In and out of three Normandy inns

Preface

THE changes which have come to Normandy, since this book was written, are those due to our changing world. A little more than two decades ago, and Normandy, to most Americans, may be said to have been an unknown country. Its attractions now are as well known as are the Boulevards of Paris.

In spite of its highways having become but an extension of the Parisian asphalt, yet is Normandy still Normandy. The stranger is but the passing figure. The Norman is the immovable, the prudent fixture. He may prefer a corrugated roof for his house but he still thatches his barn. If he wears a tailormade coat and vest instead of the blue blouse of his forefathers, the son of his father is buttoned up tight, encased in custom and tradition, within the more modern apparel. Lanes, hedges, trees and orchards are still planted and trimmed as they were during the Hundred Years’ War.

If fishing villages, such as Villerville, the first of the ‘“Three Normandy Inns,” have become semi-fashionable little cities by the sea, Villerville fishwives still go out to the mussel-beds, and their sons and husbands still spread their sails from Honfleur docks.

The rustic Inn I found, years ago, known then as today, as L’Hostellerie Guillaume-le-Conquérant, iti

PREFACE has been transformed into a veritable scéne-de-décor. The fairy wand of American dollars is largely to blame for the old—the adorably old—Inn being but a hidden frame whereon depends its now splendid dress. The older, antique charm vanished with the death of that true Norman—Madame Le Rémois. Her influence, however, is still potent; the famous sauces have not lost the secrets of their flavour.

If Madame Poulard’s smile and her animating presence no longer grace the rocky heights of Mont Saint-Michel, the soaring glories of the famous Hill remain, like Norman character, intact and inspiring.

Old streets, grey with age, are still to be seen in towns through which walked William the Conqueror. In Caen, in Bayeux, in Coutances, Cathedrals rear their sculptured spires above roofs ribboned with the rains of ancient days.

On Fétes-Dieu, crowds may still be seen kneeling in the open streets, as the Host passes. At the Beatification of Sainte Thérése, at Lisieux, three years ago, Cardinals from Rome, England and America, clad in the splendour of their scarlets and laces, were followed by thousands of the devout. For Normandy is indeed Normandy still. She lives her inner life as she has lived it for centuries. She transmits her traditions as she does her Norman astuteness, her thrifty habits and her industry, fighting innovations and changes as she fought in the Great War, to keep France French.

A; Bea)

iv

Contents

VILLERVILLE CHAPTER I.—A LANDING ON THE COAST OF FRANCE II.—A Sprinc DRIvE III.—From An INN WINDOW IV.—OvtT oN A MuUSSEL-BED V.—THE VILLAGE VI.—A PAGAN COBBLER VII.—SomeE NorMAN LANDLADIES VIII.—THE QUARTIER LATIN ON THE BEACH

TX.—A NorMsAn HOUSEHOLD

X.—ERNESTINE .

Chapter I A Landing On The Coast Of France

NARROW streets with sinuous curves; dwarfed houses with minute shops protruding on inch-wide sidewalks; a tiny casino perched like a bird-cage on a tiny scaffolding; bath-houses dumped on the beach; fishing-smacks drawn up along the shore like so many Greek galleys; and, fringing the cliffs—the encroachment of the nineteenth century—a row of fantastic sea-side villas.

This was Villerville.

Over an arch of roses; across a broad line of olives, hawthorns, laburnums, and syringas, straight out to sea—

This was the view from our windows.

Our inn was bounded by the sea on one side, and on the other, by a narrow village street. The distance between good and evil has been known to be quite as short as that which lay between these two thoroughfares. It was only a matter of a strip of land, an edge of cliff, and a shed of a house bearing the proud title of Hétel-sur-Mer.

Two nights before, our arrival had made quite a stir in the village streets. The inn had given us a characteristic French welcome; its eye had measured us before it had extended its hand. On reaching the inn and the village, however, -we had already tasted of the flavour of a genuine Norman welcome. Our experience in adventure had begun on the Havre quays.

Our expedition could hardly be looked upon as perilous, yet it was one which, from the first, evidently appealed to the French imagination; half Havre was hanging over the stone wharves to see us start.

‘‘Dame, only English women are up to that!’’—for all the world is English, in French eyes, when an adventurous folly is to be committed.

