Passengers who land at Dieppe may perhaps be conveniently divided into two classes—those who pass through, intent on tours further inland or in other countries, and those who go to Dieppe, as they would to Brighton. It is pretty safe to say that very few of either class really know the place.

But Dieppe deserves some consideration apart from its harbour and its beach; it is no mushroom town of villadom, but has an old-world flavour, and a delightful mingling of simplicity with its fashion. We can see in it a series of charming pictures. There is, for instance, a long, narrow, cobble-paved street passing through the middle, running more or less parallel with the front, and cut off from it by a double wall of houses. But, alas, there are few old houses, for gable end and ancient woodwork went down before the furious bombardment of the combined English and Dutch fleets in 1694, when the bombs, falling in all directions, set the place on fire. After having done such damage that the whole town had to be rebuilt, the fleet sailed away to Havre. It is said that some of the rich inhabitants at the first sign of danger hid their valuables in the caves, which may be seen in numbers along the limestone cliffs, and that 4000 houses in all were burnt. Thus it is that there is nothing to be seen in the streets anterior to this date. Nevertheless there is a quaint irregularity in the nondescript architecture that is very charming. And on a Saturday morning the long street is lined by the market women, who come in to dispose of their country produce. They have no stalls, but sit on the edge of the pavement on the sunny side, each one with her basket or baskets ranged beside her. Dazed hens with tied legs, faintly expostulating ducks, baskets of pearly eggs, wedges of butter under cool green leaves, great masses of roses and other flowers—such are the goods for sale, and each one represents a large amount of hard work and patience. The women chatter gaily, comparing produce and prices, their pleasant, brown faces shining the while in the sun, until perhaps the babel is for an instant stilled by a funeral passing down the narrow street. The walking priests, in their birettas, lead the procession, followed by the acolytes and the silent coffin; they wind slowly over the cobbles, and the solemn dirge rises on the summer air; but it has passed, and is forgotten, and all is happy tumult once more. Midway down the street, by the fountain, there curves off another, at the end of which is the magnificent church of St Jacques. It is only the west end we can see in this vista, with its two curious octagon turrets, gargoyle crowned, but as we draw nearer, the fine western tower comes into view. The church, like so many another, was begun in the thirteenth century, and completed in the sixteenth. The other notable church of Dieppe, St Remi, stands further west, and is hemmed in by houses; it was not begun until St Jacques was nearly finished.

If we go into St Jacques late in the afternoon, when the sun is flooding that glorious western rose-window, we shall find the whole building filled with opalescent light. Soft patches of transparent colour, amethyst and gold, far more glorious than even the rich blue and orange of the glass through which they filter, creep slowly across the aisle and climb the pillars. They rest upon the bowed shoulders of an old peasant woman, who sits with hanging head. Her plain stuff dress and the print cap tightly fitting her grey hair, the blue check apron telling of days of toil, are all suddenly transformed into something “rich and strange.” But she sits there with the dark beads falling one by one through her work-worn fingers, heedless of the glory in which she is bathed; and if you go nearer you will see that poor proud face drawn by lines of sorrow, and every now and then the fingers are interrupted in their work to wipe off those too insistent tears; evidently no ordinary case this, but a woman who has suffered trouble, and who comes to seek peace, though happiness has left the world so far as she is concerned.

It is a wonderful place this church, the mighty chancel and transept arches seem to hold the silence as a bowl holds water; one could not “strive or cry” aloud here. Yet outside, through the open door, one can see a patch full of life and movement—boys darting to and fro, a carter unloading a van, continual passers-by; and every now and then out of the light a boy or girl flits into the solemn spaces of the wonderful silence, gives never a glance at the gorgeous colours that make one feel as though one were in the heart of a jewel, but with a hasty genuflexion passes out at the other door into the market-place.

In the market-place there is medley and chatter, bargain and sale. All the usual things are here. Coloured curtains, masses of shoes, rows of shining utensils, piles of snowy draperies, sweets, flowers, toys, cakes in profusion. A yard of ribbon, a pair of stuff shoes, a bit of glittering jewellery from that fascinating stall where all goes at “quinze sous” the piece, this is the extent of most purchases that can be seen.

