In and out of Three Normandy Inns

by Anna Bowman Dodd

A group of gossamer caps beneath a row of sad, gray-faced houses was our Bayeux welcome. The faces beneath the caps watched our approach with the same sobriety as did the old houses—they had the antique Norman seriousness of aspect. The noise we made with the clatter and rattle of our broken-down vehicle seemed an impertinence, in the face of such severe countenances. We might have been entering a deserted city, except for the presence of these motionless Normandy figures. The cathedral met us at the threshold of the city: magnificent, majestic, a huge gray mountain of stone, but severe in outline, as if the Norman builders had carved on the vast surface of its facade an imprint of their own grave earnestness.

We were somewhat early for the hot breakfast at Nigaud's. There was, however, the appetizing smell of soup, with a flourishing pervasiveness of onion in the pot, to sustain the vigor of an appetite whetted by a start at dawn. The knickerbockers came in with the omelette. But one is not a Briton on his travels for nothing; one does not leave one's own island to be the dupe of French inn-keepers. The smell of the soup had not departed with our empty plates, and the voice of the walkers was not of the softest when they demanded their rights to be as odorous as we. There is always a curiously agreeable sensation, to an American, in seeing an Englishman angry; to get angry in public is one thing we do badly; and in his cup of wrath our British brother is sublime—he is so superbly unconscious—and so contemptuous—of the fact that the world sometimes finds anger ridiculous.

At the other end of the long and narrow table two other travellers were seated, a man and a woman. But food, to them, it was made manifestly evident, was a matter of the most supreme indifference. They were at that radiant moment of life when eating is altogether too gross a form of indulgence. For these two were at the most interesting period of French courtship—just after the wedding ceremony, when, with the priest's blessing, had come the consent of their world and of tradition to their making the other's acquaintance. This provincial bride and her husband of a day were beginning, as all rustic courting begins, by a furtive holding of hands; this particular couple, in view of our proximity and their own mutual embarrassment, had recourse to the subterfuge of desperate lunges at the other's fingers, beneath the table-cloth. The screen, as a screen, did not work. It deceived no one—as the bride's pale-gray dress and her flowery bonnet also deceived no one—save herself. This latter, in certain ranks of life, is the bride's travelling costume, the world over. And the world over, it is worn by the recently wedded with the profound conviction that in donning it they have discovered the most complete of all disguises.

This bride and groom were obviously in the first rapture of mutual discovery. The honey in their moon was not fresher than their views of the other's tastes and predilections.

"Ah—ah—you like to travel quickly—to see everything, to take it all in a gulp—so do I, and then to digest at one's leisure."

The bride was entirely of this mind. Only, she murmured, there were other things one must not do too quickly—one must go slow in matters of the heart—to make quite sure of all the stages.

But her husband was at her throat, that is, his eyes and lips were, as he answered, so that all the table might partake of his emotion—"No, no, the quicker the heart feels the quicker love comes. Tiens, voyons, mon amie, toi-même, tu m'as confié"—and the rest was lost in the bride's ear.

Apparently we were to have them, these brides, for the rest of our journey, in all stages and of all ages! Thus far none others had appeared as determined as were these two honey-mooners, that all the world should share their bliss. They were cracking filberts with their disengaged fingers, the other two being closely interlocked, in quite scandalous openness, when we left them.

That was the only form of excitement that greeted us in the quiet Bayeux streets. The very street urchins invited repose; the few we saw were seated sedately on the threshold of their own door-steps, frequent sallies abroad into this quiet city having doubtless convinced them of the futility of all sorties. The old houses were their carved facades as old ladies wear rich lace—they had reached the age when the vanity of personal adornment had ceased to inflate. The great cathedral, towering above the tranquil town, wore a more conscious air; its significance was too great a contrast to the quiet city asleep at its feet. In these long, slow centuries the towers had grown to have the air of protectors.

The famous tapestries we went to see later, might easily enough have been worked yesterday, in any one of the old mediaeval houses; Mathilde and her hand-maidens would find no more—not so much—to distract and disturb them now in this still and tranquil town, with its sad gray streets and its moss-grown door-steps, as they must in those earlier bustling centuries of the Conqueror. Even then, when Normandy was only beginning its career of importance among the great French provinces, Bayeux was already old. She was far more Norse then than Norman; she was Scandinavian to the core; even her nobles spoke in harsh Norse syllables; they were as little French as it was possible to be, and yet govern a people.