This was one view of our temerity; it was the comment of age and experience of the world, of the woman with the cap, with the short pipe in her mouth, over which curved, downward, a bulbous, fiery-hued nose that met the pipe.

“C'est beau, tout de méme, when one is young—and rich.’ This was a generous partisan, a girl with a miniature copy of her own round face—a copy that was tied up in a shawl, very snug. It was a bundle that could not possibly be in any one’s way, even on a somewhat prolonged tour of observation of Havre’s shipping interests.

‘‘And the blond one—what do you think of her, hein?”

This was the blouse’s query. The tassel of the cotton night-cap nodded, interrogatively, towards the object on which the twinkling ex-mariner’s eye had fixed itself{—on Charm’s slender figure, and on the yellow half-moon of hair framing her face. There was but one verdict concerning the blond beauty; she was a creature made to be stared at. The staring was suspended only when the bargaining went on; for Havre, clearly, was a sailor and merchant first; its

—vwe ee knowledge of a woman’s good points was rated merely as its second-best talent.

Meanwhile, our bargaining for the sailboat was being conducted on the principles peculiar to French traffic; it had all at once assumed the aspect of dramatic complication. It had only been necessary for us to stop on our lounging stroll along the stone wharves, diverting our gaze for a moment from the grotesque assortment of old houses that, before now, had looked down on so many naval engagements, and innocently to ask a brief question of a nautical gentleman, picturesquely attired in a blue shirt and a scarlet béret, for the quays immediately to swarm with jerseys and red caps. Presently the battle of tongues was drowning all other sounds.

In point of fact, there were no other sounds to drown. All other business along the quays was being temporarily suspended; the most thrilling event of the day was centring in us and in our treaty. Until this bargain was closed, other matters could wait. For Frenchmen have the true instinct of the dramatist: business they rightly consider as being only an entr’acte in life; the serious thing is the scéne-de-thédtre, wherever it takes place. Therefore it was that the black, shakylooking houses, leaning over the quays, were now populous with frowsy heads and cotton nightcaps. The captains from the adjacent sloops and tug-boats formed an outer circle about the closer ring made by the competitors for our favours, while the loungers along the parapets and the owners of top seats on the shining quay steps may be said to have been in possession of orchestra stalls from the first rising of the curtain.

A baker’s boy and two fishwives, trundling their carts, stopped to witness the last act of the play. Even the dogs beneath the carts, as they sank, panting, to the ground, followed, with red-rimmed eyes, the closing scenes of the little drama.

“Allons, let us end this,’’ cried a piratical-looking captain, in a loud, masterful voice. And he named a price lower than the others had bid. He would take us across—yes, us and our luggage, and land us—yes, at Villerville, for that.

The baker’s boy gave a long, slow whistle, with relish.

“Dame!” he ejaculated, between his teeth, as he turned away.

The rival captains at first had drawn back; they had looked at their comrade darkly, beneath their bérets, as they might at a deserter with whom they meant to deal—later on. At his last words they smiled a smile of grim humour. Beneath the beards a whisper grew; whatever its import, it had the power to move all the hard mouths to laughter. As the men drifted away, their shrugging shoulders and the scorn in their light laughter seemed to hand us over to our fate.

In the teeth of this smile, our captain had swung his boat round and we were stepping into her.

‘Au revoir—au revoir et a bientot!”’

The group that was left to hang over the parapets and to wave us its farewell, was a thin one. Only the professional loungers took part in this last act of courtesy. There was a cluster of caps, dazzlingly white against the blue of the sky; and a collection of highly decorated noses and of old hands ribboned with wrinkles, to nod and bob and wave down the cracked-voiced ‘‘bonjours.”’ But the audience that had gathered

Pine to witness the closing of the bargain had melted away. Long ere this moment of our embarkation the wide stone street facing the water had become suddenly deserted. The curious-eyed heads and the cotton nightcaps had been swallowed up in the hollows of the dark, little windows. The baker’s boy had long since mounted his broad basket, as if it were an ornamental head-dress, and whistling, had turned a sharp corner, swallowed up, he also, by the sudden gloom that lay between the narrow streets. The sloop-owners had linked arms with the defeated captains, and were walking off towards their respective boats, whistling a gay little air.

