Chapter 7

In this fairly hopeful frame of mind, we set forth from Coutances to the north-east. The path at least is easy enough. After some miles of _route nationale_, with a fine view of the towers of Coutances for those who look backwards, we turn off into a _route départementale_. And all who are used to French roads know well that a _route nationale_ is always excellent, and that a _route départementale_ is always endurable and something more. We have one or two gentle ups and downs; but we neither see nor feel anything to suggest the presence or the neighbourhood of an _alta villa_. Presently a gentle down rather than a gentle up brings us to a small village, a church with a good example of the usual saddle-back tower, and with a few houses around it. We are told, and the ordnance map confirms the statement, that this is Hauteville, Hauteville-la-Guichard. Here then is the home of the Norman gentleman of the twelfth century, whose sons grew into counts and dukes in the southern lands, and whose remoter descendants wore the crowns of kingship and of Empire. With this knowledge, we are staggered to find ourselves, if not actually in a hole, yet in something much nearer to a hole than to a height, in a spot which, of the two, would seem to be more fittingly called _Basseville_ than _Haute_. A slightly rising ground to the east of the church kindles again some faint hopes, the more so when the bystanders, again confirmed by the map, point out this direction as the way to the _château_. But _château_, in modern French use, is a dangerous word, and even the higher ground did not at all answer our preconceived notion of Hauteville. Still, not to throw away the faintest chance, we go on in the direction pointed out, trusting to our natural wits, for we had nothing else to guide us. Our books had failed us; nor did we, as sometimes happens, light on some intelligent priest or other person more likely to help us than the ordinary villager. A short further drive through two or three narrower roads and their turnings brings us to a spot beyond which there is clearly nothing "carossable" or even "jackassable." We come to two ranges of buildings standing among fields, buildings which have greatly gone down in the world, but which proclaim themselves as the remains of a _château_ in the later French sense, or perhaps only of its outhouses. The modern _château_ does indeed often enough stand on the site of the ancient _castle_; but here were no signs whatever of mound or ditch, though we ran into several fields to look for them. And, though we were certainly on higher ground than the church and village, there was nothing at all to suggest why the name of the place should have been called Hauteville.

The only hope now is to go back to the village, on the chance either of finding out something more by the light of nature or of lighting on some one who can tell us something. To the south of the church, as to the east, there is some ground rather higher than the village itself; but we see nothing of a mound, nothing to suggest an _alta villa_. But some farm-buildings to the west of the church attract the eye; they are not of yesterday; a round tower, seemingly belonging to a gateway, suggests a _château_ which has taken the place of a _château-fort_. And, hard by, some of our company are led, perhaps by their noses, to an undoubted ditch, though not exactly a fellow of Arques, Marsala, or Old Sarum. And it is more than a common ditch; it is deep; it is four-sided, and it fences in a distinct plot of ground. Our thoughts have come down so low from the lofty donjon with the vision of which we set out that we begin to think of the smaller kind of moated houses in our own land. The rectory at Slymbridge in Gloucestershire had, some years back at least, a moat round it. Some traces of a moat were not long ago still to be seen at the Bishop's court-house at Wookey in Somerset. Is it possible that this unsavoury ditch really marks out the home precinct of the father of kings? Can it be that Tancred lived within it, perhaps in a wooden house, defended by a palisade and by such a ditch? We do not like the guess, but we have no better, and it really is not so absurd as it sounds. We must remember that, in Tancred's day, at least in Tancred's youth, the existence of stone castles is a little problematical. It is certain that there are few or none left of so early a date; but Normandy has seen so many seasons of the destruction of castles that it is rash to say positively that there never were any. In Tancred's day and later we often hear of the "_domus defensabilis_," as distinguished from the castle. And, as the famous one at Brionne, which so long defied the arms of Duke William, is defined as "_aula lapidea_,"[40] it seems implied that a "_domus defensabilis_" might be only "_lignea_." To be sure the stone house at Brionne had in the river Rille a ready-made moat in every way better than the ditch that we have stumbled on at Hauteville. In England, at the same time, we should have been perfectly satisfied with a wooden "aula" as the dwelling place of a powerful thegn, but then we should have looked for it on something of a mound, like the home of Wiggod at Wallingford. Certainly, a frightfully stinking ditch of no great width, compassing a square field, is a poor find after the hopes with which we set out. But, in the absence of all help from books or men, it is all that we have to offer. We should be glad if anybody would tell us of something better; but this is all we could make out for ourselves. The name is hardly a greater difficulty on this lower site than on the higher ground of the _château_. It may be then--we hope it is not so, but it may be--that it was within this ditch that Humphrey and Drogo and William of the Iron Arm were so carefully brought up by their good stepmother, that it was here that the Wiscard played his first childish tricks, with the yet smaller Roger as a willing younger brother. Tancred's estate, we are told, was not large enough to feed his two batches of children; that was the reason why they went to seek their fortunes so far off. If they had stayed at home, the estate might possibly have grown; for we are told by their own biographer that it was the nature of the sons of Tancred, when they saw that anybody else had anything, to take it to themselves. Perhaps this dangerous tendency extended only to misbelievers, schismatics, or at least men of other tongues. Otherwise such vigorous annexers of other men's lands might have found more than one chance at home, in days of confusion, of enlarging the estate of Hauteville. In short we may speculate on many matters; we can only say what we have seen and what we have not. And at the last moment a frightful thought comes upon us. We have with us one book of Gally Knight's, but it is only the Norman book. But he wrote another book, in which the house of Hauteville plays a great part. What if he went to Hauteville and found out all about it and put it all in print, only not in his Norman, but in his Sicilian book.

