Account of a Tour in Normandy Volume I Part 1

Account of a Tour in Normandy.

Vol. I.

by Dawson Turner.

PREFACE.

The observations which form the basis of the following letters, were collected during three successive tours in Normandy, in the summers of 1815, 1818, and 1819; but chiefly in the second of these years. Where I have not depended upon my own remarks, I have endeavored, as far as appeared practicable and without tedious minuteness, to quote my authorities for facts; and I believe that I have done so in most instances, except indeed where I have borrowed from the journals of the companions of my tours,--the nearest and dearest of my connections,--or from that of my friend, Mr. Cohen, who, at almost the same time, travelled through a great part of Normandy, pursuing also very similar objects of inquiry. The materials obtained from these sources, it has been impossible to separate from my own; and, interwoven as they are with the rest of the text, it is only in my power to acknowledge, in these general terms, the a.s.sistance which I have thus received.--We were proceeding in 1818, to the southern and western districts of Normandy, when a domestic calamity compelled me to return to England. The tour was consequently abridged, and many places of note remained unvisited by us.

My narrative is princ.i.p.ally addressed to those readers who find pleasure in the investigation of architectural antiquity. Without the slightest pretensions to the character either of an architect or of an antiquarian, engaged in other avocations and employed in other studies, I am but too conscious of my inability to do justice to the subject. Yet my remarks may at least a.s.sist the future traveller, by pointing out such objects as are interesting, either on account of their antiquity or their architectural worth. This information is not to be obtained from the French, who have habitually neglected the investigation of their national monuments. I doubt, however, whether I should have ventured upon publication, if those who have always accompanied me both at home and abroad, had not produced the ill.u.s.trations which const.i.tute the princ.i.p.al value of my volumes. Of the merits of these ill.u.s.trations I must not be allowed to speak; but it may be permitted me to observe, that the fine arts afford the only mode of exerting the talents of woman, which does not violate the spirit of the precept which the greatest historian of antiquity has ascribed to the greatest of her heroes--

[English. Greek in Original] "Great will be your glory in not falling short of your natural character; and greatest will be hers who is least talked of among the men whether for good or for bad." Thucydides'

Historiae. (Book 2, Chapter 45, Paragraph 2, Verses 3-5.)

DAWSON TURNER.

YARMOUTH, _13th August_1820.

LETTERS FROM NORMANDY.

LETTER I.

ARRIVAL AT DIEPPE--SITUATION AND APPEARANCE OF THE TOWN--COSTUME OF THE PEOPLE--INHABITANTS OF THE SUBURB OF POLLET.

(_Dieppe, June_, 1818)

MY DEAR SIR,

You, who were never at sea, can scarcely imagine the pleasure we felt, when, after a pa.s.sage of unusual length, cooped up with twenty-four other persons in a packet designed only for twelve, and after having experienced every variety that could he afforded by a dead calm, a contrary wind, a brisk gale in our favor, and, finally, by being obliged to lie three hours in a heavy swell off this port, we at last received on board our French pilot, and saw hoisted on the pier the white flag, the signal of ten feet water in the harbor. The general appearance of the coast, near Dieppe, is similar to that which we left at Brighton; but the height of the cliffs, if I am not mistaken, is greater. They vary along the sh.o.r.es of Upper Normandy from one hundred and fifty to seven hundred feet, or even more; the highest lying nearly mid-way between this town and Havre, in the vicinity of Fecamp; and they present an unbroken barrier, of a dazzling white[1], except when they dip into some creek or cove, or open to afford a pa.s.sage to some river or streamlet. Into one of these, a boat from the opposite sh.o.r.es of Suss.e.x shot past us this afternoon, with the rapidity of lightning. She was a smuggler, and, in spite of the army of Douaniers employed in France, ventured to make the land in the broad face of day, carrying most probably a cargo, composed princ.i.p.ally of manufactured goods in cotton and steel. The crew of our vessel, no bad authority in such cases, a.s.sured us, that lace is also sent in considerable quant.i.ties as a contraband article into France; though, as is well known, much of it likewise comes in the same quality into England, and there are perhaps few of our travellers, who return entirely without it. On the same authority, I am enabled to state, what much surprised me, that the smuggled goods exported from Suss.e.x into Normandy exceed by nearly an hundred fold those received in return.

