HAVRE—TRADE AND HISTORY OF THE TOWN—EMINENT MEN—BOLBEC—YVETOT—RIDE TO ROUEN—FRENCH BEGGARS.
(Rouen, June, 1818.)
To Fécamp and the other places noticed in my last letter, a more striking contrast could not easily be found than Havre. It equally wants the interest derived from ancient history, and the appearance of misery inseparable from present decay. And yet even Havre is now suffering and depressed. A town which depends altogether upon foreign commerce, could not fail to feel the effects of a long maritime war; and we accordingly find the number of its inhabitants, which twenty years ago was estimated at twenty-five thousand, now reduced to little more than sixteen thousand.
The blow, which Havre will with most difficulty recover is the loss of St. Domingo; for, before the revolution, it almost enjoyed a monopoly of the trade of this important colony, in which upwards of eighty ships, each of above three hundred tons burthen, were constantly employed. With Martinique and Guadaloupe it had a similar, though less extensive, intercourse. As the natural outlet for the manufactures of Rouen and Paris, it supplied the French islands in the West Indies with the principal part of their plantation stores; and the situation of the port was equally advantageous for the importation of their produce. Guinea and the coast of Africa afforded a second and important branch of commerce; and this also is little likely entirely to recover. We may add that, happily it is not so; for it depended principally upon the slave-trade, the profits of which were such, that it was calculated a vessel might clear upon an average nearly eight thousand pounds by each voyage[[41]]. Its whale-fishery has, for more than a century, ceased to exist. This pursuit began with spirit and at as early a period as the year 1632, when the merchants of this port, in conjunction with those of Biscay, fitted out the expedition commanded by Vrolicq, seized upon a station near Spitzbergen, where they would have obtained a permanent establishment, had they not been violently expelled by the Danes and Dutch. But the coasting-trade with the various ports of France, and the communication with the other countries of Europe, is now again in full vigor; and it is to these sources that Havre is chiefly indebted for the life and spirit visible in its quays and public places.
The appearance of bustle and activity is a striking, at the same time that it is a most pleasing, character, of every great and commercial sea-port, in every part of the world: it is especially so in a climate which is milder than our own, and where not only the loading and unloading of the ships, with the consequent transport of merchandize, is continually taking place before the spectator; but the sides of the shops are commonly set open, sail-makers are pursuing their business in rows in the streets, and almost every handicraft and occupation is carried on in the open air. An acute traveller might also conjecture that the mildness of the atmosphere is comfortable and congenial to the parrots, perroquets, and monkeys, which are brought over as pets and companions by the sailors. Great numbers of these exotic birds and brutes are to be seen at the windows, and they almost give to the town of Havre the appearance of a tropical settlement.
The quays are strongly edged and faced with granite: the streets, of which there are forty, are all built in straight lines, and chiefly at right angles with each other. In them are several fountains, round which picturesque groups of women are continually collected, employed with Homeric industry in the task of washing linen. The churches are ugly, their style is a miserable caricature of Roman architecture, the interiors are incumbered by dirty and dark chapels, filled up with wood carvings. The principal church has figures of saints, of wretched execution, but of the size of life, ranged round the interior. The harbor is calculated to contain three hundred vessels. The houses are oddly constructed: they are very narrow, and very lofty, being commonly seven stories high, and they are mostly fronted with stripes of tiled slate, and intermediate ones of mortar, so fantastically disposed, that two are rarely seen alike.
Notwithstanding what is alledged by the author of the Mémoires sur Havre, in his endeavors to give consequence to his native place, by maintaining its antiquity, it appears certain that no mention is made of the town previously to the fifteenth century. Even so late as 1509, its scite was occupied by a few hovels, clustered round a thatched chapel, under the protection of Notre Dame de Grace, from whom the place derived the name of Havre de Grace. Francis Ist, who was the real founder[[42]] of Havre, was desirous of changing this name to Françoisville or Franciscopole. But the will of a sovereign, as Goube very justly observes, most commonly dies with him: in our days, the National Convention, aided by the full force of popular enthusiasm, has equally failed in a similar attempt. The jacobins tried in vain to banish the recollections of good St. Denis, by unchristening his vill under the appellation of Franciade. Disobedience to the edict, exposed, indeed, the contravener to the chance of experiencing the martyrdom of the bishop; yet the mandate still produced no effect. Nor was Napoléon more successful; and history affords abundant proof, that it is more easy to build a city, or even to conquer a kingdom, than to alter an established name.
