Part 12 (1/2)
We went home by a different road, but it looked just like the other--fewer little hamlets, perhaps, and great pasture fields, filled with fine specimens of Norman dray horses and mares with long-legged colts running alongside of them. It was late when we got home. The lighthouses of Honfleur and Havre made a long golden streak stretching far out to sea, and the great turning flashlight of St. Adresse was quite dazzling.
We went back over the same ground two or three days later on our way to Bayeux. The town is not particularly interesting, but the cathedral is beautiful and in wonderful preservation--the columns are very grand--every capital exquisitely carved and no two alike. Our guide, a very talkative person--unlike the generality of Norman peasants, who are usually taciturn--was very anxious to show us each column in detail and explain all the really beautiful carving, but we were rather hurried as some of the party were going to lunch at Barbieville--Comte Foy's chateau.
On the same place as the cathedral is the Hotel de Ville, with the wonderful tapestries worked by the Queen Mathilde, wife of William the Conqueror. They are really most extraordinary and so well preserved. The colours look as if they had been painted yesterday. I hadn't seen them for years and had forgotten the curious shapes and vivid colouring. We went to one of the lace shops. The Bayeux lace is very pretty, made with the ”fuseau”, very fine--a mixture of Valenciennes and Mechlin. It is very strong, though it looks delicate. The dentellieres still do a very good business. The little girls begin to work as soon as they can thread their needle, and follow a simple pattern.
The F.'s enjoyed their day at Barbieville, Comte Foy's chateau, very much. They said the house was nothing remarkable--a large square building, but the park was original. Comte Foy is a racing man, breeds horses, and has his ”haras” on his place. The park is all cut up into paddocks, each one separated from the other by a hedge and all connected by green paths. F. said the effect from the terrace was quite charming; one saw nothing but gra.s.s and hedges and young horses and colts running about. Comtesse Foy and her daughters were making lace.
The girls went in to Bayeux three or four times a week and took lessons from one of the dentellieres.
XI
BOULOGNE-SUR-MER
One year we were at Boulogne for the summer in a funny little house, in a narrow street just behind the port and close to the Casino and beach.
There were a great many people--all the hotels full and quant.i.ties of automobiles pa.s.sing all day. The upper part of the town is just like any other seaside place--rows of hotels and villas facing the sea--some of the houses built into the high green cliff which rises steep and almost menacing behind. Already parts of the cliff have crumbled away in some place and the proprietors of the villas find some difficulty in letting them. The front rooms on the sea are charming, but the back ones--directly under the cliff--with no air or sun, are not very tempting. There is a fine digue and raised broad walk all along the sea front, with flowers, seats, and music stand.
It is a perfectly safe beach for children, for though the channel is very near and the big English boats pa.s.s close to the sh.o.r.e, there are several sand banks which make the beach quite safe, and from seven in the morning till seven at night there are two boats au large and two men on the beach, with ropes, life-preservers, and horns which they blow whenever they think the bathers are too far out. There is an ”Inspecteur de la Plage,” a regular French official with a gold band on his cap, who is a most important and amiable gentleman and sees that no one is annoyed in any way. We made friends with him at once, moyennant une piece de dix francs, and he looked after us, saw that our tents were put up close to the water, no others near, and warned off stray children and dogs who were attracted by our children's toys and cakes.
The plage is a pretty sight on a bright day. There are hundreds of tents--all bright-coloured. When one approaches Boulogne from the sea the beach looks like a parterre of flowers. Near the Casino there are a quant.i.ty of old-fas.h.i.+oned ramshackly bathing cabins on wheels, with very small boys cracking their whips and galloping up and down, from the digue to the edge of the water, on staid old horses who know their work perfectly--put themselves at once into the shafts of the carriages--never go beyond a certain limit in the sea.
