Read Ebook: Rambles in Normandy by Mansfield M F Milburg Francisco McManus Blanche Illustrator

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TINCHEBRAY 343

WALLED FARM 346

PORT-EN-BESSIN 348

OLD WOODEN HOUSES, LISIEUX facing 350

CH?TEAU OF FALAISE 351

DONJON OF FALAISE facing 352

STREET UNDER THE CHURCH OF THE TRINITY, FALAISE 356

A COTENTINE facing 360

MILLET'S HOME, GRUCHY 365

THE ROCK OF GRANVILLE facing 380

BAY OF MONT ST. MICHEL 384

MONT ST. MICHEL IN 1657 385

PORTE DU ROI, MONT ST. MICHEL facing 386

CLOCK TOWER, VIRE 392

IN THE CHURCH OF STE. FOY, CONCHES facing 400

RUGLES 403

THE APIARY OF LA TRAPPE facing 408

CH?TEAU D'ALEN?ON 413

ARGENTAN 416

MARKET-PLACE, NEUBOURG 417

ABBEY OF BEC-HELLOUIN 420

INTERIOR OF ABBEY OF BERNAY 424

THE PROVINCES OF FRANCE 427

PROFILE MAP OF NORMANDY 435

THE COAST OF NORMANDY 436

NATURAL CURIOSITIES OF NORMANDY 437

ARCHITECTURAL CURIOSITIES OF NORMANDY 438

ROAD MAP, NORMANDY COAST 439

ROAD MAP, THE SEINE VALLEY 440

ROAD MAP, ACROSS NORMANDY 441

RAMBLES IN NORMANDY

INTRODUCTORY

"One doubles his span of life," says George Moore, "by knowing well a country not his own."

When one knows the country well he recognizes many things which it has in common with England. Its architecture, for one thing, bears a marked resemblance; for the Norman builders, who erected the magnificent ecclesiastical edifices in the Seine valley during the middle ages, were in no small way responsible for many similar works in England.

It is possible to carry the likeness still further, but the author is not rash enough to do so. The above is doubtless sufficient to awaken any spirit of contention which might otherwise be latent.

Some one has said that the genuine traveller must be a vagabond; and so he must, at least to the extent of taking things as he finds them. He may have other qualities which will endear him to the people with whom he comes in contact; he may be an artist, an antiquarian, or a mere singer of songs;--even if he be merely inquisitive, the typical Norman peasant makes no objection.

One comes to know Normandy best through the real gateway of the Seine, though not many distinguish between Lower Normandy and Upper Normandy. Indeed, not every one knows where Normandy leaves off and Brittany begins, or realizes even the confines of the ancient royal domain of the kings of France.

How many Englishmen know that it is in the tongue of the ancient Normans that the British sovereign is implored to approve or reject the laws of his Parliament? This is beyond dispute, though it appears not to be generally known; hence it is presumed that the land of the Conqueror is not wholly an overtilled field for Anglo-Saxon tourists.

In the House of Commons, only within the last year , the First Lord of the Treasury rose to abolish this inexplicable usage, the employment of a foreign tongue. Mr. Balfour replied with a refusal based on historical tradition: "French was the language of state in England by right of the Norman Conquest." It was in 1706 that the House of Lords forbade the use of French in parliamentary and judicial debates. The only chief of state in England who used the English tongue exclusively was Cromwell.

The full significance of the spirit of relationship between Normandy and England to-day is admirably brought out in the expression of sentiment which was advanced on the occasion of the Norman f?tes held at Rouen in the summer of 1904, when the following address was despatched to King Edward at Buckingham Palace by the society that had the f?tes in charge:

"With the deepest joy the 'Souvenir Normand' respectfully begs your Majesty to accept its greetings from the banks of the Seine, the river whence your glorious ancestor, William, of the stock of Viking Rollo, set out to found the great British Empire under Norman kings. We thank Providence for the happy tokens of your royal efforts to bring about an understanding between the two Normandies, to secure the peace of the world through the Normans. May God preserve your Majesty; may God grant long life and prosperity to the King and Queen of England and to the English Normandy."

Normandy is by no means limited to the lower Seine valley, but for the purposes of the journeys set forth herein it is the gateway by which one enters. Normandy is the true land of the cider-apple, though there are other places where, if it is not more abundant, it is of better quality, or at least it has more of the taste of those little apples which grow on trees hardly larger than scrub or sagebrush.

A small boy was once asked by a patronizing elder what books he used in studying geography and history, and he answered, curtly, "I use no books, I go to places." That boy was very fortunate.

If the traveller is looking for information and incidental pleasure, he is in a class quite apart from the mere pleasure-seeker; and he ought, if he would profit from his travels to the fullest extent, to be able to increase his power of observation as he widens his horizon. He is often unable to do so, and goes about deploring the absence of pie and buttered toast.

With visitors to Normandy, the case is in no wise different, in spite of the fact that the well-known roads from Havre or Dieppe to Paris, via the Seine valley, are a little better known than any other part of France.

There are still but two wholly unspoiled spots in all the Seine valley, Les Andelys and La Roche-Guyon; and it is doubtful if they ever will become spoiled by tourists within the lives of the present generation. The railway has only recently come to Les Andelys, and the two pretty little towns, with their stupendous Ch?teau Gaillard, are even now not popular resorts, though the French, English, and American travellers are coming yearly in increasing numbers, while La Roche-Guyon--a few miles farther up the river--is even less well-known.

Mention is made of this simply because it serves to emphasize the fact that all highroads are not well-worn roads, and that there is a wealth of unlooked-for attraction to be gathered wherever one may roam.

Of the theorists who have attempted to class the Normans with the Danes, the least said the better. To rank the Norman-French and the Dane together, as the pioneers of feudalism, is to ignore the fact that it was the Normans who were the real civilizers of Britain.

The fact stands boldly forth, however, that the ancestors of Norman William, who afterward became England's king, came direct and undiluted from Scandinavia, while the Norman Frenchman of later times was a distinct development of his own environment.

It is well enough to claim that the English nobility is descended from the Norman barons. At any rate it seems plausible, and one may well agree with those who have said that no Upper House of Lords could ever have been conceived by the Anglo-Saxons. History demonstrates the fact that the idea of the English House of Lords, as an appointment by the Crown, was of Norman conception, and alien to Anglo-Saxon tendencies.

It seems, perhaps, superfluous to reiterate these facts here, but they are so commonly overlooked by the traveller in France that it is well to recall that it was the Norman who governed Britain, and not members of the Saxon hierarchy who afterward became kings of France.

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