MORTAIN AND ITS SURROUNDINGS

1892

In the course either of a Norman journey or of any study of Norman matters, the thought is constantly suggesting itself that there is an important class of people who are always using the names of the places through which we go, but who seem to attach no meaning to them. The whole tribe of genealogists, local antiquaries, and the like, are, in the nature of things, constantly speaking of Norman places, or at least of the families which take their names from them. But it never seems to come into their heads that these places are real places still in being on the face of the earth. What was the state of mind of the endless people who have spoken of both King Stephen and King John in earlier stages of being by the strange title of "Earl of Moreton"? Do they think they took their title from Moreton-in-the-Marsh, or do they mix those kings up with the Earl of Moreton in Scotland, who died by the maiden a good while later? And, if they try to improve their spelling, and to give it more of a continental look, perhaps he comes out in some such shape as "Count of Mortaigne." That is to say, no distinction is made between _Mortain_, _Moretolium_ or _Moretonium_, in the Avranchin, and _Mortagne_, _Mauritania_, in Perche. Yet the two towns are both there, each in its old place, though in official speech we have no longer to speak of the Avranchin, but of the department of La Manche, no longer of Perche, but of the department of Orne. There are railways, branch railways certainly, which lead to both; there is no difficulty in getting to either, and Mortain at least, the one most closely connected with our own history, is very well worth going to indeed.

The position of Mortain, to say nothing else, is certainly one of the most beautiful to be found in any region which does not aspire to the sublimity of mountain scenery. The waterfalls have been famous ever since Sir Francis Palgrave connected them with the story of the place and its counts. But the whole position of town, castle, everything about Mortain, is lovely. The town itself in a strange way suggests Taormina. It stands in somewhat the same sort on a kind of ledge on a hill-side, with higher hills rising behind it. But while Taormina looks straight down on the Ionian Sea, Mortain looks down only on the narrow dale of the little river Cance, with its steep banks rising on the other side. Yet there are spots among the limestone rocks which rise about and above Mortain which call up other Sicilian memories. If the traveller intrusts himself to the care of a local guide he will certainly be carried to the little chapel of Saint Michael overhanging the town. From that height he will be rewarded by a wide view, the most part of which, over the rich Norman plain, is as unlike Sicily as may be. But, on another side, the greater Mount of the Archangel may be seen far away floating on its bay, and the position of the chapel itself--old, but modernised and no great work of art--called up for a moment that chapel of Saint Blaise on the Akragantine rocks, which once was the temple of Dêmêtêr and her Child. And, if one only had the means of finding out, it may be that the Archangel displaced some Celtic powers, such as those which Gregory of Tours still knew as abiding on the Puy de Dôme of Auvergne. But the life of Mortain as Mortain is, or rather as Mortain, with its counts and its canons, once was, began at a lower point, at a point lower than the town itself. The Moretolian akropolis, like some others, was not an akropolis in the literal sense, for the good reason that the point of most value for military purposes was not the most lofty. The windings of the little stream allow of the projection of a bold peninsular rock, joined by a kind of isthmus to the main hill on which the town stands. Here stood the castle; town and church rise above it, and higher hills rise above town and church. But no higher point was so well suited for the purposes of a great and strong fortress. On that spot therefore the castle of Mortain arose; the town, the church, the suburb on the opposite height with its smaller church, the house of nuns above the waterfalls, the Archangel's chapel on the highest point of all, were alike satellites of the castle. They came into being, because the castle had come into being. Count Robert, the brother of the Conqueror, founded the great church of Mortain; but he founded it only because some one before him had founded the castle.

