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.