One jersey-clad figure was singing lustily, as he dropped with a spring into his boat. He began to coil the loose ropes at once, as if disappointment in life were only a necessary interruption to be accepted philosophically, to this, the serious business of his days.

We were soon afloat, far out from the land of either shore. Between the two, sea and river meet. Is the river really trying to lose itself in the sea, or is it hopelessly attempting to swallow the sea? The green line that divides them will never give you the answer: it changes hour by hour, day by day; now it is like a knife-cut, deep and straight; and now like a ribbon that wavers and flutters, tying together the blue of the great ocean and the silver of the Seine. Close to the lips of the mighty mouth lie the two shores. In that fresh

May sunshine Havre glittered and bristled, was aglow with a thousand tints and tones; but we sailed and sailed away from her, and behold, already she had melted into her cliffs. Opposite, nearing with every dip of the dun-coloured sail into the blue seas, was the Calvados coast; in its turn it glistened, and in its young spring verdure it had the lustre of a rough-hewn emerald. :

“Que voulez-vous, mesdames? Who could have told that the wind would play us such a trick?”

The voice was the voice of our captain. With much affluence of gesture he was explaining—his treachery! Our nearness to the coast had made the confession necessary. To the blandness of his smile, as he proceeded in his unabashed recital, succeeded a pained expression. We were not accepting the situation with the true phlegm of philosophers; he felt that he had just cause for protest. What possible difference could it make to us whether we were landed at Trouville or at Villerville? But to him—to be accused of betraying two ladies—to allow the whole of the Havre quays to behold in him a man disgraced, dishonoured!

His was a tragic figure as he stood up, erect on the poop, to clap hands to a blue-clad breast, and to toss a black mane of hair in the golden air.

“Dame! Toujours étais galant homme, moi! I am known on both shores as the most gallant of men. But the most gallant of men cannot control the caprice of the wind!”’ To which was added much abuse of the muddy bottoms, the strength of the undertow, and other marine disadvantages peculiar to Villerville.

It was a tragic figure, with gestures and voice to match. It was evident that the Captain had taken

THE HARBOR

—— his own measure mistakenly. In him the French stage had lost a comedian of the first magnitude. Much, therefore, we felt, was to be condoned in one who, doubtless, felt so great a talent itching for expression. When next he smiled, we had revived to a keener appreciation of baffled genius ever on the scent for the capture of that fickle goddess, opportunity.

The captain’s smile was oiling a further word of explanation. ‘‘See, mesdames, they come! they will soon land you on the beach!”’

He was pointing to a boat smaller than our own, that now ran alongside. There had been frequent signallings between the two boats, a running up and down of a small yellow flag which we had thought amazingly becoming to the marine landscape, until we learned the true relation of the flag to the treachery aboard our own craft.

““You see, mesdames,’’ smoothly continued our talented traitor, ‘‘you see how the waves run up on the beach. We could never, with this great sail, run in there. We should capsize. But behold, these are bathers, accustomed to the water—they will carry you —but as if you were feathers!’”” And he pointed to the four outstretched, firmly-muscled arms, as if to warrant their powers of endurance. The two men had left their boat; it was dancing on the water, at anchor. They were standing immovable as pillars of stone, close to the gunwale of our craft. They were holding out their arms to us.

Charm suddenly stood upright. She held out her hands like a child, to the least impressionable boatman. In a instant she was clasping his bronze throat.

“All my life I’ve prayed for adventure. And at y last it has come!’ This she cried, as she was carried high above the waves.

‘‘That’s right, have no fear,’’ answered her carrier as he plunged onward, ploughing his way through the waters to the beach.

Beneath my own feet there was a sudden swish and a swirl of restless, tumbling waters. The motion, as my carrier buried his bared legs in the waves, was such as accompanies impossible flights described in dreams, through some unknown medium. The surging waters seemed struggling to engulf us both; the two thin, tanned legs of the fisherman about whose neck I was clinging appeared ridiculously inadequate to cleave a successful path through a sea of such strength as was running shoreward.

‘‘Madame does not appear to be used to this kind of travelling,” puffed out my carrier, his conversational instinct, apparently, not in the least dampened by his strenuous plunging through the spirited sea. ‘‘It happens every day—all the aristocrats land this way, when they come over by the little boats. It distracts and amuses them, they say. It helps to kill the ennui.”