Behind the market-place rises one of the chapels of the transept, built by Ango, whose history is told in connection with the castle; its fellow is on the other side, and in its solid plainness of design, and with its worn stone, and two stages of red tiles, the chapel is in delightful contrast with the ornateness of the pinnacled and buttressed choir.

To the south and west of the church is another market, one of the most repulsive imaginable. Spread out on the open ground are old second-hand articles of every description, from loathsome rags to rusty iron.

If we pass down one of the narrow streets to the east of the church, we come quite suddenly upon a scene of a different order. Here is the basin where the steamers lie, and the swing-bridge which leads to the fishermen s quarter, Le Pollet, one of the two places in Normandy where the Celtic influence still lingers. There are some quaint superstitions and ideas held by these men, but they are not ready to speak of them. They are religious, and would not think of letting a boat go out unblessed. One of the songs which is chanted at the lighting of a candle in the hold before a boat puts out to sea, is as follows:—

On the quay is the fish-market, and outside it a mass of fisher-folk broken up into groups. The men are nearly all rust-coloured in complexion, with hair that curls fiercely and thickly, and among the younger ones is to be seen not infrequently that type of face which, idealised, appears in the portrait of Gilliatt, in the English translation of Les Travailleurs de Mer, a face of a short oval, with small pointed chin, and mobile, sensitive lips. Yet others there are as square-jawed and bull-dog, as ruffianly in expression, as the lowest among the sailors in London by the river.

The chaffering goes on hotly; two fine mackerel are handed over at thirteen sous, four good ones, not quite so fine, at sixteen sous. All the dealing is in sous. Strange, evil-looking fish with large heads are sold for a song, and each customer as she gets them—for it is nearly always a she—slips them into her string bag, and goes on her way rejoicing, with a cheap and wholesome dinner for the young ones at home. High on the cliff across the water, is the stiff new little church—there is another in the town below—and behind it, on the windswept cliff, the Le Pollet cemetery, filled with the cheap wooden crosses laden with those tawdry ornaments that mean so much and tell so little. But the Le Pollet cemetery does not account for more than a fraction of its dead, for many a man and lad lie out beyond the point in the shifting sea, and the wives and mothers at home have no graves on which to lay their hardly bought offerings. On Le Pollet, under the renowned General Talbot, the English erected a fort called the Bastille, a name still retained by its site.

But in lingering by the town and along the quay, we have not yet visited the castle of Dieppe, which is at the other end, rearing itself steeply on its mighty cliff. For Dieppe lies in the valley between two heights, and occupies the space dipping down to the level of the sea, hence the name which signifies deep, and is related to our names of Deepdale and Deepdene. The castle hill was at first occupied by a mere fort, which Rollo rebuilt; and Rollo’s fort lasted until the time of Henry II. of England, who rebuilt it entirely, but Henry’s fort stood a very short time, for when Philip Augustus retook the country from John, one of his first acts was to raze any strong places which might afford the English a foothold, and this fort was among the number. Nevertheless his destruction was not entire, and some of the walls attributed to Henry still remain incorporated in the castle, which was begun by the Dauphin, after the historic fight of Arques in 1435. The four towers belong to this date, but various additions were made later. There is no admission to the castle now, and but little history to clothe its walls in an aroma of the past. The most interesting name connected with it is that of the merchant prince, Jean Ango, who died here in 1551. Ango was a native of Dieppe, and began life as a common sailor, but he had in him that curious ability to seize his opportunity, which goes to the making of a fortune more than any other quality. He soon rose to be a shipowner, and wealth bringing wealth, he owned a whole fleet of vessels, and was a power on the sea. When King FranÇois came to Dieppe, he was received and entertained by Ango in princely style. FranÇois made his host governor of Dieppe in return, and afterwards conferred upon him the dignity of a vicomte. It was in 1525 that Ango built a house of the old timber style, magnificently carved, on the site where the LycÉe now stands, opposite the station, by the quay where the Newhaven boats arrive and depart. Shortly afterwards he followed this up by a country house at Varengeville, which is still standing (see p. 173). Ango is described by a contemporary as a big blonde man, with a large head and a gay expression. For long he ruled as a prince, both on sea and land; when the Portuguese had the audacity to harass French shipping, it was Ango who armed twelve ships and made war on his own account, capturing several of the Portuguese vessels. The king sent angrily to ask the French king why he had done this, as the two countries were then at peace, and the French king replied gaily that he must ask Ango, who alone was responsible.

