times of old. Its bishop, Geoffrey, blessed the Norman host on its march from Senlac to Hastings. He was made Earl of Northumbria, and his estates spread through thirteen shires ; "his flock and his see were little thought of." The cathedral which stands now is later than his time. The principal features are its towers, the central one, octagonal in shape, is interesting and striking, and the two towers ending in spires at the west end, themselves spring from a forest of smaller spires. The cathedral has been called the most beautiful church in Normandy. Coutances was for long considered the chief town of the Cotentin,
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which nominally extends so far south as to include it as well as Granville. Passing on to Granville, we find a coast town built on the side of a rocky promontory, and having quays and jetties and a small lighthouse. The chief charms of Granville are in its views over the bay, and the possibility of visiting the Isles of Chausey.
Of Avranches there is much more to say ; with it we enter the district of the Avranchin, which now, with the Cotentin, is included in La Manche. The town stands, to begin with, on an extraordinary hill, the spur or outpost of a range ; it rises sheer from the railway at its foot : a situation to arrest the attention and stimulate memory. Then its views of the islands of Tombelaine and Mont St Michel are unrivalled, and, seen as they may be against the glory of a western sky, the setting is worthy of the jewels. Avranches has claims to historical memories of its own. On a spot known as the platform, and embracing a wide prospect of sea and sky, we find a stone inscribed to the effect that it was part of the threshold on which Henry II. knelt in humble penitential garb to be absolved from the curse of excommunication brought upon him by the murder of Becket. This is pre- served from the ruins of the cathedral which, unlike most of the solid work of early Norman times, did not stand the test of time, but partly fell down, and had to be wholly dismantled in 1799.
To this town may be accredited the honour of
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A STREET IN GRANVILLE
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having- produced the first poet laureate, for a poet named Henry of Avranches so attracted the notice of Henry III., that he gave him a pension and attached him to the court.
Avranches was from very early times noted for its magnificent and valuable library, but in 18993 fire broke out and destroyed many priceless MSS., among them a copy of Domesday Book in three colours.
There are still, however, 16,000 volumes in the Public Library. These public libraries are notable features in almost every town in Normandy ; they do not quite correspond with the English libraries of the same heading, but rather with the cathedral or chapter libraries attached to some of our diocesan towns, and they usually have owed their foundation to the monks, for abbeys were in early times the chief seats of learning. They frequently contain very valuable MSS., and nearly always have some treasures to show. The reference rooms are lofty, well furnished, and convenient, and strangers are freely admitted. At Rouen the library contains 133,000 volumes and 3600 MSS., including several service books and missals written in the eleventh century in the Anglo-Saxon style. One missal belonged to Robert of Jumieges, who became Archbishop of Canterbury, and to whose chronicles we owe so much of our knowledge of early Norman history ; there is a Benedictional of 988, written for ./Ethelgar, Bishop of Selsey, and
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the earliest printed book is of the year 1468. The origin of the library is obscure. At the end of the twelfth century it is first mentioned as containing 1 60 volumes; in 1200 it was partly destroyed. The library at Bayeux holds 30,000 volumes, and that at Caen 100,000 volumes and 800 MSS. Other figures are — Lisieux, 28,000 ; Cherbourg, 30,000 ; Valognes, 20,000 ; Havre, 30,000, with eighth and ninth century MSS. These libraries are often housed in a part of the building of the Hotel de Ville, and should certainly be seen by any visitor who has half an hour to spare in passing through any of the above towns.
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CHAPTER VIII
THE FAMOUS TAPESTRY
THERE is not a school child in England who has not heard of the marvellous piece of work supposed to have been wrought by Queen Matilda and the ladies of her court ; but until the tapestry is actually seen, the conception of it is as vague as that of giants and fairies. As a matter of fact, the work is not tapestry at all, but crewel work. Real tapestry resembles carpet, and is closely worked, and the background is all filled in ; but this of Bayeux is lightly worked in worsted, on a strip of linen about two hundred and thirty feet in length by about twenty inches in breadth, and is placed on a stand, ingeni- ously arranged, so that by walking round the outside and inside the whole strip can be seen without trouble, and in itself remains intact.