Viewed in its present condition, no town in France unites more advantages than Havre: it is one of the keys of the kingdom; it commands the mouth of the river that leads direct to the metropolis; and it is at once a great commercial town and a naval station. Possessing such claims to commercial and military pre-eminence, it may appear matter of surprise that it should be of so recent an origin; but the cause is to be sought for in the changes which succeeding centuries have induced in the face of the country—
"Vidi ego quæ fuerat quondam durissima tellus
Esse fretum; vidi factas ex æquore terras."
The sea continually loses here, and, without great efforts on the part of man to retard the operation of the elements, Havre may, in process of time, become what Harfleur is. At its origin it stood immediately on the shore; the consequence of which was, that, within a very few years, a high tide buried two-thirds of the houses and nearly all the inhabitants. The remembrance of this dreadful calamity is still annually renewed by a solemn procession on the fifteenth of January.
With regard to historical events connected with Havre, there is little to be said. It was the spot whence our Henry VIIth embarked, in 1485, aided by four thousand men from Charles VIIIth, of France, to enforce his claim to the English crown. The town was seized by the Huguenots, and delivered to our Queen Elizabeth, in 1562. But it was held by her only till the following year, when Charles IXth, with Catherine of Medicis, commanded the siege in person, and pressed it so vigorously, that the Earl of Warwick was obliged to evacuate the place, after having sacrificed the greater part of his troops. At the end of the following century, after the bombardment and destruction of Dieppe, an attack was made upon Havre, but without success, owing to the strength of the fortifications, and particularly of the citadel. For this, the town was indebted to Cardinal Richelieu, who was its governor for a considerable time, and who also erected some of its public buildings, improved the basin, and gave a fresh impulse to trade, by ordering several large ships of war to be built here. As ship-builders, the inhabitants of Havre have always had a high character: they stand conspicuous in the annals of the art, for the construction of the vessel called la Grande Françoise, and justly termed la grande, as having been of two thousand tons burthen. Her cables are said to have been above the thickness of a man's leg; and, besides what is usually found in a ship, she contained a wind-mill and a tennis-court[[43]]. Her destination was, according to some authors, the East Indies; according to others, the Isle of Rhodes, then attacked by Soliman IInd; but we need not now inquire whither she was bound; for, after advantage had been taken of two of the highest tides, the utmost which could be done was to tow her to the end of the pier, where she stuck fast, and was finally obliged to be cut to pieces. Her history and catastrophe are immortalized by Rabelais, under the appellation of la Grande Nau Françoise.
It were unpardonable to take leave of Havre without one word upon the celebrated individuals to whom it has given birth; and you must allow me also, from our common taste for natural history, to point it out to your notice as a spot peculiarly favorable for the collecting of fossil shells, which are found about the town and neighborhood in great numbers and variety. The Abbé Dicquemare, a naturalist of considerable eminence, who resided here, may possibly be known to you by his observations on this subject, or still more probably by those upon the Aetiniæ; the latter having been translated into English, and honored with a place in the Transactions of our Royal Society. Of more extensive, but not more justly merited, fame, are George Scudery and his sister Magdalen: the one a voluminous writer in his day, though now little known, except for his Critical Observations upon the Cid; the other, a still more prolific author of novels, and alternately styled by her contemporaries the Sappho of her age, and "un boutique de verbiage;" but unquestionably a writer of merit, notwithstanding the many unmanly sneers of Boileau, whose bitter pen, like that of our own illustrious satirist, could not even consent to spare a female that had been so unfortunate as to provoke his resentment. She died in 1701, at the advanced age of ninety-four. The last upon my list is one of whom death has very recently deprived the world, the excellent Bernardin de Saint Pierre; a man whose writings are not less calculated to improve the heart than to enlarge the mind. It is impossible to read his works without feeling love and respect for the author. His exquisite little tale of Paul and Virginia is in the hands of every body; and his larger work, the Studies of Nature, deserves to be no less generally read, as full of the most original observations, joined to theories always ingenious, though occasionally fanciful: the whole conveyed in a singularly captivating style, and its merits still farther enhanced by a constant flow of unaffected piety.
