Impressions and Comments | Page 4

so sympathetic as the women who dwell in all this north-western
district from Paris to the sea. They are often, as one might expect, a
little English-like (it might be in Suffolk on the other side of the
Channel, and Beauvais, I recall, has something of the air of old
Ipswich), but with a vivacity of movement, and at the same time an
aristocratic precision and subtlety one fails to find in the English. When
a pretty English girl of the people opens her mouth the charm is often
gone. On the contrary, I have often noticed in Normandy that a
seemingly commonplace unattractive girl only becomes charming
when she does open her mouth, to reveal her softness of speech, the
delicately-inflexed and expressive tones, while her face lights up in
harmony with her speech. Now--to say nothing of the women of the
south, whose hard faces and harsh voices are often so distressing--in
Dijon, whence I came to Normandy this time, the women are often
sweet, even angelic of aspect, looking proper material for nuns and
saints, but, to me at all events, not personally so sympathetic as the
Norman women, who are no doubt quite as good but never express the
fact with the same air of slightly Teutonic insipidity. The men of
Normandy I regard as of finer type than the Burgundian men, and this
time it is the men who express goodness more than the women. The
Burgundian men, with their big moustaches turned up resolutely at the
points and their wickedly-sparkling eyes, have evidently set before
themselves the task of incorporating a protest against the attitude of
their women. But the Norman men, who allow their golden moustaches
to droop, are a fine frank type of manhood at the best, pleasantly honest
and unspoilt. I know, indeed, how skilful, how wily, how noble even, in
their aristocratic indifference to detail, these Normans can be in
extracting money from the stranger (have I not lunched simply at the
Hostel Guillaume-le-Conquérant in the village of Dives for the same
sum on which I have lived sumptuously for three days at the Hotel
Victoria in the heart of Seville?), but the manner of their activity in this
matter scarcely seems to me to be happily caught by those Parisians
who delight to caricature, as mere dull, avaricious plebeians, "Ces bons

Normands." Their ancient chronicler said a thousand years ago of the
Normans that their unbounded avarice was balanced by their equally
unbounded extravagance. That, perhaps, is a clue to the magnificent
achievements of the Normans, in the spiritual world even more than in
the material world.
August 10.--On leaving France by the boat from Dieppe I selected a
seat close to which, shortly afterwards, three English people--two
young women and a man--came to occupy deck-chairs already placed
for them by a sailor and surrounded by their bags and wraps.
Immediately one of the women began angrily asking her companions
why her bag had not been placed the right side up; she would not have
her things treated like that, etc. Her companions were gentle and
conciliatory,--though I noticed they left her alone during most of the
passage,--and the man had with attentive forethought made all
arrangements for his companions' comfort. But, somehow, I looked in
wonder at her discontented face and heard with surprise her peevish
voice. She was just an ordinary stolid nourishing young Englishwoman.
But I had been in France, and though I had been travelling for a whole
fortnight I had seen nothing like this. She lay back and began reading a
novel, which she speedily exchanged for a basin. I fear I felt a certain
satisfaction at the spectacle. It is good for the English barbarian to be
chastised with scorpions.
How pleasant at Newhaven to find myself near another woman, a
young Frenchwoman, with the firm, disciplined, tender face, the
sweetly-modulated voice, the air of fine training, the dignified
self-respect which also involves respect for others. I realised in a flash
the profound contrast to that fellow-countrywoman of mine who had
fascinated my attention on board the boat.
But one imagines a French philosopher, a new Taine, let us suppose,
setting out from Dieppe for the "land of Suffragettes" to write another
_Notes sur l'Angleterre_. How finely he would build a great
generalisation on narrow premises! How acutely he would point out the
dependence of the English "gentleman's" good qualities or the
ill-conditioned qualities of his women-folk!

_August 15._--I enter an empty suburban railway carriage and take up a
common-looking little periodical lying on the seat beside me. It is a
penny weekly I had never heard of before, written for feminine readers
and evidently enjoying an immense circulation. I turn over the pages.
One might possibly suppose that at the present moment the feminine