Day 1 Sunday
Arrived Caen/Ouistreham 0700 french time as
planned. Breakfast in Houlgate 0800 as planned.
I stopped in the main street of Houlgate at
eight o'clock and went into a spotless little bar for my breakfast.
It was a cool, misty June morning, so I chose a seat at the back of
the bar in a sort of snug near the babyfoot machine. Just as I sat
down a bunch of teenagers came in, making of course immediately for
my corner. I got up and moved into the main body of the bar, for
which they thanked me. Unfortunately, it turned out there were too
many lads and lasses to fit into the snug, so the proprietor started
putting tables together near me; amid profuse apologies from all
concerned, I moved back into the corner. I was brought a vast cup of
coffee and a big jug of milk, and a basket with two buttery
croissants nestled snugly into it. The teenagers sat down at their
tables and ordered coffee. Some of them asked for croissants, others
arranged to send a girl down to the bakery for bread. While she was
gone, five of the boys came into my corner for a game of babyfoot.
All this, let me add, in the utmost decorum; they smiled politely,
banged the babyfoot table about in a genial manner, treated each
other with a certain jolly courtesy, and made probably less noise
than a group of adults might.
I am still trying to work them out.
Where in England or the USA could you go to a local caff at eight on
a Sunday morning and find so much as one teenager awake? Where in
Europe could you find two dozen teenagers capable of behaving
themselves at table, or meeting for a communal breakfast? As a first
event on a trip to France it was certainly unique to its
setting.
Houlgate to Deauville, to
Pont-l'Éveque to Pont-Audemer to Bernay.
Bernay: Salon du Meuble Normand
Held in the old abbey, typical benedictine
romanesque on the verge of Gothic; south aisle a series of domes,
north aisle vaulted; all very high, helped by floor being as usual
below ground level. Pale stone similar to Loire tuffeau, but probably
local chalk.
The
meubles
themselves were amazing; mostly pure Norman, in oak, dating from the
early eighteenth to the late nineteenth century. Two types;
buffet and
armoire.
The buffet is a sideboard; it comes in top and bottom, sometimes
equal in size, sometimes smaller at top. The armoire (left) is a
linen-cupboard, shelved with two vast doors. Both are usually four or
five feet wide, seven feet high.
Some examples of the Ile de France and Sarthe
varieties in merisier, none of the North Norman pine or the rare
Dieppe/Fécamp mahogany which fetches the lowest price of all
because nobody believes it can be authentic. Photographed two sets;
one early 18th century from Coutances, called a quatre volets - 4 square
panels to each meuble. Buffet 48,000F; armoire 37,000. Second set
from Vire, where there used to be a school for carvers; highly
decorated with ribbons, hearts and pearls; the central panel with
garden tools entwined with grapes symbolic of the intoxication of
love, made for the same dowry in 1830 or so, they somehow found their
way across France to Besançon, where they were split up and
sold separately in 1970. Somehow, through a series of deals, they
both found their way back to Normandy, where two separate dealers
thought them worth of inclusion in this exhibition, and they were
snapped up by the same buyer. These things come with a history,
authenticated by notaires. Price undisclosed, but probably similar to
other set, perhaps a little more. Pine variants come at about a third
of these prices if fine.
On to Broglie, La Barre en
Ouche, Vieille lyre, Conches en Ouche.
At Conches, amazing castle ruins behind
charming hotel de ville and gardens. Restaurant À la Saint-Jacques
opened late, but was worth waiting for. Snapped the baroque windows
in the church while waiting. At the artisanat centre, a small shop
has a spiral staircase in its floor, which leads down to a whole
series of medieval vaulted cellars stuffed with pottery and wrought
iron work. The house itself is old Norman with colombages
half-timbering and the forge is in the back garden. Makes door
furniture, fire-irons, gates, window grilles, girouettes
(weathercocks), some sculpture; rarely open to public, but when the
second son is through his national service they may be able to open
the forge to view daily. They were making fire-irons, pokers and
prodders for log fires today, as being something the public can see
started and finished in a short time. Lady in shop eager to discuss
artisanat;
in France not theatre or museum, certainly not folklore; this is a
genuine living craft from which a living is still to be made.
On to
Breteuil sur Iton. Cider fair in progress, judging going on; lovely
ponds in grounds of dead castle.
Verneuil; supposed to a be flower-arranging
festival, but all hidden by vast crowds at grande braderie. This is
a second-hand sale, enormously popular with thrifty Normans.
La Ferté-Vidame, Senonches, la Loupe,
Mortagne.
A great deal of our
knowledge of the court of Louis XIV comes from the memoirs of the Duc
de Saint-Simon. His country estate was at La Ferté-Vidame,
though he rarely actually went there; it was the genius if Louis XIV
that he persuaded his nobles to prefer life at a crowded, smelly
Versailles to the immense luxury of their actual homes. Nevertheless,
when the ducal château burned down, a new one was built
immediately though, curiously, without actually demolishing the
old, whose skeletal remains still stand in the park. The later castle
is surrounded by a broad moat covered in water-lilies; I spent a
peaceful hour just watching dragonflies.
