Normandy Picturesque Part 12

[17] An architect, speaking of the Albert Memorial, now approaching completion, says:--'In ten years the spire and all its elaborate tracery will have become obsolete and effaced for all artistic purposes. The atmosphere of London will have performed its inevitable function. Every 'scroll work' and 'pinnacle' will be a mere clot of soot, and the bronze gilt Virtues will represent nothing but swarthy denizens of the lower regions; the plumage of the angels will be converted into a sort of black-and-white check-work. 'All this fated transformation we see with the mind's eye as plainly as we see with those of the body, the similar change which has been effected in the Gothic tracery of some of our latest churches.'

[18] The old woman is well known at Caen, and her encounter with the '_garcon anglais_' it matter of history amongst her friends in the town.

[19] It was lately found necessary to repair the south door; but the restoration of the carved work has been effected with the utmost skill and care: indeed we could hardly point to a more successful instance of 'restoring' in France.

[20] We might point, as a notable exception, to the memorial window to Brunel, the engineer, in Westminster Abbey; especially for its appropriateness and harmony with the building.

[21] The _raconteurs_ of the middle ages used to travel on foot about Europe, reciting, or repeating, the last new work or conversation of celebrated men--a useful and lucrative profession in days before printing was invented.

[22] In the British Museum there is a book containing a facsimile of the whole of this tapestry (printed in colours, for the Society of Antiquaries), where the reader may see it almost as well as at Bayeux; just as, at the Crystal Palace, we may examine the modelling of Ghiberti's gates, with greater facility than by standing in the windy streets of Florence.

[23] The sketch of the pulpit (made on the spot by the author) is erroneously stated in the List of Ill.u.s.trations to be from a photograph.

[24] At the cathedral at Coutances the service is held under the great tower, and the effect is most melodious from above.

[25] In an article in the _Pall Mall Gazette_, on the 'woman of the future,' the writer argues that:--'As beauty is more or less a matter of health, too much can never be said against the abuse of it. Quite naturally the fragile type of beauty has become the standard of the present day, and men admire in real lift the lily-cheeked, small-waisted, diaphanous-looking creatures idealized by living artists.

When we become accustomed to a n.o.bler kind of beauty we shall attain to a loftier ideal. Men will seek n.o.bility rather than prettiness, strength rather than weakness, physical perfection rather than physical degeneracy, in the women they select as mothers of their children.

Artists will rejoice and sculptors will cease to despair when this happy consummation is reached--let none regard it as chimerical or Utopian.'

[26] The railway from Paris to Granville is nearly finished; and another line is in progress to connect Cherbourg, Coutances, Granville, and St.

Malo.

[27] If this were the place to enlarge upon the general question of bringing children abroad to be educated, we might suggest, at the outset, that there were certain English qualities, such as manliness and self-reliance; and certain English sports, such as cricket, hunting and the like, which have less opportunity of fair development in boys educated abroad. And as to girls--who knows the impression left for life on young hearts, by the dead walls and silent trees of a French _pension_?

[28] It is well that sportsmen do not always make a good bag, for another drawback to the pleasures of sport in France is the 'heavy octroi duty which a successful shot has to pay upon every head of game which he takes back to town.' For a pheasant (according to the latest accounts) he has to pay '3f. 50c. to 4f.; for a hare, 1f. 50c. to 2f.; for a rabbit, 75c. to 1f. 25c.; for a partridge, 75c. to 1f. 50c. the pound; and for every other species of feathered game, 18c. the kilogramme.'

[29] The island, in this ill.u.s.tration, appears, after engraving, to be about two miles nearer the spectator, and to be less covered with houses, than it really is.

[30] During the last few years the prisoners have all been removed from Mont St. Michael.

[31] The sands are so s.h.i.+fting and variable, that it is impossible to cross with safety, excepting by well-known routes, and at certain times of the tide; many lives, even of the fishermen and women, have been lost on these sands.

