Chapter II: Norman Industries

Normandy is still a land fertile and rich, as well by nature and the product of the soil, as by the industry of her people.

The following charming lines by Frédéric Berat are appreciative.

“J’ai vu les champs de l’Helvétie,
Et ses chalets et ses glaciers;
J’ai vu le ciel de l’Italie
Et Venise et ses gondoliers!
En saluant chaque patrie
Je me disais: aucun séjour
N’est plus beau que ma Normand
C’est le pays qui m’a donné le jour.”

Not alone from this does one infer the prominence which the province holds, and has held in industrial and economic affairs since the time when Henry II. really broke the power of the Norman barons; but there are self-evident intimations at every turn of one’s footsteps, whether by the highroads or by the by-roads.

It is difficult to imagine what France would have been to-day had it not been for the disaster of the Franco-Prussian war, the rebuff of Fashoda, and the unrest attendant upon the Dreyfus affair.

France has held her own remarkably, when one considers the depression which periodically falls upon other European nations.

Still, there is a great influx of foreign influences to France which, in all but individual manners and customs, is making itself felt.

The English who have settled here in the great woollen industries in Normandy, at Louviers, Elbeuf, and in the neighbourhood of Rouen, are a notable indication of outside influence; but still more so is the recent advent of things American, to say nothing of the forty thousand persons who form the permanent American population of Paris.

American farming machinery is seen everywhere, and if the American automobile has found no place in France, American machine tools are greatly in use in the manufacture of the horseless carriages of France. The French are to-day wearing and copying the fashions in American boots and shoes almost exclusively, and are imitating the Americans in their habits and customs of travel.

A universal English innovation one sees everywhere is tea; but it is not the afternoon variety, except in the case of the “_five o’clocks_” of the Paris boulevards. Your Frenchman drinks his tea--and likes it very much, apparently--after his dinner. Other folk have the idea that this tends to sleeplessness, but not so the French.

In a recent number of a French journal devoted to travel an admiring and appreciative Frenchman says:

“The English and Americans come in great numbers to our land, and travel hither and thither over our great railway lines. They spend their money liberally, and to them we owe the opportunity of doing all that we can to facilitate not only their travel, but to make pleasant their stay amongst us. We should reconstruct the sanitary arrangements of our hotels, and encourage the circulation of information with regard to places of interest.”

And all this the French are doing, and if it is coming but slowly, so far as the country-side is concerned, it is most surely coming, and to-day no more delightful travel-ground is to be found in all the world than France, and Normandy and Brittany and Touraine in particular.

This, then, is one of the industries that is an important one in France, and the coming of the automobile and the revival of travel by road will do much for the increased prosperity of the genuine market-town inns of Normandy.

In the Seine valley, in the heart of Normandy, has sprung up a cotton and woollen manufacturing industry of immense proportions. Much of the wool is a local product, but large quantities of it in the raw state are brought from the river Plata; while at the wharves of Rouen are vast warehouses filled with cotton from the Southern States of America, ready to be worked into cloth by the busy looms of France.

The woollen mills of Elbeuf and Louviers are now turning out worsteds and cloth for men and women’s clothing of a quality and quantity quite rivalling that of Bradford, in England, in the olden times.

As far back as 1780-90 Arthur Young wrote of a visit to a great woollen manufacturer of Louviers, where he saw “a fabric unquestionably the first woollen in the world, if success, beauty of fabric, and an inexhaustible invention to supply with taste all the cravings of fancy can give the merit of such superiority. Perfection goes no farther than the Vigonia cloths of M. Decretot.” This, from an Englishman born and bred in the Midlands, is praise indeed.

The country to the west of Evreux forms the very heart of Normandy. It is a region of rich farms, great prairies, and apple orchards, in which apple-trees are set out twenty-five or thirty to the acre. Nowhere more than in the Plain of St. André and the country district of Neubourg, which immediately environs Evreux, is there to be found anything more characteristically Norman.

Little by little great pasture-lands have been made into tilled fields, to the prosperity of the individual and the nation as well. Were the English farming peasants able and willing to work small holdings in England in the same way, who knows but what prosperity might come to the small farmer there?

Through these rich lands of the Departments of the Eure, Orne, and Calvados flow the Eure, the Iton, the Risle, the Touques, the Dives, and the Orne, which nourish them abundantly, and give a thriving aspect to the towns and country-side alike. That Normandy is so plentifully watered, accounts for its bountiful pasture-lands and prairies; which, by a process known to all the world, produces most abundant supplies of butter and cheese, to say nothing of such by-products as the cattle themselves. It is doubtful if the cattle-raising industry of itself has a tithe of the economic value and importance of the trade in milk products, which in some parts of Normandy is of tremendous proportions.

The butter of Gournay (Lower Seine), of St. Lô, and Isigny is famous throughout England and France, while the savoury cheeses--above all the Camembert and the Pont l’Evêque--are exported to all ends of the earth. A good cow in the Pont l’Evêque country produces cheese to the value of 350 francs a year; and at Lisieux, the centre of the Camembert industry, as much as five hundred francs worth in value.

