The sunsets are a thing to marvel at, never two nights alike. ‘C’est adorable!’ as our old Norman waiting-woman said, with a fervent pressure of the hands, as she looked with us on ‘the crimson splendour when the day had waned.’ Sometimes it is a lingering glory, the rose-light on the pools fading slowly, as if loath to go; sometimes the spectacle is more quickly over, and almost ‘with one stride comes the dark;’ then swiftly in their appointed order the familiar stars. Now and again, it is a great storm—a blue-black sea and an inky sky, rent too frequently by the zigzags of the lightning. There is always the charm of change and novelty; the piquancy of the unexpected.
After the serious business of the bath is over, the lunch-hour has arrived. Being as it were one family, we all take our meals at the same time. Later in the afternoon, Houlgate rides and drives, elegant landaus, carriages with linen umbrellas suspended over them, donkey-carts driven by beautiful young ladies in beautiful Paris gowns. Beuzeval braves the dust, and looks on respectfully at the show; but Beuzeval does not drive much. It takes its little folks to the beach and helps them to build sand-castles. It goes off in bands armed with forks to the exciting chase of the équilles. These little fish of the eel tribe, which are savoury eating, burrow in the sand at low tide, and it requires some skill to capture them. Whole families go out shrimping too, looking not unpicturesque as, set against the light on the far sea-margin, they push their nets before them. One afternoon we watched two bearded men amuse themselves for hours with flying a pink kite. Their gesticulations were lively, and their excitement great, when at last it sailed bravely before the breeze. We are very easily amused here; for the most part, we are content to look about us, hospitable to all stray impressions. At such times, one is tempted to the idlest speculations. Why, for instance, are all the draught-horses white? Is it that the blue sheep-skin collar may have the advantage of contrast? Why, in a land of green pastures, where kine abound, is milk at a ransom price, and butter not always eatable? Why, again, in spite of our simplicity, our vie de famille, is it necessary to one’s well-being here to have an inexhaustible Fortunatus’s purse? But these things are mysteries; let us cease to meddle with them, and follow Houlgate wider afield, on foot, if you will, to little Dives, too long neglected—Dives, which sends its placid river to swell the sea, but lingers inland itself, hardly on the roughest day within sound of the waves.
It was at Dives that Duke William of Normandy and his host waited for the south wind, that fair wind that was to carry them to England. The harbour, choked now with the shifting sand, and sheltering nothing larger than a fishing-smack—held the fleet which some have numbered in thousands; gallant ships for which Normandy’s noblest forest trees were sacrificed during that long summer of preparation. Finest of them all, riding most proudly on the waves, was William’s own Mora, the gift of his Matilda. At its prow there was carved in gold the image of a boy ‘blowing on an ivory horn pointing towards England.’ ‘Stark’ Duke William thus symbolised his conquest before ever he set foot on that alien shore. On the gentle slopes above the little town, where the cattle feed, the great army encamped itself, waiting for that fair wind that never came. Four weeks they lingered, long enough to associate the seaport inseparably with the Conqueror’s name; and brave stories are chronicled of the order he kept among his fierce Gauls, and how the worthy people of Dives learned to look on the strangers without distrust—almost with indifference; to till their fields, to tend their flocks, to gather in the harvest, as if no nation’s fate hung on the caprice of a breeze. Four weeks of this, and then that great company melted away almost with the suddenness of a certain Assyrian host of old—a west wind blew gently—not the longed-for south; but the ships, weary of inaction, spread their wings, and flew away to St Valery, where a narrower band of blue separated them from the desired English haven. And the village folks were left once more to the vast quietude of their country life.
There is an old church, rebuilt since English Edward destroyed it, a noble specimen of Norman architecture, and there they keep recorded on marble the names of the knights who sailed on that famous expedition from the port hard by. The church has its legend, too, of a wondrous effigy of our Lord found by the fishermen who launched their nets in these waters. It bore the print of nails in the hands and feet; but the cross to which it had been fastened was awanting. The village folks gave it reverent sanctuary, and devout hands busied themselves in fashioning a crucifix; but no crucifix—let the workman be ever so skilful—could be made to fit the carven Christ. This one was too short, that too long. Clearly the miracle had been but half wrought; the cross must be sought where the image had already been found. In faith, the fishermen cast their nets again and again into the deep. At last, after long patience on their part, the sea gave up what it had previously denied. The long-lost cross was found; and with the figure nailed to it once more, the sacred symbol was borne to its resting-place. A great feast-day that, for Dives; but only the memory of it lingers. The treasure has vanished, and nothing save a curious picture representing the miracle remains to witness to the event. It hangs in the transept, and there are many who linger to look at it. The outside of this grand building pleased us well; it stands secure and free, with open spaces about it, green woods behind, and the blue sky of France above. A stone’s-throw off there is the market, which is nothing but a wide and deep overhanging roof, supported on pillars of carved wood. Here the sturdy peasants of this white-cotton-night-cap country sell the cheeses that smell so evilly and taste so well.