[32] It a irresistible, here, not to compare in our minds, with these twelfth-century relics of magnificence and festivity, certain emblazoned 'civic banquets,' and the gay 'halls by the sea,' with which the child (old or young) of the nineteenth century is enraptured--the former being the realities of a chivalrous epoch; the latter, masquerades or money speculations, of a more advanced century. The comparison may be considered unjust, but it is one that suggests itself again and again, as typical of a curiously altered state of society and manners.

[33] The latest, and perhaps the most complete, description of Mont St Michael, will be found in the 'People's Magazine' for August, 1869.

[34] French artists flock together in the valleys of the Seine and the Somme, like English landscape painters at the junction of the Greta and the Tees--Mortain and Vire not being yet fas.h.i.+onable. It is hard, indeed, to get English artists out of a groove; to those who, like ourselves, have had to examine the pictures at our annual Exhibitions, year by year, somewhat closely, the streams in Wales are as familiar on canvas, as 'Finding the Body of Harold.'

[35] We speak of Mortain as we found it a few years ago; its sanitory arrangements have, we understand, been improved, but people are not yet enthusiastic about Mortain as a residence.

[36] Notwithstanding this apparent indifference to landscape, we remember finding at a country inn, the walls covered with one of Troyon's pictures (a hundred times repeated in paper-hanging); a pretty pastoral scene which Messrs. Christie would have catalogued as 'a landscape with cattle.'

[37] The neatness and precision with which they make their piles of stones at the roadside will be remembered by many a traveller in this part of Normandy. They accomplish it by putting the stones into a shape (as if making a jelly), and removing the boards when full; and, as there are no French boys, the loose pile remains undisturbed for months.

[38] Submitting to the exigencies of publis.h.i.+ng expediency, we have been unable to have this drawing reproduced on wood; although we were anxious to draw attention to the bold forms of rocks which crown these heights, and to the line old trees which surround the castle.

[39] There are' deeds of valour' (according to the _affiches_) to be witnessed in these days at Falaise; we once saw a woman here, in a circus, turning somersaults on horseback before a crowd of spectators.

The people of Falaise cannot be accused of being behind the age; one gentleman advertises as his _specialite_,' the cure of injuries caused by velocipedes'!

[40] Our peaceful proclivities may be noticed in small things; the fierce and warlike devices, such as an eagle's head, a lion _rampant_, and the like, which were originally designed to stimulate the warrior in battle, now serve to adorn the panel of a carriage, or a sheet of note-paper.

[41] It is rather a curious fact that Prout, notwithstanding his love for historic scenes, seems to have had little sympathy with the poor 'Maid of Orleans.' In a letter which accompanied the presentation of this drawing, the following pa.s.sage occurs:--'I beg your acceptance of what is miserable, though perhaps not uninteresting, as it is part of the house in which Joan of Arc was confined at Rouen, and before which the English, _very wisely_, burnt her for a witch!'

Mr. Prout evidently differed in opinion from Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Bauvais, who presided at the tribunal which condemned Joan of Arc to death; for he founded a Lady Chapel at Lisieux, 'in expiation of his false judgment of an innocent woman.'

[42] It is curious to note that the wealth of cities nearly always flow westward,--converting, as in London, the market-gardens of the poor into the 'Palace Gardens' of the rich; and, with steady advance, sweeps away our landmarks,--turning the gravel pits of western London into the decorum of a Ladbroke-square.

[43] It is no new remark that more than one Englishman of artistic taste has returned to Rouen after visiting the buildings of Paris, having found nothing equal in grandeur to this cathedral, and the church of St.

Ouen.

[44] The original spire was made of wood, and much more picturesque; our artist evidently could not bring himself to copy with literal truth this disfiguring element to the building.

[45] For a detailed description of the monuments in this Cathedral, and of the church of St. Ouen, we cannot do better than refer the reader to the very accurate account in Murray's 'Handbook;' and also to Ca.s.sell's 'Normandy,' from which we have made the above extracts.

[46] We must record an exception to this rule, in the case of the church at Dives, which a kept closely locked, under the care of an old woman.