The road from Havre to Rouen is of a different character, and altogether unlike that from Dieppe; but what it gains in beauty of landscape it loses in interest. And yet, perhaps, it is even wrong to say that it gains much in point of beauty; for, though: trees are more generally dispersed, though cultivation is universal, and the soil good, and produce luxuriant, and though the mind and the eye cannot but be pleased by the abundance and verdure of the country, yet in picturesque effect it is extremely deficient. Monotony, even of excellence, displeases. I am speaking of the road which passes through Bolbec and Yvetot: there is another which lies nearer to the banks of the Seine, through Lillebonne and Caudebec, and this, I do not doubt, would, in every point of view, have been preferable.
At but a short distance from Havre, to the left, lies the church, formerly part of the priory, of Grâville, a picturesque and interesting object. Of the date of its erection we have no certain knowledge, and it is much to be regretted that we have not, for it is clearly of Norman architecture; the tower a very pure specimen of that style, and the end of the north transept one of the most curious any where to be seen, and apparently; also one of the most ancient[[44]]. I should therefore feel no scruple in referring the building to a more early period than the beginning of the thirteenth century, where our records of the establishment commence; for it was then that William Malet, Lord of Grâville, placed here a number of regular canons from Ste. Barbe en Auge, and endowed them with all the tythes and patronage he possessed in France and England. The act by which Walter, Archbishop of Rouen, confirmed this foundation, is dated in 1203. Stachys Germanica, a plant of extreme rarity in England, grows abundantly here by the road-side; and apple-trees are very numerous, not only edging the road, but planted in rows across the fields.
The valley by which you enter Bolbec is pretty and varied; full of trees and houses, which stand at different heights upon the hills on either side. The town itself is long, straggling, and uneven. Through it runs a rapid little stream, which serves many purposes of extensive business, connected with the cotton manufactory, the preparation of leather, cutlery, &c. This stream, of the same name with the town, afterwards falls into the Seine, near Lillebonne, one of the most ancient places in Normandy, and formerly the metropolis of the Caletes, but now only a wretched village. Tradition refers its ruin to the period of the invasion of Gaul by the Romans; but it revived under the Norman Dukes, who resided here a portion of the year, and it was a favorite seat of William the Conqueror. To him, or to one of his immediate predecessors or successors, it is most probable that the castle owes its existence. Mr. Cotman found the ruins of it extensive and remarkable. The importance of the place, at a far more early date, is proved by the medals of the Upper and Lower Empire, which are frequently dug up here, and not less decisively by the many Roman roads which originate from the town. Bolbec can lay claim to no similar distinction; but it is full of industrious manufacturers. Twice in the last century it was burned to the ground; and, after each conflagration, it has arisen more flourishing from its ashes. At the last, which happened in 1765, Louis XVth made a donation to the town of eighty thousand livres, and the parliament of Normandy added a gratuity of half as much more, to assist the inhabitants in repairing their losses.
Yvetot, the next stage, possesses no visible interest, and furnishes no employment for the pencil. The town is, like Bolbec, a residence for manufacturers; and the curious stranger would seek in vain for any traces of decayed magnificence, any vestiges or records of a royal residence. And yet, it is held that Yvetot was the capital of a kingdom, which, if it really did exist, had certainly the distinction of being the smallest that ever was ruled on its own account. The subject has much exercised the talents and ingenuity of historians. It has been maintained by the affirmants, that an actual monarchy existed here at a period as remote as the sixth century; others argue that, though the Lords of Yvetot may have been stiled Kings, the distinction was merely titular, and was not conferred till about the year 1400; whilst a third, and, perhaps, most numerous, body, treat the whole as apocryphal.
