The whole coast-line is shingly, and its chief characteristic is the up and down sweep of the contour, which continually rises to the top of tall white cliffs, and almost immediately falls again right down to the sea-level, only to rise once more. This peculiarity is admirable for its variety, and it affords fine shelter to the seaside places in the folds, but it renders any attempt at passing along near the coast on foot or bicycle very tedious work. The white cliffs, however, and the shingly beaches make eminently beautiful foregrounds for a sea so often blue in the sunlight which France seems to attract so much more than England, and some of the cliffs are crowned by fine trees or blooming gorse.
Going westward from Dieppe, we come to the little village of Varengeville, standing high on the top of the cliffs. It has two great attractions—one its shady lanes, arched by beeches so as to resemble veritable cathedral aisles, a thing unique in Normandy; and the other the fine Maison d’Ango, now a farmhouse. This is built round four sides of a courtyard, and the walls are worked with marvellous skill into various intricate patterns with the materials of flint and brick. The latter, which adorn the cowbyres, are set in even patterns, and the effect with the red tiles and thatch is pretty and curious. On one side of the mansion itself is an open loggia or arcade, raised above the ground-level. But the most striking and notable detail is the columbier standing in the yard, one of the very few remaining. It is cylindrical, and the walls are worked in patterns of lines and bands in the same way as those of the house. It terminates in a curved dome-like roof. The whole is well worth going to see, in spite of the churlish, and we must add, in France, very unusual, spirit that animates the present occupants. We pass many little places ever growing in popularity, such as Veules and St Valery en Caux, bearing family resemblance to Dieppe in their situation in the breaks formed by streams cutting through the chalk cliffs, and come to Fécamp, which is a bit of a health resort, a bit of a manufacturing town, and a bit of a fishing harbour, without being particularly distinguished in any one of the three things. From Fécamp, as from all these northern fishing towns, there annually sets forth that fleet for the cold waters near Iceland so touchingly described in Pierre Lôti’s Pêcheurs d’Islande.
FISHERMEN AT FÉCAMP
Fécamp stands at the foot of cliffs from 300 feet to 400 feet in height, around the base of which are scattered the great blocks of débris with which the seas play like footballs. The memory of the terrible storm of 1663, when the whole of the valley or chine was blocked by these stones, hurled up by the terrific power of the sea, is still preserved. The chief claim of Fécamp to notice, however, is its splendid abbey, of which the church still remains; it was built in the Conqueror’s reign, burnt and rebuilt, so that the greater part is of the thirteenth century, and some dates from the reconstruction in the fifteenth. What is left of the abbey has been built into the public offices of the town.
But the strange legend of La Fontaine du Precieux-Sang should come before mention of the abbey, for it was because of this relic St Waneng erected here the first religious house for nuns. The story goes that a case containing some of the blood of our Lord had been placed in the cleft of a fig-tree by Isaac, the nephew of Nicodemus, but in some way the stump had been cut down, and reached the sea, from whence it floated unaided all the way to Fécamp, and a well in the courtyard of a house is pointed out as the actual spot where it stranded. During a great conflagration this precious relic was lost, but an angel brought it back, saying, “Voici le prix de la redemption du monde, qui vient de Jerusalem.” Needless to say, this priceless relic drew thousands of pilgrims to the shrine at Fécamp. They came in spite of wind and weather; as the quaint old Norman song has it:—
“Rouge rosée au matin,
Beau temps pour le pèlerin
Pluie de matin
N’arrete pas le pèlerin.”
And the monks reaped a rich reward from their ingenuity! Passing Valmont, with its old castle of the D’Estoutevilles, we come to Etretat, a much more fashionable bathing-place than Fécamp.
The coast at Etretat is grand and beautiful, though the beach is stony. The sea with its ceaseless work has carved caverns in the high cliffs. The three principal headlands, standing grandly out to sea, all end in a natural arch. Here, as elsewhere, fishermen mingle with the gay crowd that increases the population some five hundred per cent. in the summer.