Honfleur

“ Just above Havre on the Seine is the florid spire of the noble church of Harfleur,—not to be confounded with the now dormant port of Honfleur on the opposite bank,—one of the most imposingly placed spires in Normandy, if not in France. ”

“ In an hour you arrive at Honfleur, after a very pleasant voyage, which the inhabitants of Havre are extremely fond of taking: a diligence starts from the quay, and proceeds through an avenue of a league's length between beautiful hills, orchards, and corn-fields, to the strange old town of Lisieux, to which we proceeded. ”

“ As we descended, the ample Seine, here not less than nine miles in width, suddenly displayed itself, and we had not gone far before we came in sight of Honfleur. The mist [Page 94] occasioned by the intense heat, prevented us from seeing distinctly the opposite towns of Havre and Harfleur: we could only just discern the spire of the latter, and the long projecting line of the piers and fortifications of Havre. The great river rolls majestically into the British Channel between these two points, and forms the bay of Honfleur. ”

“ Their strangely uncertain life at Honfleur, poor Mark's position and poverty, her own malady and the curious manner in which she had lost that eager faith in the result of her journey, her reception on the morrow by Miss Davenal--and with all these thoughts were mingled more prominently the tidings which had greeted her since her entrance.
Unconsciously to herself she dropped into a doze. It was a very foolish thing to do, of course, for she would have been much better in bed; but none of us are wise always. ”

“ We were all three more or less ill, and did not like to part; but it was a necessity, so I was sent forward with twelve pieces of baggage and sixteen napoleons to work my way from Ouchy to Honfleur, where I was to wait for my brother-in-law and sister, Honfleur being a quieter place than Havre. Poor Blanche looked so worn and sad!
I got in a railway-carriage by myself, and asked the guard to look after me because I was alone; but just before the train started he put in a man, and begged my pardon, saying it was inevitable, as there was not a place in any other carriage. ”

“ They follow you like a flock of sheep, and say, "We will carry your baggage if you pay us, and if not we will not." My purse prevented my being very free-handed; they would not take less than a franc and a half, and slang you for that; and I spent eighteen francs on them between Lausanne and Honfleur.
Honfleur is a horrid place. It is a fishing town, containing about ten thousand people of an inferior class, as dull as the grave, no society, and, still worse, not the necessaries of life—the only good things are the fruit, the sea, and country. ”

“ The beauties of Honfleur are to be found in its curiously appealing ensembles. All that remains of its thirteenth-century ramparts is the Quai Beaulieu, whence the boat for Havre leaves. Porte de Caen the ancient harbour was first called, and later La Lieutenance. Eastward lie the quartiers, as they exist to-day; and, though they are but a mimicry of their former selves, they are still characteristic of the olden time.
Honfleur
The denominations of the ancient parishes were Notre Dame des Vases, practically non-existent to-day ”

“ To get the King here from Honfleur the following method was adopted: M. Bresson, a loyal and intelligent officer in the French Navy and well known to the King, and Mr Jones, my Vice-Consul and principal Clerk, went in the steam ferry-boat a quarter before five P.M. to Honfleur. From the landing-place it is three-quarters of a mile to the place where the King and Queen were concealed. The ferry-boat was to leave Honfleur for Havre a quarter before seven o'clock. ”

“ At this very moment she's probably with another lover. But then, think of leaving a woman alone in Paris, in July? 'I am never bored. I dine at Mme Fleury's every day; she loves having me. We start for Honfleur on the 25th. You must come and see us.' She imagines that Honfleur is close to Cherbourg. 'I am never bored.' Come, come; when women speak so clearly, it means they have nothing to hide.... On the contrary it's one of their tricks...."
"Well, my child, how's your wretchedness? Is it all over?"
"I am very happy," Rose answered. ”

“ It is splendid ground for cavalry to act, and it is upon them the brunt of the fighting will fall. We are a little stronger in foot; for several companies from Honfleur, our own among them, have come up this morning, and I hear we muster twelve thousand, which is a thousand more than they say Mayenne has with him. ”