But this big, cheery, bluff man, a sailor at heart, changed unaccountably in his old age; he grew morose, suspicious, and overbearing; he quarrelled with his neighbours, got himself entangled in lawsuits, and finally, ruined in pocket and credit, had to take refuge from his enemies within the castle walls, where he died.

The general idea is that Arques is the parent town of Dieppe, and that the men of Arques gradually established themselves on the sea-coast, for the purpose of fishing. Others, however, point to the Camp of CÆsar, anciently called the City of Limes, which is on the top of the hill near Puys, as an old Gaulish settlement before the advent of CÆsar, and say that this was the parent town, and that the settlement at Dieppe came later, when a great part of the cliff near the Gaulish town had fallen bodily into the sea.

With the siege of the castle of Arques by William the Conqueror we have dealt elsewhere. But the castle of Arques, always a stronghold, underwent a yet more terrible ordeal in the attack by Henri IV. in 1589, when it was held by the Duc de Mayenne. The king had 4000 men against 30,000 of the Leaguers, but the smaller force was victorious, and the battle was long spoken of as a miraculous event.

Having so far dealt with the immediate surroundings of Dieppe, we turn now the coast-line. The great white cliffs which rise vertically on both sides of Dieppe have their counterparts in the white cliffs of England, so exactly similar in structure that no one can doubt they once joined across what is now the Channel. Even were there no other means of judging, the great friability of these cliffs and the masses which continually fall off into the sea, driving the coast-lines further and further apart, would alone answer the suggestion in the affirmative. All the way to TrÉport stretches this grand rampart. TrÉport is situated in the embouchure of the river Bresle, and above it rise the cliffs. It has a modern part with first-class hotels, a casino, and other of the usual attractions, and the older village nestles in the narrow valley ascending from the beach. The beach is limited by the river to the east, beyond which begins the beach of Mer.

Eu is a place of considerable importance in Norman history. It is the outlying border town of Normandy in this direction, and beyond it was the vexed country of Ponthieu, between whose counts and the Norman dukes there was so much fighting. All those who have followed the chapter on the Bayeux tapestry will remember that it was on the territory of Ponthieu that the unfortunate Harold was blown by wind and tide, and that it was Guy, Count of Ponthieu, who brought his captive proudly to William. He did not, however, do so until he had been repeatedly commanded by William, who also bribed him, though Guy was “his man,” having done homage to him five or six years previously. Eu had also been the scene of the Conqueror’s marriage about ten years before, when his Flemish bride, his own first cousin, had met him here. The church which witnessed that famous ceremony has disappeared, but the present one, a fine building of the thirteenth century, worthily replaces it.

In the Chapelle du College, a splendid building, are some fine monuments to the Guises, whose name was associated with Eu in the sixteenth century. The elder Guise, FranÇois, was called Le BalafrÉ, because he bore on his face a horrible scar from a sword-cut received at Boulogne; he was assassinated in 1563, and succeeded by his son Henri, also assassinated in 1588.

The whole coast-line is shingly, and its chief characteristic is the up and down sweep of the contour, which continually rises to the top of tall white cliffs, and almost immediately falls again right down to the sea-level, only to rise once more. This peculiarity is admirable for its variety, and it affords fine shelter to the seaside places in the folds, but it renders any attempt at passing along near the coast on foot or bicycle very tedious work. The white cliffs, however, and the shingly beaches make eminently beautiful foregrounds for a sea so often blue in the sunlight which France seems to attract so much more than England, and some of the cliffs are crowned by fine trees or blooming gorse.

