Chapter 19

The shops on the quay are an unfailing source of interest to me. I make a tour there every morning before I go down to the beach. They have such a wonderful variety of things. Shells of all sizes--enormous pink ones like those I always remember standing on the mantelpiece in the nursery at home--brought back by a sailor brother who used to tell us to put them to our ears and we would hear the noise of the sea--and beautiful delicate little mother-of-pearl shells that are almost jewels--wonderful frames, boxes, and pincushions, made of shells; big spoons, too, with a figure or a ship painted on them--knives, penholders, paper-cutters and brooches, made out of the bones of big fish--tassels of bright-coloured sea-weed, corals, vanilla beans--curiously worked leather belts--some roughly carved ivory crosses, umbrella handles, canes of every description, pipes, long gold earrings, parrots, little birds with bright-coloured feathers, monkeys--an extraordinary collection.

I am sure one would find many curious specimens if one could penetrate into the back of the old shops and pull the things about--evidently sailors from all parts of the world have passed at Boulogne. Still I don't hear many foreign languages spoken--almost always French and English; occasionally a dark face, with bright black eyes, strikes one. We saw two Italians the other day, talking and gesticulating hard, shivering, too, with woollen comforters tied over their caps. There was a cold fog and we were all wrapped up. It must be awful weather for Southerners who only live when the sun shines and go to bed when it is cold and gray. There are all sorts of itinerants, petits marchands, on the other side of the quay, looking on the water--old women with fruit and cakes--children with crabs and shrimps--dolls in Boulonaise costume--fishwives and matelottes, stalls with every description of food, tea, coffee, chocolate, sandwiches, and fried potatoes. The children bought some potatoes the other day wrapped up in brown paper--quite a big portion for two sous--and said they were very good.

The quais are very broad, happily, for everything is put there. One morning there were quantities of barrels. I asked what was in them. Salt, they told me, for the herring-boats which are starting these days. Nets, coils of ropes, big sails, baskets, boxes, odd bits of iron, some anchors--one has rather to pick one's way. An automobile has been standing there for three or four days. I asked if that was going to Iceland on a trawler, but the man answered quite simply, "Oh, no, Madame, what should we do with an automobile in a fishing-boat. It belongs to the owner of one of the ships, and has been here en panne waiting till he can have it repaired."

We went one evening to the Casino to see a "bal des matelottes." It was a curious sight--a band playing on a raised stand--a broad space cleared all round it and lots of people dancing. The great feature, of course, was the matelottes. Their costumes were very effective--they all wore short, very full skirts, different coloured jackets, short, with a belt, very good stout shoes and stockings, and their white frilled caps. They always danced together (very rarely with a man--it is not etiquette for them to dance with any man when their husbands or lovers are at sea), their hands on each other's shoulders. They dance perfectly well and keep excellent time and, I suppose, enjoy themselves, but they look very solemn going round and round until the music stops. Their feet and ankles are usually small. I heard an explanation the other day of their dark skins, clean cut features, and small feet. They are of Portuguese origin. The first foreign sailors who came to France were Portuguese. Many of them remained, married French girls, and that accounts for that peculiar type in their descendants which is very different from the look of the Frenchwoman in general. There are one or two villages in Brittany where the women have the same colouring and features, and there also Portuguese sailors had remained and married, and one still hears some Portuguese names--José, Manuel--and among the women some Annunziatas, Carmelas, etc. We had a house in Brittany one summer and our kitchen maid was called Dolores.

CAP GRIS NEZ.

We made a lovely excursion one day to Cap Gris Nez--just at the end of a wild bit of coast about twenty-five kilomètres from Boulogne. The road was enchanting on the top of the cliff all along the sea. We passed through Vimereux, a small bathing-place four or five miles from Boulogne, and one or two other villages, then went through a wild desolate tract of sand-hills and plains and came upon the lighthouse, one of the most important of the coast--a very powerful light that all inward-bound boats are delighted to see. There are one or two villas near on the top of the cliff, then the road turns sharply down to the beach--a beautiful broad expanse of yellow sand, reaching very far out that day as it was dead low tide.

In the distance we saw figures; couldn't distinguish what they were doing, but supposed they were fishing for shrimps, which was what our party meant to do. The auto was filled with nets, baskets, and clothes, as well as luncheon baskets. The hotel--a very good, simple one--with a broad piazza going all around it, was half-way down the cliff, and the woman was very "complaisante" and helpful--said there were plenty of shrimps, crabs, and lobsters and no one to fish. She and her husband had been out at four o'clock that morning and had brought back "quatre pintes" of shrimps. No one knew what she meant, but it was evidently a measure of some kind. I suppose an English pint. She gave us a cabin where the two young matrons dressed, or rather undressed, as they reappeared in their bathing trousers--which stopped some little distance above the knee--very short skirts, bare legs, "espadrilles" on their feet, and large Panama hats to protect them from the sun. The men had merely rolled up their trousers. They went out very far--I could just make them out--they seemed a part of the sea and sky, moving objects standing out against the horizon.

I made myself very comfortable with rugs and cushions under the cliff--I had my book as I knew it would be a long operation. It was enchanting--sitting there, such a beautiful afternoon. We saw the English coast quite distinctly. There was not a sound--no bathing cabins or tents, nobody on the shore, but a few fishermen were spreading nets on poles to catch the fish as the tide came up. The sea was quite blue, and as the afternoon lengthened there were lovely soft lights over everything; such warm tints it might almost have been the Mediterranean and the Riviera. A few fishing-boats passed in the distance, but there was nothing to break the great stillness--not even the ripple of the waves, as the sea was too far out. It was a curious sensation to be sitting there quite alone--the blue sea at my feet and the cliff rising straight up behind me.