“‘T should think it might, my feet are soaking—sometimes wet feet ss

“Ah, that’s a pity, you must get a better hold,” sympathetically interrupted my fisherman, as he proceeded to hoist me higher up on his shoulder. I, or a sack of corn, or a basket of fish, they were all one to this strong back and to these toughened sinews. When he had adjusted his present load at a secure height, above the dashing of the spray, he went on talking. ‘‘Yes, when the rich suffer a little it is not such a bad thing, it makes a pleasant change—cela leur distrait. For instance, there is the Princess de L , there’s her villa, close by, with green blinds. She makes little excuses to go over to Havre, just for this—to be carried in the arms like an infant. You should hear her, she shouts and claps her hands! All the beach assembles to see her land. When she is wet she cries for joy. It is so difficult to amuse one’s self, it appears, in the great world.” ;

‘But, tiens, here we are, I feel the dry sands.” I was dropped as lightly on them as if it had been indeed a bunch of feathers my fisherman had been carrying.

And meanwhile, out yonder, across the billows, with airy gesture dramatically executed, our treacherous captain was waving a theatrical salute. The infant mate was grinning like a gargoyle. They were both delightfully unconscious, apparently, of any event having transpired, during the afternoon’s pleasuring, which could possibly tinge the moment of parting with the hues of regret.

“Pour les bagages, mesdames ;

Two dripping, outstretched hands, two bérets doffed, two picturesque giants bowing low, with a Frenchman’s grace—this, on the Trouville sands, was the last act of this little comedy of our landing on the coast of France.

bf

Chapter II A Spring Drive

THE Trouville beach was as empty as a desert. No other footfall, save our own, echoed along the broad board walks; this Boulevard des Italiens of the Normandy coast, under the sun of May, was a shining pavement that boasted only a company of jelly-fishes as loungers.

Down below was a village, a white cluster of little wooden houses; this was the village of the bath-houses. The hotels might have been monasteries deserted and abandoned, in obedience to a nod from Rome or from the home government. Not even a fisherman’s net was spread a’-drying, to stay the appetite with a sense of past favours done by the sea to mortals more fortunate than were we. The whole face of nature was as indifferent as a rich relation grown callous to the voice of entreaty. There was no more hope of man, apparently, than of nature, being moved by our necessity; for man, to be stirred, must primarily exist, and he was as non-existent on this occasion as Genesis proves him to have been on the fourth day of creation.

Meanwhile we sat still and took counsel together. The chief of the council suddenly presented himself. It was a man in miniature. The masculine shape, as it loomed up in the distance, gradually separating itself

I2 i from the background of villa roofs and casino terraces, resolved itself into a figure stolid and sturdy, very brown of leg and insolent of demeanour—swaggering along as if conscious of there being a full-grown man buttoned up within a boy’s ragged coat. The swagger was accompanied by a whistle, whose neat crispness announced habits of leisure and a sense of the refined pleasures of life, for an artistic rendering of an aria from ‘‘La Fille de Madame Angot”’ was cutting the air with clear, high notes.

The whistle and the brown legs suddenly came to a dead stop. The round blue eyes had caught sight of us:

“Ouid-a-a!”’ was this young Norman’s salutation. There was very little trouser left, and what there was of it was apparently all pocket. Into the pockets the boy’s hands were stuffed, along with his amazement; for his face, round and full though it was, could not hold the full measure of his surprise.

‘“‘We came over by boat—from Havre,’’ we murmured meekly; then, ‘‘Is there a cake-shop near?”’ irrelevantly concluded Charm with an unmistakable ring of distress in her tone. There was no need of any further explanation. These two hearty young appetites understood each other; for hunger is a universal language, and cake a countersign common among the youth of all nations.

“Until you came, you see, we couldn’t leave the luggage,’ she went on.

The blue eyes swept the line of our boxes as if the lad had taken his afternoon stroll with no other purpose than to guard them. ‘‘There are eight, and two umbrellas. Soyez tranquille, je vous attendrat.”