The question whether Queen Matilda and the ladies of William's court really were the authors of this marvellous record in needlework will, with such subjects as the authorship of the Letters of Junius,
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always remain unanswered. There are arguments for and against ; the fact that the tapestry was designed for the glorification of William, looks as if it were executed in his lifetime, and the dis- proportionate importance attached to the smallest events in the campaign in Brittany, which are given with more detail and fidelity than even in the chronicles, looks as if that campaign must have been contemporary, and was depicted with that disregard for proportion which is ever the effect of seeing an affair in the foreground. The minute details given in the case of the figures look also as if they were done from personal knowledge — details such as the fact that Edward the Confessor is always represented with a beard, and that the Saxons wear moustaches, while the Frenchmen are clean shaven. In the reign of the Conqueror's successor, the Normans themselves cultivated beards, and allowed the hair to grow; and anyone working tapestry at that date would surely never have been realistic enough to depart from the fashions he saw around him to depict those which had preceded them. Later on, also, other little points, such as immoderately peaked shoes, were adopted ; these are not shown in the tapestry, though had the work been done later than the Conqueror's reign, the fashions would have been those of the then prevailing mode.
On the other hand, there are serious arguments against Matilda's being the designer, though they are mostly negative ; for instance, the tapestry is not
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The Famous Tapestry
mentioned in her will, neither does it find a place in the inventory of the goods belonging to the church at Bayeux in 1369, though it is mentioned in that made in 1476, from which the inference is drawn that it was not in existence at the earlier date. But, on the other hand, it may well have been overlooked. By some it is supposed to have been executed for the cathedral of Bayeux by Bishop Odo's command, and it is a fact that in length it exactly fits the circuit of the choir walls, where it might have been hung on feast days.
It was in 1724 that attention was first drawn to the tapestry, which until then had been lying unnoticed at Bayeux. There was a drawing of it in the Cabinet of Antiquities at Paris, and M. Lance- lot coming across this was struck by it, and searched for the original, though he was quite uncertain what material it was in, whether it were a fresco, a sculpture, or a piece of needlework. It was unearthed at last at Bayeux, and was kept in a side chapel at the cathedral rolled around a mighty spool, whence it was unrolled once a year. In 1803, when Buonaparte meditated an invasion of England, the tapestry was brought to France with a view to stimulating the spirits of the French by pointing out to them what had been done might be done again. Subsequently, the much better plan of preserving the work from injury and enabling it to be seen, which is at present in use, was adopted. The case is glazed, so that the tapestry may stand for as many
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hundred years as it has already stood, without per- ceptible injury.
The worsted in which it is worked is as fresh as the day it was first used, and its brightness against the light background contrasts very strongly with the dingy hues of the tapestry one is accustomed to see. The colours used are drabs and greens, russets and blues, all art colours, and extraordinarily effective. The shadows are treated in a very original manner : for instance, when it is desired to show the inside of a horse's leg in shadow, the leg is filled in in a different colour from that of the horse's body ; it is technically supposed to represent a shadow, and this does very well.
There is a border decorated by grotesque beasts and heraldic figures, and the border has sometimes to give way to the exigencies of the story, when an exceptionally tall man or a large ship has to encroach upon it.
The drama begins long before the Norman Conquest, and is told with a verve and humour quite unexpected; whether it were Matilda who was the designer, or the wives of those " natives of Normandy on whom William had bestowed lands in England," as the writer in the Encyclopedia Britannica thinks, the authors must have had plenty of character, and strong indeed must their freshness have been to resist the withering dulness of the life then deemed meet for women. And freshness they had in full measure, for no one could have depicted
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the lugubrious roundness of Harold's face, and the quaint expressions of the horses, who did not delight in the work.