The castle is gone; a few pieces of wall on the rock are all that remains. Mortain is now ruled, not by a count, but by a sub-prefect, and the sub-prefect has made his home on the site of the home of the count. The sub-prefect of Mortain is therefore in one sort to be envied above all sub-prefects, and even prefects too. Such functionaries are commonly quartered in some dull spot in the middle of a town. The sub-prefect of Mortain dwells, and doubtless goes through the duties of his sub-prefecture, in a fair house in a fair garden. That house is the _château_ that is, on the site of the _château-fort_ that was, looking down on the valley, looking up at the hills, looking across at the church which marks the hermitage of the Blessed Vital. Whether from any point he can actually look over on the lesser waterfall, one must be the sub-prefect or his guest to know. Such is the change, and perhaps one should not regret it; a sub-prefect is certainly a more peaceful representative of authority than a mediæval count. But he is less picturesque and less ancient; and his dwelling follows the pattern of its inhabitant. Sub-prefects are a fruit of the principles of 1789, and it would doubtless be easy to find out who was the first of the sub-prefects of Mortain. Nor is it hard to find out who was the first of the counts. We came upon him in Malger, son of Duke Richard the Fearless. But we are tempted to think that the first of the counts of Mortain need not have been absolutely the first man to make himself a stronghold on the peninsula rock of Mortain, whether for his own defence or for the better harrying of his neighbours.

From Count Malger the castle of Mortain, and all that went with the castle of Mortain, passed to his son William the Warling.[41] Such seems to be the obvious English shape of _Warlencus_; but we have a natural curiosity to know what a _Warling_ is, and why William was so called. The name has an attractive sound, and some have seen in it that same approach to a _warlock_ which Gibbon saw to a _wiseacre_ in the surname of Robert Wiscard. We have also a natural curiosity to know whether Duke William really had any good reason for banishing him, and thereby giving the Wiscard another comrade in the Apulian wars. We care more for the reputation of William the Great than for that of William the Warling: the accuser of the Warling too was the first recorded Bigod.[42] That is, he was the first who bore that name as a surname; for Normans in general were scoffed at by Frenchmen as _bigods_, _bigots_,--never mind the spelling or the meaning--and also as drinkers of beer. We have that reverence for a much later Bigod that we had rather not think that any Bigod told lies; but there is an awkward oath which an intermediate Bigod took at the time of the election of Stephen. So we will not venture to go beyond the fact that Duke William gave the lands of the Warling to his half-brother Robert. We know him on Senlac; we know him in Cornwall; we know him through all the western lands; we know him most of all on that Montacute of his founding which once was Leodgaresburh, scene of the Invention of the Holy Cross of Waltham.[43]

The West-Saxon knew Count Robert only as a spoiler, the Norman of Mortain knew him as a great ecclesiastical founder. In 1082 he founded the collegiate church of Saint Evroul "in castro Moretonii" for a Dean and eight Canons, to whom seven more were added by other benefactors. He also built or rebuilt the church, and, just as in the case of Harold at Waltham, the language of the charter seems to imply that he built the church first and then founded the canons to serve in it. There was a time--it seems not so very long ago--when Gally Knight had to fight against people who believed that the present church was of Count Robert's own building. So to believe was indeed one degree less grotesque than to believe that the far more advanced church of Coutances was earlier still. Gally Knight easily saw that there was nothing in the church which could be of Count Robert's time except the fine Romanesque doorway on the south side. And even that we should now call too advanced for Count Robert's own work; we should set it down for the last finish of a building which doubtless took some time to make complete in all its parts.

It is common enough in England to find a grand doorway of the twelfth century left in a church where everything else has been rebuilt. Later builders clearly admired them and spared them. Much more would this be the case at Mortain, where the building of the new church must have begun no very long time after the adding of this last finish to the old. The style of the building is Transition, and advanced Transition; it is all but early Gothic. The pointed arch alone is used; the only trace of Romanesque feeling is to be seen in the short columns of the arcade, and in the extreme simplicity of the triforium and clerestory, a single unadorned lancet in each. The vaulting is naturally a little later; that at least, with the English-looking shafts from which it springs, is in the fully developed Pointed style.