It was the voice and accent of a man of the world, four feet high—a pocket edition, so to speak, in shabby binding. The brown legs hung, the next instant, over the tallest of the trunks. The skilful whistling was resumed at once; our appearance and the boy’s present occupation were mere interludes, we were made to understand; his real business, that afternoon, was to do justice to the Lecoq’s entire opera and to keep his eye on the sea.

Only once did he break down; he left a high C hanging perilously in mid-air, to shout out, “‘I like madeleines, I do!’ We assured. him he should have a dozen.

“Bien!”’ and we saw him settling himself to await our return, in patience.

Up in the town the streets, as we entered them, were as empty as was the beach. Trouville might have been a buried city of antiquity. Yet, in spite of the desolation, it was French and foreign; it welcomed us with an unmistakably friendly, companionable air. Why is it that one is made to feel the companionable element, by instantaneous process, as it were, in a Frenchman and in his towns? And by what magic also, does a French village or city, even at its least animated period, convey to one the fact of its nationality? We had made but ten steps’ progress through these silent streets, fronting the beach, and yet, such was the subtle enigma of charm with which these dumb villas and mute shops were invested that we walked along as though under the spell of fascination. Perhaps charm is a matter of sex, after all; towns are feminine, in the wise French idiom—that idiom so delicate in discerning qualities of sex in inanimate objects, as the Greeks before them were clever in discovering sex distinctions in the moral qualities. Trouville was so true a woman that the coquette in her was alive and breathing even in this her moment of suspended animation. The closed blinds and iron shutters appeared to be winking at us, slyly, as if warning us not to believe in this nightmare of desolation; she was only sleeping, she wished us to understand; the touch of the first Parisian would wake her into life. The features of her fashionable face, meanwhile, were arranged with perfect composure; even in slumber she had preserved her woman’s instinct of orderly grace; not a sign was awry, not a window-blind gave hint of rheumatic hinges, or of shattered vertebre; all the machinery was in order; the faintest pressure on the electrical button —the button that connects this lady of the sea with the Paris Bourse and the Boulevards—and how gaily, how agilely would this Trouville of the villas and the beaches spring into life!

The listless glances of the few tailors and cobblers who, with suspended thread, now looked after us, seemed dazed—as if they could not believe in the reality of two early tourists. A woman’s head here and there, leaned over to watch us from a high window; even these feminine eyes, however, appeared to be glued with the long winter’s lethargy of dull sleep; they betrayed no edge of surprise or curiosity. The sun alone, shining with spendthrift glory, flooding the narrow streets and low houses with a late afternoon stream of colour, was the sole inhabitant who did not blink at us, bovinely, with dulled vision.

Half an hour later we were speeding along the

roadway. Half an hour—and Trouville might have been a thousand miles away. Inland, the eye plunged over nests of clover, across the tops of apple and peach trees, frosted now with blossoms, to some farm interiors. The familiar Normandy features could be quickly spelled out, one by one.

It was the milking-hour.

The fields were crowded with cattle and women; some of the cows were standing immovable, and still others were slowly defiling, in processional dignity, towards their homes. Broad-hipped, lean-limbed figures, in coarse gowns and worsted kerchiefs, toiled through the fields, carrying full milk-jugs; brass amphore these latter might have been, from their classical elegance of shape. Ploughmen appeared and disappeared, they and their teams rising and sinking with the varying heights and depressions of the more distant undulations. In the nearer cottages the voices of children would occasionally fill the air with a loud clamour of speech; then our steed’s bell-collar would jingle, and for the children’s cries, a bird-throat, high above, from the heights of a tall fir-tree would pour forth, as if in uncontrollable ecstasy, its rapture into the stillness of this radiant Normandy garden. The song appeared to be heard by other ears than ours. We were certain the dull-brained sheep were greatly affected by the strains of that generous-organed songster—they were so very still under the pink apple boughs. The cows are always good listeners; and now, relieved of their milk, they lifted eyes swimming with appreciative content above the grasses of their pasture. Two old peasants heard the very Jast of the crisp trills, before the concert ended; they were leaning forth from the narrow window-ledges of a straw-roofed cottage; the

—_

TYPE OF NORMAN FISHERMAN music gave to their blinking old eyes the same dreamy look we had read in the ruminating cattle orbs. For an aeronaut on his way to bed, I should have felt, had I been in that blackbird’s plumed corselet, that I had had a gratifyingly full house.