Going westward from Dieppe, we come to the little village of Varengeville, standing high on the top of the cliffs. It has two great attractions—one its shady lanes, arched by beeches so as to resemble veritable cathedral aisles, a thing unique in Normandy; and the other the fine Maison d’Ango, now a farmhouse. This is built round four sides of a courtyard, and the walls are worked with marvellous skill into various intricate patterns with the materials of flint and brick. The latter, which adorn the cowbyres, are set in even patterns, and the effect with the red tiles and thatch is pretty and curious. On one side of the mansion itself is an open loggia or arcade, raised above the ground-level. But the most striking and notable detail is the columbier standing in the yard, one of the very few remaining. It is cylindrical, and the walls are worked in patterns of lines and bands in the same way as those of the house. It terminates in a curved dome-like roof. The whole is well worth going to see, in spite of the churlish, and we must add, in France, very unusual, spirit that animates the present occupants. We pass many little places ever growing in popularity, such as Veules and St Valery en Caux, bearing family resemblance to Dieppe in their situation in the breaks formed by streams cutting through the chalk cliffs, and come to FÉcamp, which is a bit of a health resort, a bit of a manufacturing town, and a bit of a fishing harbour, without being particularly distinguished in any one of the three things. From FÉcamp, as from all these northern fishing towns, there annually sets forth that fleet for the cold waters near Iceland so touchingly described in Pierre LÔti’s PÊcheurs d’Islande.

FÉcamp stands at the foot of cliffs from 300 feet to 400 feet in height, around the base of which are scattered the great blocks of dÉbris with which the seas play like footballs. The memory of the terrible storm of 1663, when the whole of the valley or chine was blocked by these stones, hurled up by the terrific power of the sea, is still preserved. The chief claim of FÉcamp to notice, however, is its splendid abbey, of which the church still remains; it was built in the Conqueror’s reign, burnt and rebuilt, so that the greater part is of the thirteenth century, and some dates from the reconstruction in the fifteenth. What is left of the abbey has been built into the public offices of the town.

But the strange legend of La Fontaine du Precieux-Sang should come before mention of the abbey, for it was because of this relic St Waneng erected here the first religious house for nuns. The story goes that a case containing some of the blood of our Lord had been placed in the cleft of a fig-tree by Isaac, the nephew of Nicodemus, but in some way the stump had been cut down, and reached the sea, from whence it floated unaided all the way to FÉcamp, and a well in the courtyard of a house is pointed out as the actual spot where it stranded. During a great conflagration this precious relic was lost, but an angel brought it back, saying, “Voici le prix de la redemption du monde, qui vient de Jerusalem.” Needless to say, this priceless relic drew thousands of pilgrims to the shrine at FÉcamp. They came in spite of wind and weather; as the quaint old Norman song has it:—

And the monks reaped a rich reward from their ingenuity! Passing Valmont, with its old castle of the D’Estoutevilles, we come to Etretat, a much more fashionable bathing-place than FÉcamp.

The coast at Etretat is grand and beautiful, though the beach is stony. The sea with its ceaseless work has carved caverns in the high cliffs. The three principal headlands, standing grandly out to sea, all end in a natural arch. Here, as elsewhere, fishermen mingle with the gay crowd that increases the population some five hundred per cent. in the summer.

The wall of cliff continues right on to Havre, where the Cape de la HÈve feels the full shock of the resistless north winds. Also the cliff is always crumbling, with that law of nature that ordains that the sea shall gain on the land on the rocky coasts, and the land shall advance out to sea on sandy beaches. Once or twice, more than mere crumbling has taken place, for with a noise like the rumbling of artillery the face of the cliff has broken away, and fallen headlong into the sea, sending gigantic spouts of water heavenwards, while the roar attracted attention even at Havre. Havre has a population of 120,000, and is a self-respecting busy town. It has a very large traffic, and it is also favourably situated for inland trade, being connected by a dredged-out canal with Tancarville, and thence by the Seine to Rouen. The mouth of the Seine is here so treacherous and shifty, that without constant dredging navigation would be impossible. There is only one more remark to make before leaving Havre, and that is, to tell how it earned its secondary title of Le Havre de Grace. One of those terrible high tides that about once in a generation sweep through the Channel, appeared on the coast and overwhelmed the breakwater, flooding it to such a height that it seemed to the inhabitants nothing remained for them but utter ruin, even if they managed to preserve their own lives; when, as they were momentarily expecting to see the town swept from end to end by the lowering mass of water, a new channel burst suddenly through one of the walls which prevented the escape, and the water flowed away into the bed of the Seine. This was considered a special miracle in favour of the town, which was henceforth known as Le Havre de Grace.