Mortagne au Perche
Those of us who grew up with the French
text-books of W.F.H. Whitmarsh will remember François, the old
peasant with what would nowadays be regarded as a somewhat unhealthy
interest in young children, and who lived in a small town called
Mortagne. He had, I remember, a cat called Mistigri. There are towns
called Mortagne all over France, but the best candidate for
Whitmarsh's immortalisation is surely this one, in the centre of a
region entirely devoted to peasant farming.
The
Office de Tourisme is in the Halle aux Grains, one of those old
French market buildings with arcades below and an assembly room
above. The arcades are glassed in nowadays, and the hall above
dignified with the name of theatre. Vast, over-modern spiral
staircases lead the theatregoer to his place.
Behind the Hotel de Ville of Mortagne is, as
one might expect, the Jardin Municipal, at the end of which an area
partly given over to the local bus station boasts a balustrade
overlooking what is announced as a panorama. Few things in this town
disappoint, but the panorama is one of them. At the end of the garden also is a
strange bronze by Frémiet, representing the infant Neptune on
a horse. The inscription on the base assures us that Ceres is there
as well, but I couldn't find her. The town's brochures also insist
that the horse is a Percheron; if thats so, the Percheron has
developed and doubled in weight since Frémiet's day
(1824-1910). On closer inspection, this appears to be the same horse
as the one bearing Joan of Arc in the Place des Pyramides in Paris, a
far more impressive piece of work by the same hand. The proportions
of this thing are all wrong; a tiny armoured putto with a vast
trident on a life-size horse. Have we lost a full-size Ceres? Did she
in some way offend the local worthies with her shameless fertility in
their back garden, and was removed one midnight and her memory
suppressed?
All these hilltop towns were fortified once,
and Mortagne retains one of its gates, the Porte Saint-Denis. Next to
it is the church of Notre-Dame, with a ridiculously solid Renaissance
tower and a ridiculously over-decorated flamboyant vault. Mortagne
seems to have achieved its greatest prosperity at just the wrong
moment in the history of church architecture.
The
nicest building I saw at Mortagne was a school; the Lyce-College
Bignot, one of those organic structures which has been added to and
rabbit-warrened over a period of centuries, with a charming entrance
courtyard that would grace any chateau. Of course, education in
France is as old as the nobility, and nowadays far more respected.
Only fair that it should inhabit the same sort of buildings. In
England, of course, where education is not respected at all, the
place would have been condemned as unsuitable to its purpose years
ago, and probably demolished to make way for something with a flat
roof and brick corridors. There must be somebody who calls it
progress.
From Perche to Beauce
A friend of mine was motoring in central France
some years ago, when he suddenly had one of those Proustian moments.
Marcel Proust, remember, dipped a madeleine in his tea and found that
the taste brought back all the memories of his childhood in a village
he called Combray. My friend drove down a French road and suddenly
found himself remembering all Proust's memories. Round the next
corner he came on the village of Illiers, the original of Combray,
which since those days has added its fictional name to its real
one.
Illiers-Combray is the gateway between Perche
and Beauce. That's why young Marcel Proust had two ways to go; du
côté de chez Swann was bourgeois, rich, prosperous,
essentially beauceron; the Guermantes way was aristocratic, horsy,
ancient but a bit shabby; the soul of the Perche. Most of Illiers
belongs to Swann nowadays; the memory of Proust brings in the
tourists and the tourists bring in the money. There's a
beautifully-paved pedestrian area round the old church, and the way
to Aunt Sophie's house is well signposted. The Jardin du
Pré-Catelan, where young Marcel used to walk, is the town park
now, free to enter and not too carefully managed. There is a choice
of walks; the hilly paths through the woods, or the smooth,
well-tended valley. Which would Marcel have taken? I decide that,
being Marcel Proust, he would have taken the valley walk while
inventing secret mountains in his mind.
Chartres is prosperous, too, and evidently growing all the
time. I first saw the Cathedral when I was 20, and I was
disappointed. Returning at 50, I feel the same. Sorry, Chartres; I
put you about sixth on my list of French cathedrals. This time,
though, I discovered the town, which has some delightful little
squares in its pedestrianised medieval centre. Its always worth
looking behind the tourist sights.
Looking for a shady picnic place between
Chartres and Chateaudun, I stumbled on ALLUYES, one of those sudden
enchantments that hide round the corners of rural France. This was
once the seat of one of the five baronies of southern Perche, with an
enormous château inhabited by a baron with the wonderful name
of Florimond Robertet. All that remains of the castle now is a ruined
chapel, the massive keep, a single gateway with its bridge, and the
moat. The moat winds through the village green, all water-lilies and
willows and marigolds, crossed here and there by little bridges. The
keep towers above it all, perhaps a hundred feet high, grim and grey.
And at a corner of the green a splendid little church offers three
gables and a steeple to the embrace of the sun.
When
I arrived in Alluyes, there was obviously something about to happen.
It turned out to be an old folks' boules tournament. I'm watching it
now. It's magical. There's one grey-bearded man playing with what
I'll swear are real cannon-balls; red with rust and pitted with age,
probably a little something his grandfather picked up at Austerlitz.
There are ten games going on at once, nobody seems to know quite who
is playing whom, let alone who's winning; but then, nobody minds
either. There are as many spectators as players, they've all brought
their own garden chairs, there's a hessian awning over a little
open-air bar. One old lady is obsessively cutting blossoms off the
surrounding trees. You're right, its a little corner of
heaven.