Meanwhile, towards the west, a vast marine picture, like a panorama on wheels, was accompanying us. Sometimes at our feet, beneath the seamy fissures of a hillside, or far removed by sweep of meadow, lay the fluctuant mass we call the sea. It was all a glassy yellow surface now; into the liquid mirror the polychrome sails sent down long lines of color. The sun had sunk beyond the hills, but the flame of his mantle still swept the sky. And into this twilight there crept up from the earth a subtle, delicious scent and smell— the smell and perfume of spring—of the ardent, vigorous, unspent Normandy spring.

Suddenly a belfry grew out of the grain-fields.

“‘Nous voici—here’s Villerville!”’ cried lustily into the twilight, our coachman’s thick peasant voice. With the butt-end of his whip he pointed towards the hill that the belfry crowned. Below the little hamlet church lay the village. A high, steep street plunged recklessly downwards near the cliff; we as recklessly were following it. The snapping of our driver’s whip had brought every inhabitant of the street upon the narrow sidewalks. A few old women and babies hung forth from the windows, but the houses were so low that even this portion of the population, hampered somewhat, by distance and comparative isolation, had been enabled to join in the chorus of voices that filled the street. Our progress was marked by a pomp and circumstance which commonly attend only a royal entrance into a town; all of the inhabitants, to the last man and infant, apparently, were assembled to assist at the ceremonial of our entry.

A chorus of comments arose from the shadowy groups filling the low doorways and the window casements.

“Tiens—it begins to arrive—the season!’’

‘“Two ladies—alone—like that!”’

“Damel Anglaises, Américaines—they go round the world thus, @ deux!”

“And why not, if they are young and can pay?”

‘‘Bah! old or poor, it’s all one—they’re never still, those women!”’ A chorus of croaking laughter rattled down the street along with the rolling of our carriage-wheels.

Above, the great arch of sky had shrunk, all at once, into a narrow scollop; with the fields and meadows the glow of twilight had been left behind. We seemed to be pressing our way against a great curtain—the curtain made by the rich dusk that filled the narrow thoroughfare. Through the darkness the sinuous street and rickety houses wavered in outline, as the bent shapes of the aged totter across dimly-lit interiors. A fisherman’s bare legs, lit by some dimly illumined interior; a line of nets in the little yards; here and there a white kerchief or cotton cap, dazzling in whiteness, thrown out against the black facades, these made spots of light here and there. There was a glimpse of the village at its supper. In low-raftered interiors a group of blouses and women in fishermen’s rig was gathered about narrow tables, the coarse-featured faces and the seamed foreheads lit up by the feeble flame of candles that ended in long, thin lines of smoke.

—— il

“Ohé—Mere Mouchard!—des voyageurs!” cried forth our coachman, into the darkness. He had drawn up before a low, brightly-lit interior. In response to the call, a figure appeared on the threshold of the open door. The figure stood there for a long instant, rubbing its hands, as it peered out into the dusk of the night to take a good look at us. The brown head was cocked on one side; it was an attitude that expressed, with astonishingly clear emphasis, an unmistakable professional conception of hospitality. It was the air and manner, in a word, of one who had long since trimmed the measurement of its graciousness to the price paid for the article.

“Ces dames wished rooms, they desired lodgings and board—ces dames were alone?’”’ The voice finally asked, with reticent dignity.

“From Havre—from Trouville, par p’tit bateau!”’ called out lustily our driver, as if to furnish us, gratis, with a passport to the landlady’s not too effusive cordiality.

What secret spell of magic may have lain hidden in our friendly coachman’s announcement we never knew. But the ‘“‘p’tit bateau’”’ worked magically. Mére Mouchard’s manner at once changed into such zeal, such effusion, such a zest of welcome, that we, our bags, and our coachman were on the instant toiling up a pair of spiral wooden stairs. There was quite a little crowd to fill the all-too-narrow landing at the top of the steep steps. It was a crowd that ended in a long line of waiters and serving-maids, each grasping a remnant of luggage. Our hostess, meanwhile, was fumbling at a door lock—an obstinate door that refused to be wrenched open. 19