All the bathers are prudent. It is rare to see any one swimming out or diving from a boat. A policeman presides at the public bathing place and there are three or four baigneurs and baigneuses who take charge of the timid bathers; one wonderful old woman, bare-legged, of course, a handkerchief on her head, a flannel blouse and a very short skirt made of some water-proof material that stood out stiff all around her and shed the water--she was the premiere baigneuse--seventy years old and had been baigneuse at Boulogne for fifty-one years. She had bathed C. as a child, and was delighted to see her again and wildly interested in her two children.
There were donkeys, of course, and goats. The children knew the goat man well and all ran to him with their mugs as soon as they heard his peculiar whistle. They held their mugs close under the goat so that they got their milk warm and foaming, as it was milked directly into their mugs. The goats were quite tame--one came always straight to our tents and lay down there till his master came. Every one wanted to feed them with cakes and bits of sugar, but he would never let them have anything for fear it should spoil their milk.
Another friend was the cake man, dressed all in white, with his basket of brioches and madeleines on his head--then there were the inevitable Africans with fezes on their heads and bundles of silks--crepes-de-chine and ostrich feathers, that one sees at every plage. I don't think they did much business.
The public was not all distinguished. We often wondered where the people were who lived in the hotels (all very expensive) and villas, for, with very rare exceptions, it was the most ordinary pet.i.te bourgeoisie that one saw on the beach--a few Americans, a great many fourth-rate English.
They were a funny contrast to the people who came for the Concours Hippique, and the Race Week. One saw then a great influx of automobiles--there were b.a.l.l.s at the Casino and many pretty, well-dressed women, of both worlds, much en evidence. The chatelains from the neighbouring chateaux appeared and brought their guests.
For that one week Boulogne was quite fas.h.i.+onable. The last Sunday of the races was a terrible day. There was an excursion train from Paris and two excursion steamers from England. We were on the quay when the English boats came in and it was amusing to see the people. Some of them had left London at six in the morning. There were all sorts and kinds, wonderful sportsmen with large checked suits, caps and field gla.s.ses slung over their shoulders--a great many pretty girls--generally in white. All had bags and baskets with bathing suits and luncheon, and in an instant they were swarming over the plage--already crowded with the Paris excursionists. They didn't interfere with us much as we never went to the beach on Sunday.
F. was fis.h.i.+ng all day with some of his friends in a pilot boat. (They brought back three hundred mackerel), had a beautiful day--the sea quite calm and the fish rising in quant.i.ties. C. and I, with the children, went off to the Hardelot woods in the auto. We established ourselves on a hillside, pines all around us, the sea at our feet, a beautiful blue sky overhead, and not a sound to break the stillness except sometimes, in the distance, the sirene of a pa.s.sing auto. We had our tea-basket, found a nice clear s.p.a.ce to make a fire, which we did very prudently, scooping out a great hole in the ground and making a sort of oven. It was very difficult to keep the children from tumbling into the hole as they were rolling about on the soft ground, but we got home without any serious detriment to life or limb.
The life in our quarter on the quais is very different, an extraordinary animation and movement. There are hundreds of vessels of every description in the port. All day and all night boats are coming in and going out: The English steamers with their peculiar, dull, penetrating whistle that one hears at a great distance--steam tugs that take pa.s.sengers and luggage out to the Atlantic liners, lying just outside the digue--yachts, pilot boats, easily distinguished by a broad white line around their hulls, and a number very conspicuously printed in large black letters on their white sails, ”baliseurs,” smart-looking little craft that take buoys out to the various points where they must be laid. One came in the other day with two large, red, bell-shaped buoys on her deck which made a great effect from a distance; we were standing on the pier, and couldn't imagine what they were; ”avisos”
(dispatch-boats), with their long, narrow flamme, which marks them as war vessels, streaming out in the wind. Their sailors looked very picturesque in white jerseys and blue berets with red pompons. Small steamers that run along the coast from Calais to Dunkirk--others, cargo boats, broad and deep in the water, that take fruit and eggs over to England. The baskets of peaches, plums, and apricots look most appetizing when they are taken on board. The steamers look funny when they come back with empty baskets, quant.i.ties of them, piled up on the decks, tied to the masts. Many little pleasure boats--flat, broad rowing boats that take one across the harbour to the Gare Maritime (which is a long way around by the bridge), a most uncomfortable performance at low tide, as you go down long, steep, slippery steps with no railing, and have to scramble into the boat as well as you can.
