Chapter I: The Seine Valley--Preamble

Three great gateways to Paris, from England’s shores, lie through Normandy: via Cherbourg and the Cotentin, via Dieppe and the Pays de Caux, and via Havre and the Seine valley, by the old Norman capital of Rouen.

All three routes traverse a lovely country, but it is probable that the one by the great silent highway of the Seine is the most picturesque and historically interesting of its length in the whole world.

If the Seine be truly a great highway--the main street--of that elongated metropolis which extends from the Ile de la Cité, at Paris, to Havre, it is equally true that the roadways along either bank become its footpaths or sidewalks, and that the parallel highroads, running along either side not far from the river-bank, are as busy with wheeled traffic as any other of the great national roads of France.

“The Seine,” says Michelet, “is the most civilized and the most perfect of the rivers of France. It bears the spirit of Paris to Normandy, to the sea, to England, and to far-away America.”

“The valley,” say the geographers, “is monotonous up to Paris, varied to Rouen, and picturesque to Havre.” Deep-sea navigation is possible from its mouth to Paris, and above all as far as to Rouen, to which point great ships come and go with the same regularity that would obtain in a seacoast port. The tide of the ocean rises and falls as high up as Pont de l’Arche, where the first dam and lock are built.

The affluents of the Seine below Paris are the Oise, its principal tributary, which has its birth in the distant Ardennes in Belgium; the Epte, a “pure water” stream which flows through a charming valley, from Forges-les-Eaux to Giverny near Vernon; the Andelle, less important, but a wonderfully picturesque little river, which joins the parent stream near Pont de l’Arche. The Eure also comes to its confluence with the Seine at the same point, and the Risle, which rises near La Perche, after 140 kilometres, finally reaches the sea through the Seine at Quillebeuf.

The populous and charmingly situated towns of the Seine valley, its wooded banks and forests, and the delightful roads along its banks, with here and there a château half-hidden by trees, to say nothing of the bosom of the stream itself, which forms a greatly travelled highway of another sort, all combine to present a continually changing scene, which is not excelled in all France.

There is a little village on the banks of the Seine below Vernon, where everything save the grand old ruin near by dates from the time, a dozen or more years ago, when a well-known American millionaire stopped there in his long, low-built steam-yacht, and requisitioned all the resources of the town’s not very ample supplies in provender for himself and his “suite,” as the native will tell you. The party did not remain long--over one night only, and for the _petit déjeuner_ the next day--but they must have strewn their pathway with gold, for the memory of the event still lingers.

Strange to say, this little old-world town has not become spoiled, and is not yet a popular resort, though now that an “artist colony” of a dozen or more young ladies descended upon it the last summer, in charge of a patriarchal old gentleman and his wife, its popularity appears to be on the increase.

The great highway of the Seine which connects the capital of France with the capital of Normandy forms, for the most part of its course below Paris, a broad, silvery band, which winds its way around numerous small islands until it comes well up to Rouen, when for fifty or more kilometres--as marked by the broad, white, and plainly visible stones along its banks--it flows through deep-cut cliffs of chalk crowned with greensward.

Below Rouen, after La Bouille is passed, the banks flatten out, until at Caudebec they take on quite a low-country aspect, from whence the Seine makes its way to the sea through the shifting sand-bars at its mouth.

For forty kilometres above Havre the estuary is a broad, lagoon-like expanse which looks little enough like a channel to the sea, though the country round about is not wholly flat, at least not in the distance.

Havre many travellers know as a port of embarkation or debarkation for the great Atlantic liners under the subsidy of the French government. Trouville, to the westward from Havre, across this broad bay of the Seine, is a genuine resort of rank and fashion, not dull, to be sure, but as stale and unprofitable a place in which to linger as one can well imagine. It is the abode of the fashionable world and of millionaires who are unable to take their pleasures except to the accompaniment of details which are not even luxuries to many others, but which to them are necessities of prime importance.

Etretat, practically equidistant eastward, offers much the same attractions, with this difference: it has, or had a half-century ago, a great vogue among artists. Its sea and sky and chalk cliffs are still there, all, it would seem, in a more superlative degree than elsewhere along the coast, but casinos, de luxe hotels, and “five o’clocks” have eliminated all the idyllic foreground, or at least thrust it paradoxically into the distance.