The first approach to Dieppe is extremely striking. To embark in the evening at Brighton, sleep soundly in the packet, and find yourself, as is commonly the case, early the next morning under the piers of this town, is a transition, which, to a person unused to foreign countries, can scarcely fail to appear otherwise than as a dream; so marked and so entire is the difference between the air of elegance and mutual resemblance in the buildings, of smartness approaching to splendor in the equipages, of fashion in the costume, of the activity of commerce in the movements, and of newness and neatness in every part of the one, contrasted in the other with a strong character of poverty and neglect, with houses as various in their structure as in their materials, with dresses equally dissimilar in point of color, substance, and style, with carriages which seem never to have known the spirit of improvement, and with a general listlessness of manner, the result of indolence, apathy, and want of occupation. With all this, however, the novelty which attends the entrance of the harbor at Dieppe, is not only striking, but interesting. It is not thus at Calais, where half the individuals you meet in the streets are of your own country; where English fashions and manufactures are commonly adopted; and where you hear your native tongue, not only in the hotels, but even the very beggars follow you with, "I say, give me un sou, s'il vous please." But this is not the only advantage which the road by Dieppe from London to Paris possesses, over that by Calais. There is a saving of distance, amounting to twenty miles on the English, and sixty on the French side of the water; the expence is still farther decreased by the yet lower rate of charges at the inns; and, while the ride to the French metropolis by the one route is through a most uninteresting country, with no other objects of curiosity than Amiens, Beauvais, and Abbeville; by the other it pa.s.ses through a province unrivalled for its fertility and for the beauty of its landscape, and which is allowed by the French themselves to be the garden of the kingdom. Rouen, Vernon, Mantes, and St. Germain, names all more or less connected with English history, successively present themselves to the traveller; and, during the greater part of his journey, his path lies by the side of a n.o.ble stream, diversified beyond almost every other by the windings of its channel, and the islands which stud its surface. The only evil to counterbalance the claims of Dieppe is, that the packets do not sail daily, although they profess and actually advertise to that effect; but wait till what they consider a sufficient freight of pa.s.sengers is a.s.sembled, so that, either at Dieppe or Brighton, a person runs the risk of being detained, as has more than once happened to myself, a circ.u.mstance that never occurs at Dover.

There is still a third point of pa.s.sage upon our southern coast, and one that has of late been considerably frequented, from Southampton to Havre; but this I never tried, and do not know what it has to recommend it, except to those who are proceeding to Caen or to the western parts of France. The voyage is longer and more uncertain, the distance by land between London and Paris is also greater, nor does it offer equal facilities as to inns and public carriages.

Dieppe is situated on a low tongue of land, but from the sea appears to great advantage; characterized as it is by its old castle, an a.s.semblage of various forms and ages, placed insulated upon an eminence to the west, and by the domes and towers of its churches. The mouth of the harbor is narrow, and inclosed by two long stone piers, on one of which stands an elegant crucifix, raised by the fathers of the mission; to the other has lately been affixed a stone, with an inscription, stating that the d.u.c.h.ess d'Angouleme landed there on her return to her native country; but here is no measure of her foot, no votive pillar, as are to be seen at Calais, to commemorate a similar honor done to the inhabitants by the monarch. A small house on the western pier, is, however, more deserving of notice than either the inscription or the crucifix: it was built by Louis XVIth, for the residence of a sailor, who, by saving the lives of shipwrecked mariners, had deserved well of his sovereign and his country. Its front bears, "A J'n. A'r. Bouzard, pour ses services maritimes;" but there was originally a second inscription in honor of the king, which has been carefully erased. The fury of the revolution could pardon nothing that bore the least relation to royalty; or surely a monument like this, the reward of courage and calculated to inspire only the best of feelings[2], might have been allowed to have remained uninjured. The French are wiser than we are in erecting these public memorials for public virtues: they better understand the art of producing an effect, and they know that such gratifications bestowed upon the living are seldom thrown away. We rarely give them but to the dead. Capt. Manby, to whom above one hundred and thirty shipwrecked mariners are even now indebted for their existence, and whose invention will probably be the means of preservation to thousands, is allowed to live in comparative obscurity; while in France, a mere pilot, for having saved the lives of only eight individuals, had a residence built for him at the public expence, received an immediate gratification of one thousand francs, enjoyed a pension during his life, and, with his name and his exploits, now occupies a conspicuous place in the history of the duchy.