A more complete contrast than that presented by the next two coast towns could hardly be made. We have Honfleur, old, picturesque, tumble-down, full of fishermen, with a church which for quaintness could hardly be surpassed, and we have the villa-ed and elegant Trouville, resembling one of the most gaily dressed of Parisians, where not a line is out of order, nothing is left to chance, every fold, so to speak, is arranged, every movement self-conscious.

I confess that to me such towns as Trouville exercise a repulsive effect; the moment I arrive there I want to flee, and yet it is impossible to overlook a place so patronised, so praised, so entirely self-satisfied. Trouville is not Norman; it is a little bit of Paris by the sea, and it is French entirely; it does not share in the old Norman history, “C’est le monde frivole, joyeux et bruyant qui s’agite et s’amuse et dont les petit cris, les chants quelquefois vulgaires et de gout douteux, et tous les bruits de fÊtes se percent dans le grand murmure de la mer.” Hardly more than fifty years ago, Trouville was a mere collection of fishing-huts; then someone saw the advantages of the situation, the high cliff-like hills, the surrounding woods, the flat sands, and almost at once sprang up the hotels, the casinos, the shops, and the other accompaniments of a fashionable resort. Fishing is now the least of its sources of wealth, or rather, perhaps, we may say it is replaced by angling of another sort. Deauville is a kind of offshoot of Trouville, situated on the other side of the Fouques, a lesser Trouville, a shade quieter, but after the same pattern.

The next point to notice along the coast is the mouth of the river Dives, where William assembled his ships before setting out to conquer England. They remained here waiting for a favourable wind, and finally put into St Valery, at the mouth of the Somme, from whence they made their real start. The number of ships is estimated very variously; Wace puts it at six hundred and ninety-six, a number which he had heard from his father, but he says he saw it stated in writing to have exceeded three thousand, a number which may have likely included every boat or flat-bottomed raft which crossed over. William’s own ship, made like the others of a boat-shape, with high prow, was propelled by oars. It was brilliantly decorated; its sails were crimson, and its metal parts were gilded; the figure-head was a child armed with bow and arrow, aimed at England. The whole was a present from his duchess Matilda, and it is said that the figure of the child had been copied from that of their son Robert, a boy who was to cause them both so much sore grief.

Then we come to the mouth of the Orne, on which stands Caen. From the Dives to the Orne we have had flat sands and sand dunes, a state of things which continues still. Back from the coast is one of the most splendid pasturage lands in Normandy, only rivalled by those about the drained lands behind Carentan. Ouistreham and the minor seaside resorts near Caen are much patronised, and contain hotels and villas to suit all purses. After passing Courseulles, the hotels and shops and bathing stations are left behind, and little fishing-hamlets take the place of coast resorts. Port en Bessin is situated in the fracture of a cliff, and there are in the neighbourhood formidable rocks. Then we come to the great angular Bay de Veys, in shape not unlike our own Wash. Here stands Carentan, and before the land was drained Carentan was almost surrounded with water, for the tides ran far inland, making any attempt to pass that way from the CÔtentin hazardous and difficult. A grand scheme was once mooted to build a large dike which should protect these meadows, but the much more reasonable scheme of drainage was tried, and has succeeded. Instead of being marsh land, the flat stretches now serve for pasturage. The town has been no less than twelve times taken by the English, in addition to which it suffered in the religious wars of the seventeenth century. It is now a flourishing port, carrying on an enormous trade in butter, of which the exports in one year to Southampton alone were equal to 15,000,000 francs! Isigny, which stands a little eastward, is the chief butter-producer, so much so that the name Isigny butter has come to be a synonym for good quality. We have now reached that strange peninsula, which, with exception of a strip along the eastern side, is almost all of granite; the coast town La Hogue marks the transition from the one sort of coast to the other. We have dealt so fully with the CÔtentin and with its continuation on the west to the little stream Couesnon, that it is of no use to say more here. We would merely remark that the action of waste by the sea can be seen strikingly on the western side, where the peninsula meets the full winds of the Atlantic. History says, though the statement may be accepted with caution, that at one time Jersey was severed only by a narrow channel from the mainland; if this is so, then without doubt, at some far distant geological epoch, the whole of the peninsula will be worn away to one thin strip of sandy beach, like those arms we see extending for miles along the northern coasts of Germany.