That 'the country round Mortain is not known as well as it deserves,' is a remark that cannot be too often repeated; we cannot, indeed, imagine a more delightful district for an English artist in which to spend a summer, and we promise him that he shall find subjects that will look as well on the walls of the Academy as the Welsh hills, or the valleys of Switzerland.
We are at a loss to express in words the romantic beauty of the situation of Mortain, where we may pitch our tent, and make studies of rocks, which will tell us more in practice, than written volumes about these wondrous geological formations; and the clusters of ivy in the niches, the moss and lichen, the rich colour of the boulders, the trees in the valleys below us, the clear sky, and the sweet air that comes across the bay, make us linger here for the beauty of the scene alone; regardless almost of the ancient history of Mortain, of the story of its Pagan temples, of its thirteenth-century church, and almost unmindful of the 'Abbaye de Savigny,' eight miles off, a building which is worthy of a special visit.
And we come away, perforce, in the evening-time from all this lovely landscape, from the pure air, from the cascades, the rocks, and the ferns, from everything agreeable to the senses, to the most literal, shameful, wallowing in the mire. We have spoken, so far, only of the scene; let add a word in very truth, about 'man and his dwelling-place.' How shall we describe it? We are at the Hôtel de la Poste, and we are housed like pigs; we (some of us) eat like them, and live even as the lower animals. We—'Messieurs et Mesdames,' lords and ladies of the creation—hide our heads in a kennel; our dirty rooms 'give' on to the odorous court-yard; we turn our backs upon the valley which the building almost overhangs; we can neither breathe pure air nor see the bright landscape. Any details of the domestic arrangements and surroundings of the Hôtel de la Poste at Mortain would be unfit for these pages; suffice it that, we are in one of the second-rate old-fashioned inns of France, the style of which our travelled forefathers may well remember.[35]
We have more than once been censured for saying that the French people have little natural love for scenery, and a stilted, not to say morbid, theory of landscape; but whilst we stay in this inn, from which we might have had such splendid views, we become confirmed in the opinion (formed in the Pyrenees), that the French people do not care, and that they think nothing of defiling Nature's purest places. At this hotel we are in the position of the prisoners confined aloft in the tower at Florence; the hills and valleys are before and around us, but we are not allowed to see them.[36]
On our road to Vire, twenty-three miles distant, it is tempting to make a digression to the town of Domfront (which the reader will see on the map, a few miles to the south-east); we should do so, to see its picturesque position, with the ancient castle on the heights, and the town, as at Falaise, growing round its feet; also an old church at the foot of the hill, which is considered 'one of the best and purest specimens of Norman work to be found anywhere.'
But the route we have chosen for description, now turns northward, passing through a still beautiful land, studded with thatched cottages, and lighted up with the dazzling white helmets of the women who are busy in the fields, and in the farms and homesteads. As we approach the town of Vire, the population has evidently been absorbed into the cloth and paper mills, for, excepting in the morning and the evening, there are very few people abroad; we see scarcely any one, save, at regular intervals on the road, the old cantonniers occupied in their business of making stone-pies,[37] or a village curé at work in his garden; but we notice that the houses are neater and better built than those near Mortain, where grass grows luxuriantly upon them, and the roofs are covered with coloured mosses.
The situation of Vire is one of extreme beauty (reminding us again of Switzerland), with hills and valleys richly wooded, the trees being larger than any we have yet seen on our route. If we had approached Vire from the west, by way of Villedieu and St. Sever, we should have had even finer views than by way of Mortain; but Villedieu is at present more deplorable than Mortain in its domestic arrangements, and the inn is to be avoided by all cleanly people; however, with the completion of the railway from Vire to Granville, we are promised much better things.