Within the piers, the harbor widens into a stone basin, capable of holding two hundred vessels, and full of water at the flow of the tide; but at the ebb exhibiting little more than a sheet of mud, with a small stream meandering through it. Round the harbor is built the town, which contains above twenty thousand inhabitants, and is singularly picturesque, as well from its situation, backed as it is by the steep cliff to the east, which, instead of terminating here abruptly, takes an inland direction, as from the diversity in the forms and materials of the houses of the quay, some of which are of stone, others of grey flint, more of plaster with their timbers uncovered and painted of different colors, but most of brick, not uncommonly ornamented, with roofs as steep as those of the Thuilleries, and full of projecting lucarnes. This remark, however, applies only to the quay: in its streets, Dieppe is conspicuous among French towns for the uniformity of its buildings. After the bombardment in 1694, when the English, foiled near Brest, wreaked their vengeance upon Dieppe, and reduced the whole to ashes, the town was rebuilt on a regular plan, agreeably to a royal ordinance. Hence this is commonly regarded as one of the handsomest places in France, and you will find it mentioned as such by most authors; but the unfortunate architect who was employed in rebuilding it, got no other reward than general complaints and the nickname of M.

Gateville. The inconveniences arising from the arrangements of the houses which he erected must have been serious; for we find that sixty years afterwards an order of council was procured, allowing the inhabitants to make some alterations that they considered most essential to their comfort. Upon the quay there is occasionally somewhat of the activity of commerce; but elsewhere it is as I have observed before, as well with the people as the buildings. As far as the houses are concerned, a little care and paint would remove their squalid aspect: to an English eye it is singularly offensive; but it cannot possibly be so to the French, among whom it seems almost universal.

To a painter Dieppe must be a source of great delight: the situation, the buildings, the people offer an endless variety; but nothing is more remarkable than the costume of the females of the middle and lower cla.s.ses, most of whom wear high pyramidal caps, with long lappets entirely concealing their hair, red, blue, or black corsets, large wooden shoes, black stockings, and full scarlet petticoats of the coa.r.s.est woollen, pockets of some different die attached to the outside, and not uncommonly the appendage of a key or corkscrew: occasionally too the color of their costume is still farther diversified by a chequered handkerchief and white ap.r.o.n. The young are generally pretty; the old, tanned and ugly; and the transition from youth to age seems instantaneous: labor and poverty have destroyed every intermediate gradation; but, whether young or old, they have all the same good-humored look, and appear generally industrious, though almost incessantly talking. Even on Sundays or feast-days, bonnets are seldom to be seen, but round their necks are suspended large silver or gilt ornaments, usually crosses, while long gold ear-rings drop from either side of their head, and their shoes frequently glitter with paste buckles of an enormous size. Such is the present costume of the females at Dieppe, and throughout the whole Pays de Caux; and in this description, the lover of antiquarian research will easily trace a resemblance to the attire of the women of England, in the XVth and XVIth centuries. As to the cap, which the Cauchoise wears when she appears _en grand costume_, its very prototype is to be found in _Strutt's Ancient Dresses_. Decorated with silver before, and with lace streaming behind, it towers on the head of the stiff-necked complacent wearer, whose locks appear beneath, arrayed with statuary precision. Nor is its antiquity solely confined to its form and fashion; for, descending from the great grandmother to the great grand-daughter, it remains as an heir-loom in the family from generation unto generation. In my former visit to Normandy, three years ago, we first saw this head-dress at the theatre at Rouen, and my companion was so struck with it that he made the sketch, of which I send you a copy. The costume of the females of somewhat higher rank is very becoming: they wear muslin caps, opening in front to shew their graceful ringlets, colored gowns, scarlet handkerchiefs, and black ap.r.o.ns.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Head-Dress of Women of the Pays de Caux]

