If the architect, or art student, will but make this little pilgrimage in its integrity, if he will, like Christian, walk in faith--turning neither to the right hand nor to the left, and shunning the broad road which leads to destruction--he will be rewarded.
There are two paths for the architect in Normandy, as elsewhere--paths which we may call the 'simple right' and the 'elaborate wrong,' and the right path is sometimes as difficult to follow as the path of virtue.
But both artist and amateur will revel alike in the beauty of landscape, in the variety of form and colour of the old buildings, and in the costume of the people; and we cannot imagine a more pleasant and complete change from the heat and pressure of a London season than to drop down (suddenly, as it were, like a bird making a swoop in the air), into the midst of the quiet, primitive population of a town like Pont Audemer, not many miles removed from the English coast, but at least a thousand in the habits and customs of the people. An artist of any sensibility could scarcely do it, the shock would be too great, the delight too much to be borne; but the ordinary reader, who has prepared his mind to some extent by books of travel, or the tourist, who has come out simply for a holiday, may enjoy the change as he never enjoyed anything before.
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 mediæval towns--may perchance impart something of the author's enthusiasm to his unknown readers, when scattered upon the winds of a publisher's breeze.
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]