In the following pages we do not profess to describe each place on the route we have suggested, but rather to record a few notes, made at various times during a sojourn in Normandy; notes—­not intended to be exhaustive, or even as complete and comprehensive in description, as ordinary books of travel, but which—­written in the full enjoyment of summer time in this country, in sketching in the open air, and in the exploration of its mediaeval towns—­may perchance impart something of the author’s enthusiasm to his unknown readers, when scattered upon the winds of a publisher’s breeze.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER II.

PONT AUDEMER.

About one hundred and fifty miles in a direct line from the door of the Society of British Architects in Conduit Street, London (and almost unknown, we venture to say, to the majority of its members), sleeps the little town of PONT AUDEMER, with its quaint old gables, its tottering houses, its Gothic ‘bits,’ its projecting windows, carved oak galleries, and streets of time-worn buildings—­centuries old.  Old dwellings, old customs, old caps, old tanneries, set in a landscape of bright green hills.[5]

‘Old as the hills,’ and almost as unchanged in aspect, are the ways of the people of Pont Audemer, who dress and tan hides, and make merry as their fathers did before them.  For several centuries they have devoted themselves to commerce and the arts of peace, and in the enthusiasm of their business have desecrated one or two churches into tanneries.  But they are a conservative and primitive people, loving to do as their ancestors did, and to dwell where they dwelt; they build their houses to last for several generations, and take pride and interest in the ’family mansion,’ a thing unknown and almost impossible amongst the middle classes of most communities.

[Illustration:  MARKET PLACE, PONT AUDEMER.]

Pont Audemer was once warlike; it had its castle in feudal times (destroyed in the 14th century), and the legend exists that cannon was here first used in warfare.  It has its history of wars in the time of the Norman dukes, but its aspect is now quiet and peaceful, and its people appear happy and contented; the little river Rille winds about it, and spreads its streamlets like branches through the streets, and sparkles in the evening light.  Like Venice, it has its ’silent highways;’ like Venice, also, on a smaller and humbler scale, it has its old facades and lintels drooping to the water’s edge; like Venice, too, we must add, that it has its odours here and there—­odours not always proceeding from the tanneries.

In the chief place of the arrondissement, and in a rapidly increasing town, containing about six thousand inhabitants; with a reputation for healthiness and cheapness of living, and with a railway from Paris, we must naturally look for changes and modern ways; but Pont Audemer is still essentially old, and some of its inhabitants wear the caps, as in our illustration, which were sketched only yesterday in the market-place.