But nothing connected with the costume or manners of the people at Dieppe is equally interesting as what refers to the inhabitants of the suburb called Pollet; and I will therefore conclude my letter, by extracting from the historian of the place[3] his account of these men, which, though written many years ago, is true in the main even in our days, and it is to be hoped will, in its most important respects, continue so for a length of time to come. "Three-fourths of the natives of this part of the town are fishermen, and not less effectually distinguished from the citizens of Dieppe by their name of Poltese, taken from their place of residence, than by the difference in their dress and language, the simplicity of their manners, and the narrow extent of their acquirements. To the present hour they continue to preserve the same costume as in the XVIth century; wearing trowsers covered with wide short petticoats, which open in the middle to afford room for the legs to move, and woollen waistcoats laced in the front with ribands, and tucked below into the waistband of their trowsers.

Over these waistcoats is a close coat, without b.u.t.tons or fastenings of any kind, which falls so low as to hide their petticoats and extend a foot or more beyond them. These articles of apparel are usually of cloth or serge of a uniform color, and either red or blue; for they interdict every other variation, except that all the seams of their dress are faced with white silk galloon, full an inch in width. To complete the whole, instead of hats, they have on their heads caps of velvet or colored cloth, forming a _tout-ensemble_ of attire, which is evidently ancient, but far from unpicturesque or displeasing. Thus clad, the Poltese, though in the midst of the kingdom, have the appearance of a distinct and foreign colony; whilst, occupied incessantly in fishing, they have remained equally strangers to the civilization and politeness, which the progress of letters during the last two centuries has diffused over France. Nay, scarcely are they acquainted with four hundred words of the French language; and these they p.r.o.nounce with an idiom exclusively their own, adding to each an oath, by way of epithet; a habit so inveterate with them, that even at confession, at the moment of seeking absolution for the practice, it is no uncommon thing with them to _swear_ they will be guilty of it no more. To balance, however, this defect, their morals are uncorrupted, their fidelity is exemplary, and they are laborious and charitable, and zealous for the honor of their country, in whose cause they often bleed, as well as for their priests, in defence of whom they once threatened to throw the Archbishop of Rouen into the river, and were well nigh executing their threats."

Footnotes:

[1] The chalk in the cliff, in the immediate vicinity of Dieppe, is divided at intervals of about two feet each by narrow strata of flint, generally horizontal, and composed in some cases of separate nodules, which are not uncommonly split, in others of a continuous compressed ma.s.s, about two or three inches thick and of very uncertain extent, but the strata are not regular.

[2] _Goube Histoire de Normandie_, III. p. 188.--In _Cadet Ga.s.sicourt Lettres sur Normandie_, I. p. 68, the story of Bouzard is given still more at length.

[3] _Histoire de Dieppe_, II. p. 56.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Entrance to the Castle at Dieppe]

LETTER II.

DIEPPE--CASTLE--CHURCHES--HISTORY OF THE PLACE--FEAST OF THE a.s.sUMPTION.

(_Dieppe, June_, 1818.)

The bombardment of this town, alluded to in my last, was so effectual in its operation, that, excepting the castle and the two churches, the place can boast of little to arrest the attention of the antiquary, or of the curious traveller. These three objects were indeed almost all that escaped the conflagration; and for this they were indebted to their insulated situations, the first on an eminence unconnected with the houses of the place, the other two in their respective cemeteries.