Robert Gaguin[[45]], a French historian of the fifteenth century, prefaces the anecdote by observing, that he is the first French writer by whom it is recorded; and, as if sensible that such a remark could not fail to excite suspicion, he proceeds to say, that it is wonderful that his predecessors should have been silent. Yet he certainly was not the first who stated the story in print; for it appears in the Chronicles of Nicholas Gilles, which were printed in 1492, whilst the earliest edition of Gaugin was published in 1497.—According to these monkish historians, Clotharius, of France, son of Clovis, had threatened the life of his chamberlain, Gaultier, Lord of Yvetot, who thereupon fled the kingdom, and for ten years remained in voluntary exile, fighting against the infidels. At the end of this period, Gaultier hoped that the anger of his sovereign might be appeased, and he accordingly went to Rome, and implored the aid of the Supreme Pontiff. Pope Agapetus pitied the wanderer; and he gave unto him a letter addressed to the King of the Franks, in which he interceded for the supplicant. Clotharius was then residing at Soissons, his capital, and thither Gaultier repaired on Good-Friday, in the year 536, and, availing himself of the moment when the King was kneeling before the altar, threw himself at the feet of the royal votary, beseeching pardon in the name of the common Savior of mankind, who on that day shed his blood for the redemption of the human race. But his prayers and appeal were in vain: he found no pardon; Clothair drew his sword, and slew him on the spot. The Pope threatened the monarch with apostolical vengeance, and Clothair attempted to atone for the murder, by raising the town and territory of Yvetot into a kingdom, and granting it in perpetuity to the heirs of Gaultier.
Such is the tradition. There is a very able dissertation upon the subject, by the Abbé de Vertot[[46]], who endeavors to disprove the whole story: first by the silence of all contemporary authors; then by the fact, that Yvetot was not at that time under the dominion of Clothair; then by an anachronism, which the story involves as to Pope Agapetus; and finally by sundry other arguments of minor importance. Even he, however, admits, that in a royal decree, dated 1392, and preserved among the records of the Exchequer of Normandy, the title of King is given to the Lord of Yvetot; and he is obliged to cut the knot, which he is unable to untie, by stating it as his opinion, that at or about this period Yvetot was really raised into a sovereignty, though, on what occasion, for what purpose, and with what privileges, no document remains to prove. As a parallel case, he instances the Peers of France, an order with whose existence every body is acquainted, while of the date of the establishment nothing is known. It is surprising, that so clear-sighted a writer did not perceive that he was doing nothing more than illustrating, as the logicians say, obscurum per obscurius, or, rather, making darkness more dark; as if it were not considerably more probable, that so strange a circumstance should have taken place in the sixth century, and have been left unrecorded, when society was unformed, anomalies frequent, and historians few, than that it should have happened in the fourteenth, a period when the government of France was completely settled in a regular form, under one monarch, when literature was generally diffused, and when every remarkable event was chronicled. Besides which, the inhabitants of the little kingdom continued, in some measure, independent of his Most Christian Majesty, even until the revolution. At least, they paid not a sou of taxes, neither aides, nor tenth-penny, nor gabelle. It was a sanctuary into which no farmer of the revenue dared to enter. And it is hardly to be doubted, but that there must have been some very singular cause for so singular and enviable a privilege. In our own days, M. Duputel[[47]], a member of the academy of Rouen, has entered the lists against the Abbé; and between them the matter is still undecided, and is likely so to continue. For myself, I have no means of throwing light upon it; but the impression left upon my mind, after reading both sides of the question, is, that the arguments are altogether in favor of Vertot, while the greater weight of probabilities is in the opposite scale. I shall leave you, however, to poise the balance, and I shall not attempt to cause either end of the beam to preponderate, by acting the part of Old Nick as before exhibited to you; though I decidedly believe that Gaguin had some authority for his tale, but, by neglecting to quote it, he has left the minds of his readers to uncertainty, and his own veracity to suspicion.