“ These, you may think, are, in themselves, grand points of difference, but they fall far short of those which render the continent of Europe altogether of a different nature. Of forest, there is vastly more in France than in England. But, with few exceptions, the fields are not separated by enclosures. The houses are of stone, or of wood, rough-cast. Honfleur, as we approached, had a grey distinctness that is difficult to describe. ”

“ It seems to me that our best chance would be either to cross the Loire and then make for Le Mans, and so up through Alencon to Honfleur--that way we should be east of the disturbed district--or, if we found that a vast number of fugitives had made their way into Brittany, as is almost certain to be the case, we might bear more to the east, and go up through Vendome and Chartres and Evreux, and then branch off and strike the Seine near Honfleur. ”

“ Half an hour afterwards a little dark dot upon the horizon with a golden speck at one end of it was all that could be seen of the Honfleur guard-boat. Wider and wider grew the low-lying shores, broader and broader was the vast spread of blue waters ahead, the smoke of Havre lay like a little cloud upon the northern horizon, and Captain Ephraim Savage paced his deck with his face as grim as ever, but with a dancing light in his gray eyes. ”

“ When Champlain arrived at Honfleur, he learned the death of his friend and patron, the commander De Chastes, "which greatly afflicted me, well knowing that it would be difficult for another to undertake the enterprise without being opposed, unless it should be some nobleman, whose authority was capable of overcoming envy." ”

“ Notwithstanding the discouragements of the preceding year and the small prospect of future success, De Monts and the merchants associated with him still persevered in sending another expedition, and Champlain left Honfleur for New France on the first day of March, 1611. Unfortunately, the voyage had been undertaken too early in the season for these northern waters, and long before they reached the Grand Banks, they encountered ice-floes of the most dangerous character. ”

“ Wait till you see the inhabitants—they'll enlighten you—the hags and the nautical gentlemen along the basins and quays. They've discovered the secret that if cleanliness is next to godliness, dirt and the devil are likewise near neighbors. Awful set—those Honfleur sailors The Havre and Seine people call them Chinamen, they are so unlike the rest of France and Frenchmen. ”

“ The citadel was built by the late Cardinal de Richelieu, uncle of the present Duke, and may be esteemed one of the strongest in France. The haven is very capacious.
When we had done here, we embarked ourselves and horses to pass to Honfleur, about four or five leagues distant, where the Seine falls into the sea. It is a poor fisher-town, remarkable for nothing so much as the odd, yet useful habits which the good women wear, of bears' and other skins, as of rugs at Dieppe, and all along these maritime coasts. ”

“ Its trade is inconsiderable, and its population does not amount to nine thousand inhabitants. But in the year 1450, while in the hands of our countrymen, it sustained a siege of a month's duration from the king of France; and, in the following century, it had the distinction, attended with but little honor, of being the last place in the kingdom that held out for the league.
From Honfleur we would fain have returned by Sanson-sur-Risle and Foullebec, at both which villages M. Le Prevost had led us to expect curious churches; but our postillion assured us that the roads were wholly impassable. ”

“ I live near Hoogstraaten’s estate, and he and Count Van de Burg are the only friends I have, or want; for my heart is far away in two graves in the lonely land of Terra Australis.{219}
APPENDIX. DE GONNEVILLE left Honfleur in the month of June of the year 1503, in the good ship L’Espoir; and after having rounded the Cape of Good Hope he was assailed by tempestuous weather and driven into calmer latitudes. A tedious spell of calms forced him, for want of water, to make for the first land he could sight. ”

“ The fact and the theory based on it are no novelties. Early in the sixteenth century, indeed, the Sieur Gonneville, skipper of Honfleur, sailing round the Cape of Good Hope, made his way right across the Southern Ocean to some vague point of South America where he found the people still just in the intermediate stage between the use of natural vessels and the invention of pottery. ”

“ He left one Du Parc in command, with sixteen men, and, sailing on the eighth of August, arrived at Honfleur with no worse accident than that of running over a sleeping whale near the Grand Bank.
With the opening spring he was afloat again. Perils awaited him worse than those of Iroquois tomahawks; for, approaching Newfoundland, the ship was entangled for days among drifting fields and bergs of ice. Escaping at length, she arrived at Tadoussac on the thirteenth of May, 1611. She had anticipated the spring. Forests and mountains, far and near, all were white with snow. ”

