A STREET IN GRANVILLE
To this town may be accredited the honour of having produced the first poet laureate, for a poet named Henry of Avranches so attracted the notice of Henry III., that he gave him a pension and attached him to the court.
Avranches was from very early times noted for its magnificent and valuable library, but in 1899 a fire broke out and destroyed many priceless MSS., among them a copy of Domesday Book in three colours.
There are still, however, 16,000 volumes in the Public Library. These public libraries are notable features in almost every town in Normandy; they do not quite correspond with the English libraries of the same heading, but rather with the cathedral or chapter libraries attached to some of our diocesan towns, and they usually have owed their foundation to the monks, for abbeys were in early times the chief seats of learning. They frequently contain very valuable MSS., and nearly always have some treasures to show. The reference rooms are lofty, well furnished, and convenient, and strangers are freely admitted. At Rouen the library contains 133,000 volumes and 3600 MSS., including several service books and missals written in the eleventh century in the Anglo-Saxon style. One missal belonged to Robert of Jumièges, who became Archbishop of Canterbury, and to whose chronicles we owe so much of our knowledge of early Norman history; there is a Benedictional of 988, written for Æthelgar, Bishop of Selsey, and the earliest printed book is of the year 1468. The origin of the library is obscure. At the end of the twelfth century it is first mentioned as containing 160 volumes; in 1200 it was partly destroyed. The library at Bayeux holds 30,000 volumes, and that at Caen 100,000 volumes and 800 MSS. Other figures are—Lisieux, 28,000; Cherbourg, 30,000; Valognes, 20,000; Havre, 30,000, with eighth and ninth century MSS. These libraries are often housed in a part of the building of the Hotel de Ville, and should certainly be seen by any visitor who has half an hour to spare in passing through any of the above towns.
CHAPTER VIII
THE FAMOUS TAPESTRY
There is not a school child in England who has not heard of the marvellous piece of work supposed to have been wrought by Queen Matilda and the ladies of her court; but until the tapestry is actually seen, the conception of it is as vague as that of giants and fairies. As a matter of fact, the work is not tapestry at all, but crewel work. Real tapestry resembles carpet, and is closely worked, and the background is all filled in; but this of Bayeux is lightly worked in worsted, on a strip of linen about two hundred and thirty feet in length by about twenty inches in breadth, and is placed on a stand, ingeniously arranged, so that by walking round the outside and inside the whole strip can be seen without trouble, and in itself remains intact.
The question whether Queen Matilda and the ladies of William’s court really were the authors of this marvellous record in needlework will, with such subjects as the authorship of the Letters of Junius, always remain unanswered. There are arguments for and against; the fact that the tapestry was designed for the glorification of William, looks as if it were executed in his lifetime, and the disproportionate importance attached to the smallest events in the campaign in Brittany, which are given with more detail and fidelity than even in the chronicles, looks as if that campaign must have been contemporary, and was depicted with that disregard for proportion which is ever the effect of seeing an affair in the foreground. The minute details given in the case of the figures look also as if they were done from personal knowledge—details such as the fact that Edward the Confessor is always represented with a beard, and that the Saxons wear moustaches, while the Frenchmen are clean shaven. In the reign of the Conqueror’s successor, the Normans themselves cultivated beards, and allowed the hair to grow; and anyone working tapestry at that date would surely never have been realistic enough to depart from the fashions he saw around him to depict those which had preceded them. Later on, also, other little points, such as immoderately peaked shoes, were adopted; these are not shown in the tapestry, though had the work been done later than the Conqueror’s reign, the fashions would have been those of the then prevailing mode.