[47] Just as the words of our Baptismal service, enrolling a young child into the 'church militant,' lose half their effect when addressed to men whose ideas of manliness and fighting fall very short of their true meaning.

It has a strange sound (to say the least that could be said) to hear quiet town-bred G.o.dfathers promise that they will 'take care' that a child shall 'fight under the banner' of the cross, and 'continue Christ's faithful soldier and servant unto his life's end;' and it is almost as strange to hear the good Bishop Heber's warlike imagery--'His blood-red banner streams afar; who follows in his train?' &c., &c.--in the mouths of little children.

[48] The incongruity strikes one more when we see him afterwards in the town, marching along with a flat-footed shambling tread, holding an umbrella in front of him in his clenched fist (as all french priests hold it),--a figure as unromantic-looking as ungraceful.

[49] He could not be called naturally gifted, even in the matter of speaking; but he had been well taught from his youth up, both the manner and the method of fixing the attention of his hearers.

[50] On the quay at the front of the Hotel d'Angleterre, the public seats under the trees are crowded with people in the afternoon, especially of the poor and working cla.s.ses.

[51] There seem to be few living French artists of genius, who devote themselves to landscape painting; when we have mentioned the names of Troyon, Lambinet, Lamoriniere and Auguste Bonheur, we have almost exhausted the list.

[52] It is unfortunately different in the case of the inhabitants of the neighbourhood of Fecamp and etretat, who are certainly not improved, either in manners or morals, by the fas.h.i.+onable invasion of their province.

[53] The London 'Ill.u.s.trated Police News.'

[54] The people in this part of Normandy are becoming less political, and more conservative, every day (a conservatism which, in their case, may be taken as a sign of prosperity, and of a certain unwillingness to be disturbed in their business); they are content with a paternal government--at a distance; they wish for peace and order, and have no objection to be taken care of. They are so willing to be led that, as a Frenchman expressed it to us, 'they would almost prefer, if they could, to have an omnipotent Postmaster-General to inspect all letters, and see whether they were creditable to the sender and fitting to be received'!

[55] In the matter of bells, the same voices now ring half over Europe--the music is the same at Bruges as at Birmingham; church bells being made wholesale, to the same pattern and in the same mould, another link in the chain of old a.s.sociations, is broken.

[56] We are tempted to remark, in pa.s.sing, on the curious want of manner in speaking French that we notice amongst English people abroad; arising, probably, from their method of learning it. French people have often expressed to us their astonishment at this defect, amongst so many educated English women; a defect which, according to the same authority, is less prominent amongst travelled Englishmen in the same position in life. We will not venture to give an opinion upon the latter point; but most of us have yet to learn that there are two French languages--one for writing and one for speaking; and that the latter is almost made up of _manner_, and depends upon the modulation of the voice.

[57] It is worthy of note that, in a cruel country like France, the 'blinkers' to the horses (which we are doing away with in England) are a most merciful provision against the driver's brutality; and a security to the traveller, against his habitual carelessness.

[58] We confess to a lively sympathy with the growth of artistic taste in America; a sympathy not diminished by the knowledge that every English work of credit on these subjects is eagerly bought and read by the people.

[59] The carving may be machine-made, and the slate and fringes to the roofs cut by steam; but we must remember that these houses are only 'run up to let,' as it is called, some of them costing not more than 500_l._ or 600l.

[60] It is interesting to note how the changes in the modern systems of warfare seem to be tending (both in attack and defence) to a more practical and picturesque state of things. Thus in attack, the top boots and loose costume of the engineers and sappers figure more conspicuously in these days, than the smooth broad-cloth of the troops of the line; and in defence (thanks to Captain Moncreiff's system), we are promised guns that shall be concealed in the long gra.s.s of our southern downs, whilst stone and brick fortifications need no longer desolate the heights.

[61] In one of the west-end clubs a fresco has lately been exhibited as a suggestion to the members, shewing the easy and graceful costume of the fifteenth century.

[62] If the words in an ordinary letter in a lady's handwriting, were measured, it would be found that the point of the pen had pa.s.sed over a distance of twenty or thirty feet.