Dateline: Honfleur, France. Another beautiful day in Normandy, days which our guide, Lionel, assures us are rare. He says normally the weather is very changeable; having four different weather types in one day being more the norm than the exception. Anyway, it was almost hot today and there was no rain in sight. Nobody is complaining.
Today we took a walking tour of Honfleur, a small fishing town across the estuary from Le Havre. Le Havre is of course one of France’s two main ports, the other being Marseilles. Honfleur is nothing much, which protected it from destruction in World War II.
Honfleur has the whole nine yards for a European town: narrow twisting cobblestone streets, slate roofs, half-timber buildings. Presuming you couldn’t read the signs, there’d be no telling it from a German river town, or one in Austria, or Belgium. To an American eye they all look pretty much the same as the same social forces and technologies shaped them.
In the afternoon we took a longish bus ride to Bayeux to see the “tapestry.” The quotes mean it really isn’t a tapestry. It is a strip of embroidery perhaps two feet wide by 210 feet long. Think of it as a storyboard layout of the key scenes in the process by which an English king tried to select his successor as King of England, failed, and then ultimately succeeded.
The Norman Conquest of 1066 a.d. represented his chosen successor, Richard, who rounded up an army and ships to move them, brought them from Normandy to England, defeated the usurper and took the throne of his childless uncle. This whole story is represented in 58 numbered panels of varying length, and represents what Hollywood would call the set of storyboards for a movie.
It is difficult to imagine how this strip of linen with woolen embroidery could endure for slightly over 1000 years. Nevertheless it has done so. I’d think the moths would have long since gotten to the wool thread. Nope.
At various times its been in the hands of Nazis, Napoleon, and who knows who else. The “tapestry” is one of those art works/documents that are renown throughout the ages. I had heard about it as an undergraduate and now I’ve actually seen it. Marvelous.