“ The wind increased in violence; the spray was salt on his mustache, and clung to the nap of his clothing. The radiance that marked Trouville and Honfleur grew dim almost to extinction. Along the quay the cafés began to diminish the number of their lights. The cheerful groups broke up, strolling home to the mansard or to the fo'castle, with bursts of drunken or drowsy song. Davenant continued to sit crouched, huddled, bowed. He ceased to argue, or to follow the conflict between self-interest and duty, or to put up a fight of any kind. He was content to sit still and suffer. ”

“ On the 21st day of August, sir Pierre de Brézé, lord of Varenne and count de Maulévrier, accompanied by Robert de Flocques, bailiff of Evreux, with many other lords, men at arms and archers, sailed from Honfleur, to the number of four [Pg 397] thousand combatants. And on the 25th of the said month, the lords de la Fosse and de l'Eure put to sea, and sailed for several places without meeting any adventures, nor being able to land from the roughness of the weather. ”

“ You live in your dressing gown, the great enemy of liberty and activity. To force you to dress, to go out, perhaps in the middle of an absorbing chapter, and only to see someone who does not know how to say anything quickly, and who, the more he is content, the stupider he is,—I did not dare to. Here I am obliged to finish something which drags along, and before the final touch I shall probably go to Normandy. I should like to go by the Seine to Honfleur. It will be next month, if the cold does not make me ill, and I shall try this time to carry you away in passing. ”

“ One day Leonor let fall, from the top of a ladder, a pocketbook from which a flood of papers—sketches, bills, letters, picture postcards—escaped. Rose picked them up, without giving them more than the discreetest glance, when Martinvast castle caught her eye. At the foot of the keep she found M. Hervart's 'love and kisses'. The blood came suddenly to her eyes; she turned the card over and read: "Mademoiselle Gratienne Leboeuf, Rue du Havre, Honfleur." She looked up; Leonor did not seem to have noticed the incident, and with a rapid gesture she folded up the card and slipped it into her bosom. ”

“ Somersetshire, particularly in the neighborhood of Bath, the cliffs on the Dorsetshire, or southern coast, and on the Yorkshire, or northern coast, are the places in this island in which the remains of the animals of this tribe have been chiefly found. The matrix in which they are found is in general similar to that which has been already mentioned as containing the 449fossils of Honfleur, a blue limestone, becoming almost black when wet. ”

“ Normandy, where it borders upon the Seine, comes very near being the artists’ ideal sketching-ground. It has all the attributes of the open country, as well as great industrial centres with picturesque chimney-stacks, and possesses a part of the most charming seacoast of France. Etretat and Honfleur are famous, Caudebec-en-Caux, in a way, is one of the reputed paradises for artists, while Les Andelys, Giverny, and La Roche-Guyon are—well, spots which as soon as they shall become popular with tourists will lose much of their charm, which is to-day natural, simple, and characteristically local. ”

“ WESTWARD of the mouth of the Seine is a little strip of coast-line which in a restricted sense may be said to be the resort of the Parisian world of fashion during the summer months. Trouville-Deauville, Beuzeval-Houlgate, Dives-Cabourg, and Arromanches have their own especial attractions and their own clientèles; but they are all much alike, and it is only in the old towns, such as Honfleur, Pont l’Evêque, Ouistreham, Ruys, or Port-en-Bessin, that one sees anything at all characteristically Norman. ”

“ Whilst the Puritan seaman had been detailing his reminiscence, his eyes had kept wandering from the clouds to the flapping sails and back. Such wind as there was came in little short puffs, and the canvas either drew full or was absolutely slack. The fleecy shreds of cloud above, however, travelled swiftly across the blue sky. It was on these that the captain fixed his gaze, and he watched them like a man who is working out a problem in his mind. They were abreast of Honfleur now, and about half a mile out from it. ”