The hill on which the castle stands is steep; and the building, as well from its position, as from its high walls, flanked with towers and bastions, has an imposing appearance. In its general outline it bears a resemblance to the castle of Stirling, but it has not the same claims to attention in an architectural point of view. It is a confused ma.s.s of various aeras, and its parts are chiefly modern: nor is there any single feature that deserves to be particularized for beauty or singularity; yet, as a whole, a picturesque and pleasing effect results from the very confusion and irregularity of its towers, roofs, and turrets; and this is also enhanced by a row of lofty arches, thrown across a ravine near the entrance, supporting the bridge, and appearing at a distance like the remains of a Roman aqueduct. What seems to be the most ancient part is a high quadrangular tower with lofty pointed pannels in the four walls; and though inferior in antiquity, an observer accustomed only to the English castellated style, is struck by the variety of numerous circular towers with conical roofs, resembling those which flanked the gates of the town. Some of these gates still remain perfect; and one of them, leading to the sea, now serves as a military prison. It was the Sieur des Marets[4], the first governor of the place, who began this castle shortly after the year 1443, when Louis the XIth, then dauphin, freed Dieppe from the dominion of the English, attacking in person, and carrying by a.s.sault, the formidable fortress, constructed by Talbot, in the suburb of Pollet. Of this, not a vestige now remains: the whole was levelled with the ground in 1689; though, at a period of one hundred and twenty years after it was originally taken and dismantled, it had again been made a place of strength by the Huguenots, and had been still further fortified under Henry IVth, in whose reign the present castle was completed; for it was not till this time that permission was given to the inhabitants to add to it a keep. In its perfect state, whilst defended by this keep, and still further protected by copious out-works and bomb-proof casemates, its strength was great; but the period of its power was of short duration; for the then perturbed state of France naturally gave rise to anxiety on the part of the government, lest fortresses should serve as rallying points to the faction of the league; and the castle of Dieppe was consequently left with little more than the semblance of its former greatness.

Of the churches here, that of St. Jaques is considerably the finest building, and is indeed an excellent specimen of what has been called the _decorated English style of architecture_, the style of this church nearly coinciding in its princ.i.p.al lines with that which prevailed in our own country during the reigns of the second and third Edward. It was begun about the year 1260, but was little advanced at the commencement of the following century; nor were its nineteen chapels, the works of the piety of individuals, completed before 1350. The roof of the choir remained imperfect till ninety years afterwards, whilst that of the transept is as recent as 1628[5]. The most ancient work is discernible in the transepts, but the lines are obscured by later additions. A cloister gallery fronted by delicate mullions runs round the nave and choir, and the extent and arrangement of the exterior would induce a stranger, unacquainted with the history of the building, to suppose that he was entering a conventual or cathedral church. The parts long most generally admired by the French, though they have always been miserable judges of gothic architecture, were the vaulted roof, and the pendants of the Lady-Chapel. The latter were originally ornamented with female figures, representing the Sibyls, made of colored terra cotta, and of such excellent workmanship, that Cardinal Barberini, when he visited this chapel in 1647, declared he had seen nothing of the kind, not even in Italy, superior to them for the beauty and delicacy of their execution; but they are now gone, and, according to Noel[6], were destroyed at the time of the bombardment. The state, however, of the roof does not seem to warrant this observation; and, contrary also to what he says, the pendants between the Lady-Chapel and the choir are still perfect, and serve, together with numerous small canopies in the chapel itself, to give a clear idea of what the whole must have been originally. One of the most elegant of the decorations of the church is a spirally-twisted column, elaborately carved, with a peculiarly fanciful and beautiful capital, placed against a pillar that separates the two south-eastern chapels of the choir. The richest object is a stone-screen to a chantry on the north side, which is divide into several canopies, whose upper part is still full of a profusion of sculpture, though the lower is sadly mutilated. I could not ascertain its history or use; but I do not suppose it is of earlier date than the age of Francis Ist, as the Roman or Italian style is blended with the Gothic arch. The Chapel of the Sepulchre, is not uncommonly pointed out as an object of admiration. There is certainly some, handsome sculpture round the portal; but it is not this for which your admiration is required: you are told that the chapel was made in 1612, at the expence of a traveller, then just returned from Palestine, and that it offers a faithful representation of the Holy Sepulchre itself at Jerusalem; by which if we are to understand that the wretched, grisly, painted, wooden figures of the three Maries, and other holy women and holy men, a.s.sembled round a disgusting representation of the dead Saviour, have their prototype in Judea, I can only add I am sorry for it: for my own part, putting aside all question of the propriety or effect of symbolical worship, and meaning nothing offensive to the Romish faith, I must be allowed to say that most a.s.suredly I can conceive nothing less qualified to excite feelings of devotion, or more certain to awaken contempt and loathing, than the images of this description, the tinselled virgins, and the wretched daubs, nick-named paintings, which abound in the churches of Picardy and Normandy, the only catholic provinces which I have yet visited; so that, if the taste of the inhabitants is to be estimated by the decoration of the religious buildings, this faculty must be rated very low indeed. The exterior of the church is as richly ornamented as the inside; and not a b.u.t.tress, arch, or canopy is without the remains of crumbled carving, worn by time, or disfigured by the ruder hand of calvinistic or revolutionary violence. Tradition refers the erection of this edifice to the English.