With this digression I bid farewell to Yvetot, and its Lilliputian kingdom; nor will I detain you much longer on the way to Rouen, the road passing through nothing likely to afford interest in point of historical recollection or antiquities; though within a very short distance of the ancient Abbey of Pavilly on the one side, and at no great distance from the still more celebrated Monastery of Jumieges on the other. The houses in this neighborhood are in general composed of a framework of wood, with the interstices filled with clay, in which are imbedded small pieces of glass, disposed in rows, for windows. The wooden studs are preserved from the weather by slates, laid one over the other, like the scales of a fish, along their whole surface, or occasionally by wood over wood in the same manner. I am told that there are some very ancient timber churches in Norway, erected immediately after the conversion of the Northmen, which are covered with wood-scales: the coincidence is probably accidental, yet it is not altogether unworthy of notice. At one end the roof projects beyond the gable four or five feet, in order to protect a door-way and ladder or staircase that leads to it; and this elevation has a very picturesque effect. A series of villages, composed of cottages of this description, mixed with large manufactories and extensive bleaching grounds, comprise all that is to be remarked in the remainder of the ride; a journey that would be as interesting to a traveller in quest of statistical information, as it would be the contrary to you or to me.
Poverty, the inseparable companion of a manufacturing population, shews itself in the number of beggars that infest this road as well as that from Calais to Paris. They station themselves by the side of every hill, as regularly as the mendicants of Rome were wont to do upon the bridges. Sometimes a small nosegay thrown into your carriage announces the petition in language, which, though mute, is more likely to prove efficacious than the loudest prayer. Most commonly, however, there is no lack of words; and, after a plaintive voice has repeatedly assailed you with "une petite charité, s'il vous plait, Messieurs et Dames," an appeal is generally made to your devotion, by their gabbling over the Lord's Prayer and the Creed with the greatest possible velocity. At the conclusion, I have often been told that they have repeated them once, and will do so a second time if I desire it! Should all this prove ineffectual, you will not fail to hear "allons, Messieurs et Dames, pour l'amour de Dieu, qu'il vous donné un bon voyage," or probably a song or two; the whole interlarded with scraps of prayers, and ave-marias, and promises to secure you "santé et salut." They go through it with an earnestness and pertinacity almost inconceivable, whatever rebuffs they may receive. Their good temper, too, is undisturbed, and their face is generally as piteous as their language and tone; though every now and then a laugh will out, and probably at the very moment when they are telling you they are "pauvres petits misérables," or "petits malheureux, qui n'ont ni père ni mère." With all this they are excellent flatterers. An Englishman is sure to be "milord," and a lady to be "ma belle duchesse," or "ma belle princesse." They will try too to please you by "vivent les Anglais, vive Louis dix-huit." In 1814 and 1815, I remember the cry used commonly to be "vive Napoléon," but they have now learned better; and, in truth, they had no reason to bear attachment to the ex-emperor, an early maxim of whose policy it was to rid the face of the country of this description of persons, for which purpose he established workhouses, or dépots de mendicité, in each department, and his gendarmes were directed to proceed in the most summary manner, by conveying every mendicant and vagrant to these receptacles, without listening to any excuse, or granting any delay. He had no clear idea of the necessity of the gentle formalities of a summons, and a pass under his worship's hand and seal. And, without entering into the elaborate researches respecting the original habitat of a mumper, which are required by the English law, he thought that pauperism could be sufficiently protected by consigning the specimen to the nearest cabinet. The simple and rigorous plan of Napoléon was conformable to the nature of his government, and it effectually answered the purpose. The day, therefore, of his exile to Elba was a Beggar's Opera throughout France; and they have kept up the jubilee to the present hour, and seem likely to persist in maintaining it.
Footnotes:
[41] Goube, Histoire de la Normandie, III. p. 127.
