210

18. APSE OF LA COUTURE, LE MANS 210

19. NOTRE-DAME-DU-PRE, LE MANS, N.E. 221

20. SAINTE-SUSANNE, KEEP 235

SKETCHES OF TRAVEL IN NORMANDY AND MAINE

NORMANDY

1861

Before foreign travelling had become either quite so easy or quite so
fashionable as it is now, the part of France most commonly explored by
English tourists was Normandy. Antiquarian inquirers, in particular,
hardly went anywhere else, and we suspect that with many of them a tour
in France, as Mr. Petit says, still means merely a tour in Normandy.[6]
The mere holiday tourist, on the other hand, now more commonly goes
somewhere else--either to the Pyrenees or to those parts of France which
form the road to Switzerland and Italy. The capital of the province, of
course, is familiar to everybody; two of the chief roads to Paris lie
through it. But Rouen, noble city as it is, does not fairly represent
Normandy. Its buildings are, with small exceptions, later than the
French conquest, and, as having so long been a capital, and now being a
great manufacturing town, its population has always been very mixed.
There are few cities more delightful to examine than Rouen, but for the
true Normandy you must go elsewhere. The true Normandy is to be found
further West. Its capital, we suppose we must say, is Caen; but its
really typical and central city is Bayeux. The difference is more than
nine hundred years old. In the second generation after the province
became Normandy at all, Rouen had again become a French city. William
Longsword, Rollo's son, sent his son to Bayeux to learn Danish. There
the old Northern tongue, and, we fancy, the old Northern religion too,
still flourished, while at Rouen nobody spoke anything but French.

A tour in Normandy has an interest of its own, but the nature of that
interest is of a kind which does not make Normandy a desirable choice
for a first visit to France. We will suppose that a traveller, as a
traveller should, has learned the art of travel in his own land. Let him
go next to some country which will be utterly strange to him--as we are
talking of France, say Aquitaine or Provence. He will there find
everything different from what he is used to--buildings, food, habits,
dress, as unlike England as may be. If he tries to talk to the natives
he will perhaps make them understand his _Langue d'oil_; but he will
find tha