From the certainty with which a date may be a.s.signed to almost every part, it is very interesting to the lover of architecture. The Lady-Chapel is also perhaps one of the last specimens of Gothic art, but still very pure, except in some of the smaller ornaments, such, as the niches in the tabernacles, which end in escalop sh.e.l.ls.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Font in the Church of St. Remi, at Dieppe]

The other church is dedicated to St. Remi, and is a building of the XVIIth century; though, judging from some of its pillars, it would be p.r.o.nounced considerably more ancient. Those of the transept and of the central tower are lofty and cl.u.s.tered, and of extraordinary thickness; the rest are circular and plain, and not very unlike the columns of our earliest Norman or Saxon churches, though of greater proportionate alt.i.tude. The capitals of those in the choir are singularly capricious, with figures, scrolls, &c.; but it is the capriciousness of the gothic verging into Grecian, not of the Norman. On the pendants of the nave are painted various ornaments, each accompanied by a mitre. The eastern has only a mitre and cross, with the date 1669; the western the same, with 1666; denoting the aera of the edifice, which was scarcely finished, when a bomb, in 1694, destroyed the roof of the choir, and this remains to the present hour incomplete. The most remarkable object in the church is a _benitier_ of coa.r.s.e red granite, on whose basin is an inscription, to me illegible. The annexed sketches will give you some idea of it:

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sketch of inscription]

In the letters one looks naturally for a date: the figures that alternate with them are probably mitres, and, like those on the roof, indicate the supreme jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Rouen in the place.

Dieppe itself is, by its own historians[7], said to boast an origin as early as the days of Charlemagne[8], who is reported to have built a fortress on the scite of the present town, and to have called it Bertheville, in honor of the Berthas, his mother and his daughter.

Bertheville was one of the first places taken by the Normans, by whom the appellation was changed to Dyppe or Dieppe, a word which in their language is said to signify a good anchorage. Other writers[9], however, treat the whole of the early chronicle of Dieppe as a fiction, and maintain, that even at the beginning of the XIth century the town had no existence, and the place was only known as the port of Arques, within whose territory it was comprehended; nor was it till the end of the same century that the inhabitants of Arques were, partly from the convenience of the fisheries, and partly from the advantages of the salt trade, induced to form this settlement. Whatever date may be a.s.signed to the foundation of Dieppe, it is frequently contended that William the Conqueror embarked here for the invasion of England, and it seems undoubted that he sailed hence for his new kingdom in the next year, agreeably to the following pa.s.sage from Ordericus Vitalis, (p. 509) by which you will observe, that the river had at that time the same name as the town, "Deinde s.e.xta nocte Decembris ad ostium amnis Deppae ultra oppidtim Archas accessit, primaque vigilia gelidae noctis Austro vela dedit, et mane portum oppositi littoris, (quem Vvicenesium vocitant) prospero cursu arripuit." In 1188, our Henry II built a castle upon the same hill on which the present fortress stands. This strong hold, however, afforded little protection; for we find that, in 1195, Philip Augustus of France, entering Normandy with an hostile army, laid siege to Dieppe, and set fire not only to the town, but also to the shipping in the harbor. Two years subsequently to this event, Dieppe ceased to form a part of the demesne of the Sovereign of the Duchy. Richard the Ist had given great offence to Walter, Archbishop of Rouen, by persisting in the erection of Chateau Gaillard, in the vicinity of Andelys, which belonged to the archbishop in right of his see; and though our lion-hearted monarch was not appalled either by the papal interdict or by the showers of blood that fell upon his workmen, yet at length he thought it advisable to purchase at once the forgiveness of the prelate and the secular seignory of Andelys, by surrendering to him, as an equivalent, the towns and lordships of Dieppe and Louviers, the land and forest of Alihermont, the land and lordship of Bouteilles, and the mills of Rouen. This exchange was regarded as so great a subject of triumph to the archbishop, that he caused the memory of it to be perpetuated by inscriptions upon crosses in various parts of Rouen, some of which remained as late as 1610, when Taillepied wrote his _Recueil des Antiquitez et Singularitez de la Ville de Rouen_. The following lines are given as one of these inscriptions in the _Gallia Christiana_[10]:

"Vicisti, Galtere, tui sunt signa triumphi Deppa, Locoveris, Alacris-mons, Butila, molta, Deppa maris portus, Alacris-mons locus amoenus, Villa Locoveris, rus Butila, molta per urbem.