The plan of the church of Saint Evroul, Mortain, is as simple as a church that has aisles can be. We were going to say that it is a perfect basilica; but no; the basilica commonly has the transepts and the arch of triumph. At Mortain the same simple arcade runs round nave, choir, and apse without break of any kind. Within the building the effect of this austere and untouched simplicity--no one at Mortain has altered a window or added a chapel--is perfectly satisfactory. Many buildings are larger and more enriched; not many can be said to be more perfect wholes. Save in the matter of multiplied aisles within and flying buttresses without, Mortain may pass for Bourges in small. And, just as at Bourges, the external outline is less satisfactory than the internal effect. A single body of this kind has in itself no outline at all; it depends on its tower or towers. At Mortain the usual central tower of a great Norman church could not be; but neither has Saint Evroul the two Western towers of Saint-Lo and Séez; the arrangement designed was rather a development of the side towers common in the smaller churches of the district. A tower on each side was designed and begun. They stand near the east end; but they are not eastern towers like those of Geneva and many German churches. They stand outside the aisles, so as not to interrupt the continuous design within. They therefore do not really group with the apse; they are detached towers whose lowest stage just touches that of the church. But we are speaking as if both towers were there. In truth only the southern one was carried up, and that only to a height very little above the ridge of the roof, and there furnished with a saddle-back. Such a tower lends the building hardly any increase of outline in the distance, and in a near view it is chiefly remarkable for the oddness of the wonderfully long coupled windows on the west side, which are not continued all round. Save only the simple and graceful west front and the general goodness of the design and execution, the beauties of the church of Mortain are certainly to be sought within.

The castle looks up at the church, which stands on the rather steep slope of the hill, the effect of which is that the east end can hardly be seen, except from a considerable distance. Above it is the _hospice_, with the fragment of a church with a saddle-back to its central tower. Above again is the chapel of Saint Michael. Of quite another value from Saint Michael is a church a little way out of Mortain, in the near neighbourhood of the waterfalls, with rocks above it and rocks below. This is the church of nuns known as _l'Abbaye Blanche_, a foundation of Count William of Mortain in 1105. As the next year he was taken at Tinchebray and kept in prison for the rest of his days, he was not likely to do much in the way of building. The church described long ago by Gally Knight and De Caumont is palpably later than his day. It is of the Transition, and it is a much less advanced example of the Transition than the church of Mortain. Whatever Count William meant to found, the actual house was Cistercian, and the church carries Cistercian severity to its extremest point. One thinks of Kirkstall; but Kirkstall, plain as it is, drew majesty from its grand and simple outline; the White Abbey is small; it has, through the lack of a central tower, no outline without, and its small scale hinders the effect of Kirkstall.[44] One might even say that, in buildings of this class--not in those of more elaborate design--something is gained, as with the monuments of Rome, by being somewhat out of repair. Anyhow, in connexion with Mortain, the White Abbey does not lack architectural importance. It is very odd if anybody took the collegiate church to be the older. The White Abbey is a truly Cistercian building, a simple cross with a flat east end, no aisles to the nave, but chapels east of the transepts. It follows the usual law of Transitional buildings. The main constructive arches are pointed; the windows are round-headed in the eastern part, pointed in the western. The cloister and chapter-house have round arches; the remains of the cloister have small single shafts, not the Saracenic coupling to which we have got used in Italy, Sicily, and Southern Gaul. In an odd position to the west of the church, forbidding any west front, is an undercroft with columns with good, but not very rich, twelfth-century capitals, clearly of a piece with the cloister.

Lastly, on the opposite side of the valley, forming a picturesque object on the road from Mortain to the White Abbey, is the small plain church of Neufbourg. The spot marks the solitary dwelling of the Blessed Vital, him who strove to make peace between the contending brothers at Tinchebray, and who gave up his prebend at Mortain and all that he had, to dwell as a hermit amid the woods and rocks.[45] The church, bating a few later insertions, is a perfect Transitional cross church, with a flat east end and no aisles. In this part of Normandy the small churches that one lights on in the villages, though commonly of pleasing outline, have seldom any remarkable work. In this they are distinguished in a marked way from the wonderful series of parish churches round Caen and Bayeux. Those we are tempted to compare with the churches of our own Holland, Marshland, and Northern Northamptonshire. But the comparison does not strictly apply. In each case there is a series of notable churches which never were collegiate or monastic. But in the English district the churches are, as parish churches, of considerable size, sometimes indeed very large, though never affecting the character of a minster. The churches in the Bessin are mainly small, but of singular excellence of work, largely Romanesque of the twelfth century. We may come to some of them before we have done.

MORTAIN TO ARGENTAN

1892