The first scene shows King Edward the Confessor commissioning Harold to visit Normandy. Harold's object was nominally to obtain the release of his nephews held prisoners by William, but it is supposed that Edward the Confessor had his own reasons for sending him into William's power, as he feared Harold, and really desired William to be his heir in England. If this were so, William certainly took the advantage thus given to him, and played his cards with conspicuous skill. We are carried through Harold's journey to the coast, his voyage, his wreck, and his subsequent capture by Guy, Count of Ponthieu. It may be noted that the hawks, which can be seen on the wrists of the characters, are not hooded, another small indication as to date, for hawks began to wear hoods about 1200, so that the work must have been executed before then. When Harold follows Guy as a prisoner, his hawk sits reversed upon his wrist, a sign of dejection, while that of Guy looks forward in the usual way. At the repeated solicitation of William, who backed his request with the present of a considerable slice of territory, Harold is next brought to him as a prisoner by the triumph- ant Guy, who points to him, as much as to say, " See what I have done!" However, William receives him as a guest, and brings him to his palace. The leading characters in this drama are by no means
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lay figures ; Harold can be easily recognised by his round face and vacuous expression ; he is smaller than William, who is heavy jawed and strong. In the beasts on the border we see the same spirit which is to be found more developed in the gargoyles on churches, a spirit full of mischief and appreciation of what may be called the "weird grotesque."
Did some of these ladies who worked, apparently so patiently and submissively, get rid of their feelings of petty jealousy and spite by working them into the canvas ? Did Edith caricature the knight who was blind to her charms, and Matilda glorify him who loved her in secret? It is strange to notice that the main figures are all men ; women very seldom figure in the play, only three times in fact, and twice they are nameless. In the next compartment we have the principal exception, a lady dressed in a nunlike habit stands in a small kiosk, and a man pats her cheek condescendingly ; the inscription tells us that some woman named Elgiva conversed with a clerk. The probable explanation is that this is William's daughter Adeliza or Agatha, whom he agreed to give to Harold in marriage, and it may be that the pleasing intelligence so jocularly conveyed to her, is that of her future destiny. Though Adeliza at this date was only seven or eight years old, she afterwards refused to marry a Spaniard, on account of her former betrothal to Harold, and so it seems probable that she played a part in the drama.
In the next stage Harold assists William in an
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expedition to suppress the rebels, Conan, Duke of Brittany, and the Duke of Anjou. The men are all represented in chain armour, and their pointed shoes nearly touch the ground on each side of the horses, which are small. It may be noted also that the horses wear no defensive armour, which was not used until the time of Henry the First. Towns are symbolised by a kind of dome standing1 on an arch. The army passes by Mont St Michel, and at the river Couesnon, which forms the boundary between Normandy and Brittany, many of the soldiers come to grief. The towns of Dol and Rennes are next passed, and Dinan is besieged. In it Cpnan is caught, and is forced to yield to hand out the keys of the besieged town. Harold is knighted by William for his prowess on the field. In this section we have the local touch which gives Bayeux her representa- tion in the tapestry, for at Bayeux is held a solemn parliament, whereat Harold acknowledges William heir to King Edward.
At this time also took place the formal ceremonial of betrothal between himself and Adeliza, which made so undying an impression on the child ; and which seemed to Harold merely a part of the game he had to play, as he took no account of it whatever, marrying almost directly after his return to England. The ceremony of the oath, by which he swore to uphold William's claim to the English throne, was, if chroniclers can be believed, of more importance in his eyes. For a book of the New Testament having
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been laid before him, he swore upon it with a sacred oath, and then the gold cloth on which it had been laid was lifted, and there, disclosed to his astonished eyes, were relics of great sanctity and value, apparently to him of far more import than the Gospels, for he started and trembled violently.
Having thus committed himself, he returns to