Hactenus haec Regis Richardi jura fuere; Haec rex sancivit, haec papa, tibique tuere[11]."

Nor was this the only memorial of the fact; for the advantages of the exchange were so generally recognized, that the name of Walter became proverbial; and to this day it is said in Normandy of a man who over-reaches another, "c'est un fin Gautier." It might be inferred from the terms of the bargain in which Dieppe merely appears as one of the items of the account, that it was then a place of little consequence; yet, one of the old chroniclers speaks of it at the time it was taken by the French under Philip Augustus, as

"portus fama celeberrimus atque Villa potens opibus."

These historians, however, of former days are not always the most accurate; but from this period the annals of the place are preserved, and at certain epochs it is far from unimportant in French history: as, when Talbot raised in 1442 the fortress called the Bastille, a defence so strong and in so well-chosen a situation, that even Vauban honored its memory by lamenting its destruction; when the inhabitants fought with the Flemings in the channel, in 1555; when Henry IVth, with an army of less than four thousand men, fled hither in 1589, as to his last place of refuge, winning the hearts of the people by his frank address:--"Mes amis, point de ceremonie, je ne demande que vos coeurs, bon pain, bon vin, et bon visage d'hotes;" and when, as I have already mentioned, the town sustained from our fleet a bombardment of three days' duration, and was reduced by it to ashes.

For the excellence of its sailors, Dieppe has at all times been renowned: no less an authority than the President de Thou has p.r.o.nounced them to be men, "penes quos praecipua rei nauticae gloria semper fuit;"

and they have proved their claims to this encomium, not only by having supplied to the navy of France the celebrated Abraham Du Quesne, the successful rival of the great Ruyter, but still more so by having taken the lead in expeditions to Florida[12]; by having established a colony for the promotion of the fur trade in Canada, if indeed they were not the original discoverers of that country; and by having been the first Christians who ever made a settlement on the coast of Senegal. This last-mentioned event took place, according to French writers, at as early a period as the XIVth century; and, though the establishment was not of long duration, its effects have been permanent; for it is owing to the consignments of ivory then made to Dieppe, that many of the inhabitants were induced to become workers in that substance; a trade which they preserve to the present time, and carry the art to such perfection that they have few rivals. This and the making of lace are the princ.i.p.al employments of such of the natives as are not engaged in the fishery. In the earlier ages of the Duchy, the inhabitants of the Pays de Caux found a more effectual and important employment in the salt-works which were then very numerous on the coast, but which have long since been suffered to fall into decay. Ancient charters, recorded in the _Neustria Pia_, trace these works on the coast of Dieppe, and at Bouteilles on the right of the valley of Arques, to as remote a period as 1027; and they at the same time prove the existence of a ca.n.a.l between Dieppe and Bouteilles, by which in 1390 vessels loaded with salt were wont to pa.s.s. But here, as in England, such works have been abandoned, from the greater facility of communication between distant places, and of obtaining salt by other means.

At present the only manufacture on the beach is that of kelp, for which a large quant.i.ty of the coa.r.s.er sea-weeds is burned; but the fisheries, which are not carried on with equal energy in any other port of France, are the chief support of the place. The sailors of Dieppe were not confined to their own seas; for they used to pursue the cod fishery on the coast of Newfoundland with considerable success. The herring fishery however was a greater staple; and previously to the revolution, when alone a just estimate could be formed of such matters, the quant.i.ty of herrings caught by the boats belonging to Dieppe averaged more than eight thousand lasts a year, and realized above 100,000. This fishery is said to have been established here as early as the XIth century[13].