NOTES ON NORMANDY 



777 



traveler must know his history as he 

 knows with his own eyes the true look 

 of a wide land. 



Picture follows picture in the radiant 

 Normandy landscape; the limpid light is 

 at once brilliant and tender, and the eye 

 feasts always on a banquet of color. Be- 

 tween slits of cliff are bits of sea, pop- 

 lars shiver in the sun, meadows slope 

 from height to ocean, longing for the 

 sea, and the green roadway threads its 

 path through all. It is not strange that 

 Isabey and Daubigny found beauty here. 

 In fancy Richard Sans Peur and ''le 

 Hellequin" still ride through the forests, 

 and legends people every ruin. Less in 

 the present than in the past, one dwells 

 much on the stirring times when Nor- 

 mandy had a life of its own and the 

 Norman name was famous from Scot- 

 land to Sicily. 



Honfleur is a quaint port, with its 

 famous Saint Catherine's Belfry — house, 

 shop, warehouse all in one, while a deli- 

 cately modeled spire crowns the whole. 

 Villas line the hills, old gates and watch- 

 towers yet remain of the Honfleur of 

 great days. Beyond the quay bristle a 

 hundred masts, sails drip with color, and 

 the water is Nile green — a bit of Cairo 

 in the north of France. Along the water 

 front the same old houses which nearly 

 300 years ago were brave in their brand- 

 new carvings, as they looked out to see 

 the high-decked Spanish ships ride in, 

 dipping their flags to the fleur-de-lis of 

 France. Then Havre was only a strip 

 of yellow plage, before the threatening 

 sand bar stole Honfleur's harbor inch by 

 inch. 



Lisieux is one of the charming cor- 

 ners where something still remains of 

 the Middle Ages, and in the church are 

 windows depicting the marriage of 

 Henry II and Queen Eleanor, and 

 Thomas a Becket in his Norman exile. 



The most personal beginning of the 

 Norman conquest was at Falaise. There 

 from a window of the lofty castle-keep 

 Robert, Count of Hiesnes (later Robert 

 the Magnificent and Robert le Viable), 

 saw Arlette, the tanner's pretty daugh- 

 ter, washing clothes at the riverside. 



With all the settings of romantic legend 

 she became the mother of that king 

 whose bar sinister was blotted out in 

 Conqueror. 



At Caen we are in his footsteps. 

 Saint Etienne contains his tomb, and has 

 an interior remarkable for strength and 

 solidity — a perfect example of the Nor- 

 man-Romanesque, adorned (?) though 

 it now is by 24 glass chandeliers of the 

 19th century's most lurid pattern. The 

 Hotel de la Monnaie is a splendid house, 

 built by a princely merchant, Etienne du 

 Val, Sieur de Mondrainville, the man 

 whose great wealth enabled him to get 

 sufficient supplies into Metz for it to 

 withstand its siege in 1553. 



There is an atmosphere of heroes and 

 kings in Caen. We see the tomb of the 

 Conqueror and the house where Beau 

 Brummel died. We see the ruined cas- 

 tle where '7^' jeune et beau Dunois" per- 

 formed prodigies of valor, but on church 

 walls are pasted the staring notices of 

 "loteries nationales de Prance!'' 



Many French artists, archeologists, 

 and men of letters are alarmed at the 

 lack of consideration manifested by the 

 state for the national monuments, which 

 are being allowed either to fall into de- 

 cay or to be restored with indiscretion. 

 The great master Rodin is deeply con- 

 cerned with this question, and in his de- 

 sire to awaken public interest is about to 

 bring out a series of essays (in his 

 modesty he calls them ''notes") on The 

 Cathedrals of France, the study of which 

 is his favorite pastime. 



The walls that William built and 

 Froissart writes about are a girdle that 

 is lost today. The Conqueror's vow is 

 brought to mi?id as one looks at I'Abbaye 

 aux Hommes, and vis-d-vis I'Abbaye aux 

 Dames, like the queen who builded it. 

 sits on a throne. 



It is at Bayeux, though, that one feels 

 nearer that queen, Mathilde. Gray, dim 

 Bayeux, old even then, when the Con- 

 queror's queen was writing history with 

 her needle. The first of the great French 

 realists, she seems to me, in the naive 

 sincerity of those old tapestries, which 

 truly are an epic. 