The bay is small--two points jutting out on each side, completely shutting it in. There are a good many rocks--the water dashes over them finely when the tide is high and the sea rough. I got rather stiff sitting still and walked about a little on the hard beach and talked to the fishermen. They were looking on amused and indulgently at our amateurs, and said there were plenty of fish of all kinds _if_ one knew how to take them. They said they made very good hauls with their nets in certain seasons--that lots of fish came in with the tide and got stranded, couldn't get back through the nets. One of them had two enormous crabs in his baskets, which I bought at once, and we brought them home in the bottom of the auto wrapped up in _very thick_ paper, as they were still alive and could give a nasty pinch, the man said.

About five, I thought I made out my party more distinctly; their faces were turned homeward, so I went to meet them as far as the dry sand lasted. I had a very long walk as the tide was at its lowest. They came back very slowly, stopping at all the little pools and poking their nets under the rocks to get what they could. They had made a very fair basket of really big shrimps, were very wet, very hungry, and very pleased with their performance.

We had very good tea and excellent bread and butter at the hotel. They gave us a table on the piazza in the sun which finished drying the garments of the party. I fancy they had gone in deeper than they thought. However, salt water never gives cold and nobody was any the worse for the wetting. The woman of the hotel said we ought to go to see a fisherman's hut, on the top of the cliff near the lighthouse, before we went back. The same family of fishermen had lived there for generations, and it was a marvel how any one _could_ live in such a place. We could find our way very easily as the path was marked by white stones. So we climbed up the cliff and a few minutes' walk brought us to one of the most wretched habitations I have ever seen: a little low stone hut, built so close to the edge of the cliff one would think a violent storm must blow it over--no windows--a primitive chimney, hardly more than a hole in the roof--a little low door that one had to stoop to pass through, one room, dark and cold--the floor of beaten earth, damp and uneven, almost in ruts. There were two beds, a table, two chairs, and a stove--nondescript garments hanging on the walls--a woman with a baby was sitting at the table--another child on the floor--both miserable little, puny, weak-eyed, pale children. The woman told me she had six--all lived there--one man was sitting on the bed mending a net, another on the floor drinking some black stuff out of a cup--I think the baby was drinking the same--two or three children were stretching big nets on the top of the cliff--they, too, looked miserable little specimens of humanity, bare-legged, unkempt, trousers and jackets in holes; however, the woman was quite cheerful--didn't complain nor ask for money. The men accepted two francs to drink our health. One wonders how children ever grow up in such an atmosphere without light or air or decent food.

The drive home was beautiful--not nearly so lonely. Peasants and fishermen were coming back from their work--women and children driving the cows home. We noticed, too, a few little, low, whitewashed cottages in the fields, almost hidden by the sand-hills, which we hadn't seen coming out.

HARDELOT.

Hardelot was a great resource to us. It is a fine domain, beautiful pine woods running down to the sea--a great stretch of green meadow and a most picturesque old castle quite the type of the château-fort. The castle has now been transformed into a country club with golf-links, tennis, and well-kept lawns under big trees which give a splendid shade and are most resting to the eye after the glare of the beach. There is no view of the sea from the castle, but from the top of the towers on a fine day one just sees a quiver of light beneath the sky-line which might be the sea.

The château has had its history like all the old feudal castles on the sea-board and has changed hands very often, being sometimes French and sometimes English. It was strongly fortified and resisted many attacks from the English before it actually came into their possession. Part of the wall and a curious old gate-way are all that remain of the feudal days. The castle is said to have been built by Charlemagne. Henry VIII of England lived in it for some time, and the preliminaries of a treaty of peace between that monarch and François I were signed there--the French and English ambassadors arriving in great state--with an endless army of retainers. One wonders where they all were lodged, as the castle could never have been large--one sees that from the foundations; but I fancy habits were very simple in those days, and the suites probably slept on the floor in one of the halls with all their clothes on, the troopers keeping on their jack-boots so long that they had to be cut off sometimes--the feet and legs so swollen.

The drive from the club to the plage is charming. Sometimes through pretty narrow roads with high banks on each side, with hedges on top, quite like parts of Devonshire, and nice, little, low, whitewashed cottages with green shutters and red doors, much more like England than France.

We stopped at a cottage called the Dickens House, where Charles Dickens lived for some time. It is only one story high--white with green shutters--stands at the end of an old-fashioned garden filled with all sorts of ordinary garden-flowers--roses, hollyhocks, larkspurs, pinks, all growing most luxuriantly and making patches of colour in the green surroundings. We saw Dickens' study, his table still in the window (where he always wrote), looking over the garden to an endless stretch of green fields.

The plage is very _new_. There is a nice clean hotel, with broad piazzas and balconies directly on the sea and a few chalets are already built, but there is an absolute dearth of trees and shade. There was quite a strong sea-breeze the day we were there, and the fine white sand was blown high into the air in circles, getting into our eyes and hair. There is a splendid beach--miles of sand--not a rock or cliff--absolutely level. The domain of Hardelot belongs to a company of which Mr. John Whitley was the president. He had concessions for a tramway from Boulogne to Hardelot which will certainly bring people to the plage and club. Now there is only an auto-bus, which goes very slowly and is constantly out of order; once the club is organized, I think it cannot fail to be a charming resort. There is plenty of game in the forest (they have a good piece of it), perfect golf and tennis grounds--as much deep-sea fishing as one wants. We went often to tea at the château. F. played golf, and we walked about and sat under the trees, and the children were quite happy playing on the lawns where they were as safe as in their nurseries.