Of course, there are fis.h.i.+ng-boats of every description, from the modest little sloop with one mast and small sail to the big steam trawlers which are increasing every year and gradually replacing the old-fas.h.i.+oned sailing-boat. One always knows when the fis.h.i.+ng-boats are arriving by the crowd that a.s.sembles on the quay; that peculiar population that seems natural to all ports, young, able-bodied sailors, full of interest about the run and the cargo--old men in blue jerseys who sit on the wall, in the sun, all day, and recount their experiences--various officials with gold bands on their caps, men with hand carts waiting to carry off the fish and fishwives--their baskets strapped on their backs--hoping for a haul of crabs and shrimps or fish from some of the small boats.
_All_ the cargo of the trawlers is sold before they arrive to the marieurs (men who deal exclusively in fish), and who have a contract with the big boats. There is no possibility of having a good fish except at the Halles, where one can sometimes get some from one of the smaller boats, which fish on their own account and have no contract; but even those are generally sold at once to small dealers, who send them off to the neighbouring inland towns. In fact, the proprietor of one of the big hotels told me he had to get his fish from Paris and paid Paris prices.
The fishwives, the young ones particularly, are a fine-looking lot--tall, straight, with feet and legs bare, a little white cap or woollen fichu on their heads--they carry off their heavy baskets as lightly as possible, taking them to the Halles where all the fish must go. They are quite a feature of Boulogne, the young fishwives. One sees them often at low tide--fis.h.i.+ng for shrimps, carrying their heavy nets on their shoulders and flat baskets strapped on their backs into which they tip the fish very cleverly. They are quite distinct from the Boulonaises matelottes, who are a step higher in the social scale.
_They_ always wear a wonderful white cap with a high starched frill which stands out around their faces like an aureole. They, too, wear short full skirts, but have long stockings and very good stout _shoes_--not sabots--which are also disappearing. They turn out very well on Sundays. I saw a lot of them the other day coming out of church--all with their caps scrupulously clean--short, full, black or brown skirts; ap.r.o.ns ironed in a curious way--_across_ the ap.r.o.n--making little waves (our maids couldn't think what had happened to their white ap.r.o.ns the first time they came back from the wash--thought there had been some mistake and they had some one's else clothes--they had to explain to the washerwoman that they liked their ap.r.o.ns ironed straight); long gold earrings and gold chains. They are handsome women, dark with straight features, a serious look in their eyes. Certainly people who live by the sea have a different expression--there is something grave, almost sad in their faces, which one doesn't see in dwellers in sunny meadows and woodlands.
We went this morning with the Baron de G., who is at the head of one of the fis.h.i.+ng companies here, to see one of their boats come in and unload. It was a steam trawler, with enormous nets, that had been fis.h.i.+ng off the English coast near Land's End. There were quite a number of people a.s.sembled on the quay--a policeman, a garde du port, an agent of the company, and the usual lot of people who are always about when a fis.h.i.+ng-boat comes in. Her cargo seemed to be almost entirely of fish they call here saumon blanc. They were sending up great baskets of them from the hold where they were very well packed in ice; half-way up they were thrown into a big tub which cleaned them--took off the salt and gave them a silvery look. They are put by hundreds into hand-carts which were waiting and carried off at once to the Halles. They had brought in 3,500 fish, but didn't seem to think they had made a very good haul. The whole cargo had been sold to a marieur and was sent off at once, by him, all over the country.
Other boats were also sending their cargo to the Halles. They had all kinds of fish--soles, mackerel, and a big red fish I didn't know at all.