If one could only reverse the wheel of time and see the church as it looked at its great dedication festival, when, glittering in the smartness of work fresh from the chisel, it was dedicated in the presence of Henry the First of England! Would the workmen differ greatly in type, we wonder, from the group who now sit lazily sunning themselves on the steps? The present men, who are in blue blouses, are spare, not large of limb, with faces the colour of their own house-tiles, with sharp thin features and keen eyes? The clothing of the poor in Falaise is not so picturesque as in many parts of Normandy—the blouse is here as everywhere, but there is nothing else striking in the costume of the men, and only the older women wear caps, and those of a very simple sort; the young ones go about with heads uncovered, and hair neatly coiled up in a little top-knot, after the usual manner of the French.
One of the most attractive views in Falaise, is that to be gained by standing on the raised road that leaves the town direct to Caen, and looking east and west. In the deep fosse, where once a mighty river must have run, there is now only a dirty ditch, which serves the women of Falaise for a washing-place, as it did nine hundred years ago. On either side rise neat trimly-kept gardens, terrace upon terrace, rich in greenery. In fact, the masses of green foliage which break up any general view of Falaise are among its principal charms. The influence of environment is seen in character, for even the smallest and poorest cottages have their window-boxes and flowerpots, and the neatness of the gardens is a sight to marvel at; even the wee children love flowers. In the shops, especially the butchers’, where least of all one would expect to see them, one finds great bowls and pyramids of flowers, so large that they could hardly be encircled by both arms; these are made up of lilac, rhododendron, pale pink peonies, tulips, and forget-me-not, and are such Gargantuan bouquets as would make sunshine in any London house.
A LITTLE NORMAN GIRL
A rough and narrow track leads along the northern side of the river opposite the castle. This is a very poor part of the town, where one small room serves for bedroom and living-room for a whole family, and the dark nut-brown interiors are in striking contrast with the blaze of sunlight outside. The children are mostly healthy, sometimes strikingly so; and among them it is difficult to pick out any special type; bright brown eyes and sepia locks are seen side by side with hair perfectly flaxen in colour and eyes of palest watery blue; both types alike greet the “English” as a friend, for too many English are seen here to allow them to be awesome, and perhaps also the little ones learn with their earliest history there is a bond of kinship between them and these strange people who come from across the sea. From nearly every house comes the quiet hum of a hand-machine, wherewith men and women knit socks and other garments; this sound mingles with the splash and thud of the women busily washing clothes in the little narrow ditch, kneeling in their wooden tubs, arms in ice-cold water, and backs bent in the occupation which seems to take up far the largest proportion of a French peasant-woman’s day.
There are little bridges over the water, and footpaths winding in and out, and above all is the clear vivid sky of a May day. If we went on a little further until we were almost beneath the perpendicular walls of the castle, we should come all at once on two things, which would carry us back into the far past, for a large tannery still spreads irregular buildings on the very place where once rose the tannery of William’s maternal grandfather. Its presence is quickly felt, and we can see the peasants coming away from it laden with the little “cakes” of waste bark called “mottes,” which are used for fuel, and so oddly resemble peats. Not far off a sound of voices and splashing of water will bring us to a strange place, the town washing-shed, where, with the dim light from the roof gleaming on the soapy green water, and the time-worn posts, we shall find a score of women, perhaps some of them actual collateral descendants of Arlotta’s, slapping and splashing the soiled linen with as much heartiness as ever did the girl who was to become the mother of a line of kings. It is the same spot, the same stream, whose name is Ante, only the place is now roofed over instead of being open to the sky, as it was in Arlotta’s day. We leave the valley and wind upward past some tumbledown cottages of picturesque lath and plaster; past others with such a solid foundation of stone showing in the low doorways, that they seem as if they might well have stood since the Conqueror’s day. On and on until we reach a lane, with high hedges and lush rich green grass, and pass out at last on to a flat tableland, where the purple-red orchis stand up like little tin soldiers in the grass, and heather and gorse grow everywhere. We are upon Mont Mirat, and at one end is a clump of grey rocks close by a group of windswept firs; quite suddenly, at our feet as it were, a familiar object greets us, startlingly close; it is the flat cap of the Talbot tower, and as we near it, we see the whole castle appear, and realise we are on the other side of the ravine, on a level with the tower, which is in reality some distance away, but which, in the brilliant clearness of the atmosphere, looks as if a well-thrown stone might easily strike it. The jackdaws wheel and scream around the walls, and their shadows flit after them, growing, fading, disappearing with infinite fantasy. And the castle is a vision of light, bathed in the rays of a westering sun; it appears as a perfect mass of yellow, from the deep dead gold of the streaks of lichen to the palest biscuit colour of the patches on the walls, fading to dun and sepia in the shadows.
You can still see in the castle the room in which the mighty William is said to have been born, though all probability points to his birthplace having been in the valley below. The room shown is in no sense a royal apartment; it is a little, dark, dungeon-like chamber, airless and lightless, built in the thickness of the wall; but sleeping accommodation was not made much account of then. In any case, the castle and the valley on which we look were the earliest associations of William’s childhood. Here he lay an unconscious babe, when, as we are told by Wace, he was visited by two of the premier barons in the land, one of whom exclaimed prophetically, “Par toi e par ta ligne sert la mienne moult abaisse.”
Here in that varied childhood, passed partly in the unsavoury tanyard with his grandfather, partly in the castle with the stern-faced man who caressed him, and whom he was told to call father; eyed askance by the richly-dressed young nobles; hugged by the simple-minded Arlotta, he grew up. Gradually a knowledge of his own peculiar position, of his royal but sullied birth, of the battle before him, must have forced themselves into the mind of a boy far more thoughtful than his years; and by the time he was eight, at an age when most boys have hardly begun to think, he had to take up his stern inheritance.
There is no doubt that spring is the time to see Falaise—spring, when the trees are at their freshest and richest, undimmed by dust or heat. By standing on the highest part of one line of rocks, we can see behind the castle in miniature the church of Guibray perched on a hill, its conical spire showing up against a distant line of horizon, so straight, so blue, so misty, it might well be the sea.
The town itself shows as a mass of roofs, varying from brick red to slate blue, but mostly the colour of rust; these are strangely high-pitched to an English eye, and show well amid the mass of complementary green, in which there are darker touches in the copper beeches and cedars here and there—a magnificent panorama, with enough sentiment and history about it to keep it from the insipidity of mere beauty, and nothing more.