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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 comprehensive 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 recognition in accordance with its size as does each large 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 Conqueror 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 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 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 horseshoe 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 belong 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 well describe them here. Take for instance that road running between Evreux and Lisieux; it undulates 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 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.

CHERRY BLOSSOM

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 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 surrounding Bayeux in the district of the Bessin, has been, so long as history has any record, a prime agricultural country with magnificent pasturage. The most notable points in the little villages which stud it are the wonderful churches, out of all proportion 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 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 magnificently utilised as the site of the castle where William was born. The hills through Mortain and Domfront run parallel with this ridge, and are of the same description. Indeed the positions of the castles at Domfront and Falaise are very similar.

THE HARBOUR AT LOW TIDE, GRANVILLE

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 Iles Causey and Iles 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 Côtentin, 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 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 fermiéres de la plaine et du Bessin, dont les hautes coiffes garnies de dentelles et les bijoux Normandes attiraient tous les regards.”

A FESTIVAL CAP

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. “Il y a en Normandie deux localités où on remarque une population exotique, exotique de costume, exotique de langue; c’est Granville à quatre lieues de Cancale, son berceau, son point de départ; Cancalaises et Granvillaises sont des sœurs séparées par un bras de mer. L’autre c’est le faubourg de Dieppe, celui des pêcheuses, le Pollet. Ces deux localités où la race est Celtique, se distinguent par un esprit pieux qui, comme cela se fait chez les Bretons, mêle la religion aux actes de la vie civile et de l’existence maritime.” He adds, “Le Normand chante peu et ne danse pas du tout. Son voisin le Breton chante beaucoup, danse un peu.”

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:—

“À la Claire fontaine,

Les mains me mis lavé.

Sur la plus haute branche

La rossignol chantait,

Chante, rossignol chante

Puisque t’as le cœur gai,

Le mien n’est pas de même

Il est bien affligé.”

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 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 opportunity.

A SEASIDE RESORT

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 to spend, the prices at the best hotels at these places in the season are almost prohibitive. However, the season is late, not beginning 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 Côtentin; 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 everywhere he will find opportunity for enjoyment.

The difficulty in passing quickly 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 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.

GRANDMOTHER

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 continues she grows slightly anxious, and asks to be 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’hôte 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, 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 au gratin. 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 everywhere, 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.

The hotels are also cheap. At those of the first class, 1 franc is the average charge for the petit déjeuner meal; the déjeuner 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 1s. 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 damping 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.