There are a dozen or more similar seashore resorts in the immediate neighbourhood, but when one turns the prow of his motor-boat upstream, or starts his automobile on the road which follows either bank of the Seine for the greater part of the distance from sea to source, he enters immediately upon associations of history and romance that are linked with an unbreakable silvery thread, which never allows one to forget or ignore the fact of its presence or the part it has played in the past.

Eastward lies the province of Caux, of the ancient peoples known as the Calétes, while westward, and onward through the valley of the Eure, the chief tributary of the Seine on the left bank below Paris, is the real Normandy, whose junction with the Isle of France--the ancient domain of the third race of kings--and the fertile plain of La Beauce is marked by the village of Houdan.

It was Napoleon, as first consul, who said that in time to come, Havre, Rouen, and Paris would be one and the same city, and the Seine would be the grand highway.

There is generally to be found lying at the Quai de la Hôtel de Ville, at Paris, a dumpy-looking little steamboat, with stubby masts and a collapsible funnel, which, when all is in order and shipshape, has quite the look of a deep-sea craft. In a way it performs much the same functions, for the passage of some twenty hours from Tower Bridge on London’s river to the entrance to the Seine at Havre is more often than not of a boisterousness quite the equal of the far-away briny deep itself.

Writing a hundred years after the great consul passed his observations on the great highway of the Seine, one realizes still more that its entire course, from Paris to Havre, in no small way resembles a great business thoroughfare, with its marts of trade on either hand, its green open places, its populous centres, its more bare and less pretentious areas, and its cross-roads represented by the inflowing streams, which empty into it from all directions.

In addition, the progress of the ages has multiplied the earth-roads along its banks, and the boats upon its bosom, and the iron rails which connect it with the uttermost corners of the land, bind and protect its permanent value as a great highway of trade.

One other aspect to-day, of which the majority of English-speaking folk know but little, is that the river is greatly given over, on certain occasions and on all fête-days, to sports.

The oarsman has come in the last half-century in great numbers, and in all the large centres on the banks of the Seine he is found, as often as occasion permits, in his racing boat, or shell, a name he has adopted from the English vocabulary. He may not go about his sport as scientifically as his American or English brother, but he is quite as enthusiastic.

To-day, also, the Seine is the true home of the automobile-boat. As an innovation of the times it has had some success elsewhere, but nowhere has the practice of the sport been achieved with the success that it has in that broad, though sinuous stretch of water between the islands below Paris.

Following again on the lines of Napoleon’s words, one appreciates that, if Havre, Paris, and Rouen have not yet become one, Rouen and Havre have come very near to it, for between the principal city of Normandy and the seaport city on _La Manche_--as the French prefer to call the English Channel--are a succession of villages and towns, one scarcely out of sight of the other, all swarming with industry and life, from the artists who throng Caudebec in summer to the peasants who, on a fête-day, crowd into the nearest centre of population to stare at townfolk and drink a particularly vile brand of the native cognac--_calvados_--known in parts of America as “applejack” or hard cider.

As a patriotic and observing Frenchman from the Midi told the writer: “Nowhere else in France may one see so grand a succession of charms and beauties, nowhere receive so live and varied impressions--the splendours of the arts of other days surrounded by the wonders of modern activities--as here in this beautiful stretch of the Seine through Normandy.”

This is not fulsome praise, but enthusiasm merely, bred of intimate acquaintance.

One dreams of the time when Paris was but a tiny bourg: then Rouen was already a great city, having all the prerogatives of a capital. Indeed, capital she was, in effect, under the Romans, who made their way along the Seine and established their country along the banks of the majestic river.

On a certain occasion it was a great question with the author of this book as to whether a journey through the Seine valley in Normandy should be made by means of the novel and speedy motor-boat, or some other small water-craft, or by the better known motor-car.

A covered wagon, too, was thought of, with two small horses and a gipsy driver, but the thing had been done before, and it was not wholly with equanimity that we contemplated jolting over the many miles of the rough streets for which French towns are noted.

For more reasons than one the motor-boat would not do. So the decision ultimately came to the land automobile.