Agricultural machinery is coming fast into use, and increased crops are the result. In 1862 there were but 10,850 reaping-machines in France, but their number is now more than quadrupled. In a country where nearly fifty per cent. of its inhabitants follow agricultural pursuits, this may be considered as of some significance.

The Cotentin cow gives as much as twenty-five litres of milk per day. With the cows of the Cotentin and the horses of La Perche lies the chief glory of the product of Normandy to-day. The industry of horse-raising in Normandy is most prosperous in the valley and Department of the Orne. Northwestern France produces three races of horses, the Percheron, the Merlerault, and the Breton. The Percheron is mostly raised in La Perche, the Merlerault is a crossing of the Norman with English stock; and the Breton is a hardy little animal, not at all beautiful to look at, but, nevertheless, a most useful and economical animal to own, which is saying a good deal in its favour. The chief horse-trading centres in Normandy are Alençon, Vernon, Bernay, and Mortagne.

In general, the cattle of Normandy are famous for the quality and richness of their flesh none the less than for their products, and the Norman beef and mutton are much in demand in the markets of Paris.

The market-towns of Normandy are very numerous and important, but they are by no means so picturesque as are those of the south of France, or even of the cities and towns along the Loire, or in Brittany. Market-day is more of a matter-of-fact, hard-headed commerce, with the Norman peasant, than it is an opportunity for a day in town.

To the market the Norman peasant and his wife come to sell and to buy, in a tilt-cart, usually attached to an ancient-looking, though not decrepit, white horse, who is used to only moderately long journeys. As a matter of business the peasant leaves his home by nine in the morning--the height of the market usually being just before midday. By nine, then, all is ready,--the eggs in the pannier, the chickens in their baskets, and the cheeses and butter between crisp, cool leaves of beet-root or cabbage. Crossing the courtyard, a door is opened, disclosing the old harness hung on its iron nail. Soon it is on the back of the old white horse, and he is marched forth to be attached to the shafts of the great, high, two-wheeled tilt-cart, which seems very unsteady. When the baskets are all finally disposed, and the peasant and his wife are seated, it seems even more so; but as no one has ever seen it overturned, the Norman peasant’s cart must be a most satisfactory vehicle.

There is one event which comes off periodically in Normandy, which has never had much prominence given to it from the outside, and that is the fair at Guibray,--a suburb of Falaise, the birthplace of the Conqueror. Next to the great fair at Beaucaire, of which Dumas writes in “Monte Cristo,” the fair at Guibray is the greatest in all France; and is of the popular order of the trading-fair at Nijni-Novgorod in Russia.

At Guibray the event has been held for many, many years, though of late its importance has fallen somewhat away. A hundred years ago merchandise was sold to the value of 100,000,000 francs, while at Beaucaire the sales sometimes totalled 500,000,000.

Besides this, Normandy has the great horse-fair of Bernay, held at the _Fête des Rameaux_ (Palm Sunday), the most famous and largest of its kind in France.

These great fairs of Normandy are one of the most interesting of all the attractions to the stranger.

No one should expect to find a town at its normal aspect on one of these occasions, and sightseeing of the conventional order is out of the question at such times; but, on the other hand, one’s gain is great, if he is a lover of such assemblages. Oftentimes the whole town will be found to be given over to the great local event, with the churches and musées closed, and the tables d’hôtes overcrowded.

Artists and lovers of new sensations, especially, will not mind this, for these local fairs and holidays will furnish much amusement and edification that would otherwise be missed. Colour and noise and life is everywhere. Everything smacks of gaiety and good nature, and for the most part it is distinctly local. Parisian costumes and manners have no place here, and one must be prepared to take things as he finds them.

The almanacs and local journals will give particulars of these events, and one can avoid them or not as is his mood. One cannot, however, claim to have really seen Normandy unless he has attended at least one fair.

Normandy is one of the greatest wheat-growing sections of France. Every plain, valley, and hillside is literally covered with it.

In the midst of all this agrarian industry are set many towns and villages alive with an industry of another sort. On the Avre, at Nonancourt, are the great spinning mills of M. Waddington, whose name and fame as a naturalized Frenchman are world-wide. At Evreux are great establishments which manufacture linen, cotton-stuffs, hosiery, and kindred products in vast quantities; while at Bayeux, Alençon, Argenton, and Caen lace is manufactured on a large scale. Again, cotton and woollen stuffs are produced at Elbeuf, Louviers, and Rouen; leather at Pont Audemer and Evreux; yarn and thread at Bernay, Alençon, Mortagne, Lisieux, and Vire, and pins and needles at Rugles and Laigle.

In addition, the fisheries and oyster cultures of Normandy are very great; likewise the coastwise shipping, to say nothing of the trans-atlantic traffic of the great liners from the ports of Havre and Cherbourg.

Out of Fécamp go many deep-sea fishermen bound for the Newfoundland banks; and Tréport, Yport, Dieppe, and Granville are important home ports for the mackerel and herring fleets of the North Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean.

There is a great and still growing interest in France, and indeed in many other parts of Continental Europe, in the sugar-beet industry.

In Normandy it is very considerable, and “potato spirit” and “beet sugar” are two products of the soil which of late have added much to its prosperity.