It is the fashion to praise French cooking, but to an Englishman who has passed the day bicycling with nothing but a couple of soft-boiled eggs and some sour cream, there is something unsatisfying about the ordinary dinner menu at a French hotel. The monotonous soup, always maigre; the dull variety of nameless white fish, which seems to be kept in stock as a staple; the little tasteless pieces of veal, all the same size and shape cut on a dish; the leathery and half-raw mutton, also cut in the same way; the very small variety of vegetables, and utter absence of attempt at sweets—is not an appetising menu. The French are apparently very conservative in their food. A traveller of eighty years ago tells us: “The breakfast at the table d’hôte at Argentan, as at every other place where I stopped, was of exactly the same nature as their dinners. That is, soup, fish, meat of different kinds, eggs, salad, and a dessert with cider; no potatoes or any other vegetable but asparagus at any meal,” and this would be a very fair account of an hotel menu nowadays. The worst fault seems to be monotony, always chicken, gigot, or veal. Of course, at the very first-class hotels, at places such as Dieppe, where English influence has penetrated, things are certainly better, but in the ordinary best hotel in a second-class town, the food is very unsatisfactory, and the meat always tough and bad, in spite of the splendid pasture lands and the fine fat beasts one sees grazing; good beef is very rare, and good mutton unknown. In this respect Normandy seems to have been unvaryingly the same, for the traveller above quoted writes also: “With occasional exceptions, the meat in this part of Normandy (Caen) is of inferior quality, more particularly the mutton, which is generally as lean and tough as an old shoe.” So often has the praise of French vegetables been repeated, that one has learned to take it as an axiom, until one goes and finds out for oneself. The truth is there is less, not more variety, than with us; such a thing as a good spring cabbage is unknown, and cauliflower is served only au gratin. Yet the hotels have improved enormously in many points in the last seven or eight years. They have their advantages, and in some ways every French hotel, even the poorest, can beat its English compeers. The great advantage of cheap wine is felt at every hotel in Normandy; the question of what to drink at dinner, usually such a difficult one, is solved for you. On the table, almost everywhere, are red and white wine and seltzer water “compris”; and at every hotel, without exception, cider, varying it is true greatly as to quality, can be had for the asking.
The hotels are also cheap. At those of the first class, 1 franc is the average charge for the petit déjeuner meal; the déjeuner is generally 3; and the dinner 3.50; while the room may be taken at an average price of 3 francs. Therefore a full day at an hotel usually costs 10.50 francs, or en pension 10 francs, equalling between 8 and 9 shillings; but at fashionable coast resorts in the season 15 francs per day is the lowest rate, and in the out-of-the-way districts, and off the beaten tracks, 7 and 8 francs a day are the usual charges. At any rate, in Normandy one is free from the ridiculous impost called “attendance,” which entails an additional 1s. 6d. a day in many English and Scotch hotels, while tipping is expected just the same.
Many of the hotels have a forbidding aspect outside; until one is used to it, it is a little damping to enter under a low archway leading to a stableyard, but the entry is often the worst part of it. An Englishman touring through the country will find as a rule he is able to find without difficulty quarters which possess all requisites though not luxuries.
CHAPTER II
THE NORMAN DUKES
Normandy is probably at the same time the best and the least known place on the Continent to Englishmen: the best known, because the most accessible; the least known, because, beyond the fact that the Duke of Normandy conquered England in the year 1066, and that it is in consequence from Normandy that our line of kings is derived, the average Englishman knows little or nothing of its history or associations. Ask him plainly: What is the extent of Normandy? and he will answer vaguely, “It is the north of France.” So it is, a part of the north of France, but not the whole. As a matter of fact, the term Normandy has now little geographical meaning. Normandy is not a province for practical purposes, nor does it carry any civil boundaries marking customs, or law, or government. Normandy embraces the departments of Manche, Orne, Eure, Calvados, and Seine Inférieure; that is to say, it reaches from Eu and its port Le Tréport on the east; to the stream Couesnon, which flows into the English Channel a little beyond Mont St Michel on the west; and southward it just takes in Alençon, dips down to a point near La Ferté Bernard, returning with a wavering north-eastward line across the Seine at Vernon, and by Gisors to Eu aforesaid. It answers also to the modern dioceses of Rouen, Evreux, Séez, Bayeux, and Coutances. The Archbishop of Rouen still keeps the title of Primate of Normandy, otherwise the name has gone out of formal use, and Normandy is merged in France.
Yet it is extraordinary with what tenacity and affection Englishmen regard a name which links the dwellers in the land to them as kin, and it is still more extraordinary how, after centuries of submersion, beneath a rule entirely French, the kinship makes itself felt in manner and character as well as in memory. The qualities of the sturdy northmen whose bravery and roving dispositions led them to lands far from their own, and made them at home everywhere, still exist in their descendants, as the colonies of England testify. When the Danes had settled down upon the north of France “they were,” says Freeman, “no longer Northmen but Normans; the change in the form of the name aptly expresses the change in those who bore it.” Yet many and many a vessel full of vikings discharged itself on that land without making any impression, until one came bearing the mighty Rollo, who was destined to stay and make a permanent mark.
The France of those days, torn by dissensions, was not the homogeneous country we now know. Long before Cæsar first conquered Gaul, and in the time of his successor Augustus, Lyons was the capital; then came the Germans and Goths, who began to overrun the land, and a little later the low German tribe of the Franks came also; they were destined to give their name to a land alien from their own, just as the modern name of Scotland was brought over the sea originally by the men of Ireland. It was in the beginning of the sixth century that the greater part of Gaul lay under the dominion of Clovis, King of the Franks. Yet after his death, in accordance with the German custom, the kingdom was divided among his sons, one province being Neustria, which included what we know as Normandy, and endless struggles ensued, until in the middle of the seventh century arose the great Charlemagne, who ruled by his might over all central Europe, now divided into many nations. But in the struggle between his grandsons, his great dominion was split up, one grandson taking what is now Germany, another Italy, and the third, and most powerful, Charles the Bald, holding France. He had for his kingdom “all Gaul west of the Scheldt, the Meuse, the Saône, and the Rhone; it ran down to the Mediterranean, and was thence bounded by the Pyrenees and the Atlantic.” Brittany was still savagely independent, however, and the northern coasts of Neustria were ravaged by the Northmen. The county of Paris became part of the possessions of the duchy of France, and Robert the Strong, made duke by Charles the Bald, was set to fight against the northern marauders, who had penetrated even to Paris. But the descendants of the great Charles were weak and feeble, and as his house declined that of Robert the Strong grew, culminating in his great-grandson, Hugh Capet, who, on the death of the last of the direct line of degenerate Carlovingians, became king of the France that we know.
But before Capet had succeeded in seating himself on the throne, the Northmen had settled permanently in France. In the reign of Charles the Bald’s grandson, Charles the Simple, Rollo or Rolf, the Northman, had established himself at Rouen, and the king had made terms with him, giving him his daughter to wife, and granting him a tract of land from the Epte to the sea, with Rouen as its heart. This was in 912, and is the first recognised settlement of the Northmen. Rollo himself is a fine bold figure, only surpassed by one other among his descendants. His frame was gigantic, and when in full armour no horse could carry him. He seems to have combined, with the strenuous virile qualities of the northerners, the capacity for organisation and settled government belonging to a later period, and a more civilised people. He embraced the faith of his wife Gisella, and was baptized under the name of Robert, though it is as Rollo he will be known and remembered. He was the founder of Normandy, and under his government, learning and industry sprang up and flourished. His followers received the softening influences of the French, and the French language began to be spoken in Normandy.