This offered great possibilities for exploration, in a well-known land, to be sure, but as an enthusiastic automobilist once said, it was vastly more satisfactory to him to discover a new and picturesque route from some Channel port to the south of France, than it would be to cleave a new path through trackless Africa.

The towns and places of historic interest or romantic beauty, if not of the river itself, were on its banks or near them, and were properly enough always considered in connection with the Seine.

The itinerary of the Seine occupied the whole of one long, bright summer, and when one adds to this the numerous excursions out of the Seine valley proper into those of its watershed,--up the Eure to Anet, the Ept to Gisors, or the Andelle to Lyons-le-Forêt or beyond,--one rounds off a considerable number of miles or kilometres to one’s credit, besides accomplishing much more than could possibly be achieved were the journey attempted by boat.

We progressed beautifully for the greater part of the journey. Occasionally, off the beaten track--while trying to discover that new route across France, or rather across Normandy from one river valley to another--we came upon a hill too stiff for us to surmount at the top speed. There is one in the Forêt du Rouvray near Grand Couronne, and another at La Thuit near Les Andelys; but in France such ungraded hills are few and far between. Even the dreaded Côte de Gaillon, of hill-climbing fame, paled before our machine, and we took it flying at twenty kilometres an hour.

Only one thing could have made our journey more delightful,--and that unfortunately was not possible,--the possession of a sort of amphibious automobile which, when occasion required, would take to water for a space,--we did take to water on one occasion, but the circumstance is too reminiscent of misery to recount here,--or to go one better, some sort of a machine constructed by the ingenuity of man which should travel by land, by water, or through the air; then bad stretches of _pavé_ would truly be eliminated and all hills levelled. But this would indeed be in the millennium, and this book deals only with facts.

One enters the Seine from the sea at Havre by rounding a veritable graveyard of rocks. When we entered Havre on this occasion--the artist, the automobile, and the author, it was a dull, misty morning in May, and the hour, 5 A. M.

The cross-channel boat progressed slowly through the basin to its dock, swung its length as slowly around, and finally tied up with its deck some eight feet below the level of the wharf pavement.

The process of disembarking an automobile under these conditions was complicated. With true British conservatism of tradition, the captain, his mate, quartermaster, and crew of engineers and stokers declared that the automobile could not be landed “until the tide served,”--and it was still going down.

Meantime the patron of the local garage, having been advised of our coming, was on the wharf thoroughly equipped to receive us. Accompanying this thoughtful individual was a rubicund, genial-looking gentleman who afterward proved to be the representative of the _Département des Mines_, who had come from Rouen sometime during the still hours of the night, to put us through our paces. Clambering the steeply pitched gangplank, the author--who in this case was also the chauffeur--interviewed the before-mentioned gentlemen, thinking meanwhile that it was more or less astonishing that they should have put in an appearance at such an early hour.

It was suggested that a half-dozen stalwart Frenchmen could lift the automobile and all its twelve hundredweight on their shoulders. It seemed incredible, but it was worth trying--otherwise, four hours delay. It was tried, to the contempt of the crew of the steamer, and to their chagrin the feat was accomplished at a cost of three francs, which was immediately expended in _calvados_ at the little _cabaret_ opposite.

With the aid of the Automobile Club membership card, the custom-house was passed without difficulty or delay. The tanks were filled with naphtha, water, and oil, and forthwith the test was made--before the rubicund gentleman from Rouen--upon the outcome of which our certificate of fitness was to be granted or refused.

There was nothing formidable about the process, though we came to grief, or rather to a standstill, in the midst of a flock of sheep just around the corner, and, in returning, stopped only within the proverbial hair’s breadth of a flock of geese who had flutteringly escaped from a near-by market stall.

All this seemed to demonstrate a high and efficient degree of ability, and “_un certificat de capacité pour la conduite des voitures automobiles à pétrole_” was given us forthwith, and long before the hour of high water we were in full cry at the French legal limit for traversing the streets and boulevards of a large and populous city such as Havre.

The bad effects of the exceedingly bad coffee, and equally unpalatable “cottage loaf,” purveyed to us at that early hour on board ship, had now been dissipated in air, and another coffee and rolls taken at a café on the tree-shaded Place Gambetta proved to be so appetizing that we lingered on for _déjeuner_.