But the chief interest of Dives centres itself in the Hôtellerie de Guillaume le Conquérant. Heart could not desire a quainter, more out-of-the-world spot in which to pass a summer day. One may take a hundred or two of years from the reputed date—they boast that Duke William was housed here, and they show you the chain by which the Mora was fastened to the shore!—and yet leave the place ancient enough. The famous reception-rooms may have been, and have been, redecorated and renewed after an old pattern; but they contain treasures that can boast a very respectable past. Such black carved oak is seldom to be seen; and there are tattered hangings, brasses, bits of china enough to fill a virtuoso’s heart with envy; a wonderful medley of all tastes and periods.
Of deepest interest to some of us is the Louis XIV. chair with gilded arms and seat of faded, silken brocade, from which the most brilliant correspondent of her day wrote some of the letters that are models yet of what letters ought to be. Madame de Sévigné came here once and again on her way to Les Rochers. Once, at least, she came with ‘an immense retinue,’ that must have taxed the resources of the modest inn, smaller then than now. The ‘good and amiable’ Duchess de Chaulnes is of the company. Madame de Carmen makes the third in the trio. The ladies travel ‘in the best carriage’ with ‘the best horses,’ and that large following behind them. Madame de Chaulnes, who is all activity, is up with the dawn. ‘You remember how, in going to Bourbon, I found it easier to accommodate myself to her ways than to try and mend them.’ They make quite a royal progress, halting here and there. At Chaulnes the good duchess is taken ill, seized with sore throat. The kindest lady in the world nurses her friend and undertakes the cure. ‘At Paris she would have been bled; but here she was only rubbed for some time with our famous balsam, which produced quite a miracle. Will you believe, my dearest, that in one night this precious balsam completely cured her?’ While the patient slept, the kind nurse wandered in the noble alleys and the neglected gardens. ‘I call this rehearsing for Les Rochers,’ she writes gaily; but there is little heat, ‘not one nightingale to be heard—it is winter on the 17th of April.’
Soon, however, the southern warmth floods the land, and they set off, a gay trio, and one of them at least with eyes for every quick-passing beauty as they drive through green Normandy. From Caen she writes: ‘We were three days upon the road from Rouen to this place. We met with no adventures; but fine weather and spring in all its charm accompanied us. We ate the best things in the world, went to bed early, and did not suffer any inconvenience. We were on the sea-coast at Dives, where we slept.’ (She loves the sea, and elsewhere tells how she sat at her chamber window and looked out on it.) ‘The country is beautiful.’ Later, she exclaims: ‘I have seen the most beautiful country in the world. I did not know Normandy at all; I had seen it when too young. Alas! perhaps not one of those I saw here before is left alive—that is sad!’ This is the shadow in the bright picture; she, too, is growing old, and her spring will not return. It is the last journey she is making to the well-loved country home.
Somehow, as we turn away from the quaint hostelry, it is this gracious and beautiful lady who goes with us, and not ‘stark’ hero William. At Beuzeval, as we reach it, the sun is already dipping towards the sea, and all the bathers—a fantastic crowd set against the red light—are hurrying homewards across the sands.
ARE OUR COINS WEARING AWAY?
After the recent speech by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in which he showed that our gold coins are much lighter than they ought to be, we shall have to answer the above question in the affirmative. Our coins are wearing away, and although not at any very alarming rate, yet at a perceptible one. Every sovereign, half-sovereign, half-crown, florin, shilling, or sixpence, &c., which has been out of the Mint any length of time, weighs less now than it did when brand new. Indeed, in some old coins this is quite evident upon a casual inspection, for the image may be worn flat and unrecognisable, and the superscription may be illegible. Now, the difference in value between this old coin and the same coin when turned out new may be very trifling; but when we consider that there are probably millions in circulation which have similarly suffered depreciation to a greater or less extent, and that this loss will at some time or other have to be made good, this question of the wear of our coins becomes of sufficient importance for a Chancellor of the Exchequer to seek to cope with it. We shall here only offer a few observations on the mechanical aspects of the subject.