[42] "François premier, revenant vainqueur de la bataille de Marignan en 1515, crut devoir profiter de la situation avantageuse de la Crique; il conçut le dessin de l'agrandir et d'en faire une place de guerre importante. Ce prince avoit pris les interêts du jeune Roi d'Ecosse, Jacques V, et ce fut pour se fortifier contre les Anglais qu'il forma la résolution de leur opposer cette barrière. Pour conduire l'entreprise il jetta les yeux sur un Gentilhomme nommé Guion le Roi, Seigneur de Chillon, Vice-Amiral, et Capitaine de Honfleur, et la premiere pierre fut posée en 1516."—Description de la Haute Normandie, I. p. 195.
[43] Description de la Haute Normandie, I. p. 200.
[44] See Cotman's Architectural Antiquities of Normandy, t. 12.—There is also a general view of the church, and of some of the monastic buildings from the lithographic press of the Comte de Lasteyrie.
[45] "Sed priusquàm a Clotario discedo, illud non prætermittendum reor, quod, cùm maximè cognitu dignum est, mirari licet a nullo Franco Scriptore litteris fuisse commendatum. Fuit inter familiarissimos Clotarii aulicos, Galterus Yvetotus, Caletus agri Rothomagensis, apprimè nobilis et qui regii cubiculi primarius cultor esset. Huic pro suâ integritate, de Clotario cùm meliùs meliùsque in dies promereretur, reliqui aulici invident, depravantes quodlibet ab eo gestum, nec desistunt donec irritatum illi Clotarium pessimis susurris efficiunt; quamobrem jurat Rex se hominem necaturum. Perceptâ Clotarii indignatione, Galterus pugnator illustris cedere Regi irato constituit. Igitur derelictâ Franciâ in militiam adversus religionis catholicæ inimicos pergit, ubi decem annos multis prosperè gestis rebus, ratus Clotarium simul cum tempore mitiorem effectum, Romam in primis ad Agapitum Pontificem se contulit: a quo ad Clotarium impetratis litteris, ad eum Suessione agentem se protinùs confert, Veneris die, quæ parasceve dicitur, cogitans religiosam Christianis diem ad pietatem sibi profuturam. Verùm litteris Pontificis exceptis cùm Galterum Clotarius agnovit, vetere irâ tanquam recenti livore percitus, rapto a proximo sibi equite gladio, hominem statìm interemit. Tam indignam insignis atque innocentis hominis necem, religioso loco et die ad Christi passionem recolendam celebri, pontifex inæquanimitèr ferens, confestìm Clotarium reprehendit, monetque iniquissimi facinoris rationem habere, se alioquin excommunicationis sententiam subiturum. Agapiti monita reveritus Rex, capto cum prudentibus consilio, Galteri hæredes, et qui Yvetotum deinceps possiderent, ab omni Francorum Regum ditione atque fide liberavit, liberosque prorsùs fore suo syngrapho et regiis scriptis confirmat. Ex quo factum est ut ejus pagi et terræ possessor Regem se Yvetoti hactenus sine controversiâ nominaverit. Id autem anno christianæ gratiæ quingentesimo trigesimo sexto gestum esse indubiâ fide invenio. Nam dominantibus longo post tempore in Normanniâ. Anglis, ortâque inter Joannem Hollandum, Auglum, et Yvetoti dominum quæstione, quasi proventuum ejus terræ pars fisco Regis Anglorum quotannis obnoxia esset, Caleti Proprætor anno salutis 1428, de ratione litis judiciario ordine se instruens, id, sicut annotatum a me est, comperisse judicavit."—Robert Gaguin, lib. II. fol. 17.
[46] Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions, IV. p. 728.—The question is also discussed in the Traité de la Noblesse, by M. de la Roque; in the Mercure de France, for January, 1726; and in a Latin treatise by Charles Malingre, entitled "De falsâ regni Yvetoti narratione, ex majoribus commentariis fragmentum."
[47] Précis Analytique des Travaux de l'Académie de Rouen, 1811, p. 181.