'Why were they proud—because red-lined accounts
Were richer than the songs of Grecian years?
Why were they proud—again we ask, aloud,
Why in the name of glory were they proud?'
And so on; but what we might say of Avranches would apply to nearly every little English colony abroad. There are two sides to the picture, and there is a good, pleasant side to the English society at Avranches; there is also great necessity to be 'particular,' however much we may laugh. English people who come to reside abroad are not, as a rule, very good representatives of their nation; neither they nor their children seem to flourish on a foreign soil, they differ in their character as much as transplanted trees; they have more affinity with the poplars and elms of France than with the sturdy oaks of England.[27]
Let us not be thought to disparage Avranches; if it is our lot to live here we may enjoy life well; and if we are not deterred by the dull and 'weedy' aspect of some of the old chateaux, we may also make some pleasant friends amongst the French families in the neighbourhood.
In summer time we may almost live out of doors, and ramble about in the fields and sketch, as we should do in England; the air is fresh and bracing, and the sea breeze comes gratefully on the west wind. We may stroll through shady lanes and between hedgerows, and we shall hear the familiar sound of bells, and see through the trees a church tower, such as the following (which is indeed the common type throughout Normandy); but here the similarity to England ceases, for we may enter the building at any hour, and find peasant women at prayers.
And we may see sometimes a party of English girls from a French school, with their drawing master; sketching from nature and making minute studies of the brandies of trees. They are seated on a hill-side, and there is a charming pastoral scene before them,—wood and water, pasture-land and cattle grazing,—women with white caps, and little white houses peeping through the trees.
But the trees that they are studying are small and characterless compared with our own, they are scattered about the landscape, or set in trim lines along the roads: our fair artists had better be in England for this work. There is none of the mass and grandeur here that we see in our forest trees, none of the suggestive groups with which we are so familiar, even in the parks of London, planted 'by accident' (as we are apt to call it), but standing together with clear purpose of protection and support,—the strong-limbed facing the north and stretching out their protecting arms, the weaker towering above them in the centre of the square; whilst those to the south spread a deep shade almost to the ground. French trees are under an Imperial necessity to form into line; the groves at Fontainbleau are as straight as the Fifth Avenue at New York. There are no studies of trees in all Normandy like the royal oaks of Windsor, there is nothing to compare in grandeur with the stems of the Burnham beeches, set in a carpet of ferns; and nothing equal in effect to the massing of the blue pines—with their bronzed stems against an evening sky—in Woburn Park in Bedfordshire. We may bring some pretty studies from Avranches and from the country round, but we should not come to France to draw trees.
But there are studies which we may make near Avranches, and of scenes that we shall not meet with in England. If we descend the hill and walk a few miles in the direction of Granville, we may see by the roadside the remnants of several wayside 'stations' of very early date. Let us sit down by the roadside to sketch one of these (A.D. 1066), and depict for the reader, almost with the accuracy of a photograph, its grotesque proportions. It stands on a bank, in a prominent position, by the roadside; a rude contrast to the surrounding scenery. Presently there comes up an old cantonnier in a blouse and heavy sabots, who has just returned from mending the roads; he takes off his cap, crosses himself devoutly, and kneels down to pray. The sun shines upon the cross and upon the kneeling figure; the soft wind plays about them, the bank is lovely with wild flowers; there are purple hills beyond, and a company of white clouds careering through space. But the old man sees nothing but the cross, he has no eyes for the beauty of landscape, no ear for the music of the birds or the voices of nature; he sees nothing but the image of his Saviour, he kneels as he knelt in childhood before the cross, he clasps his worn hands, and prays, with many repetitions, words which evidently bring comfort to his soul. In a few minutes the old man rises and puts on his cap, with a brass plate on it with the number of his canton, produces a little can of soup and bread and sits down on the bank to breakfast; ending by unrolling a morsel of tobacco from a crumpled paper, putting it into his mouth and going fast asleep.