Saint-Sauveur-le-Patience – Letters to Rhona – 15/03/22

Dear Rhona,

This missive is a tad late, I know. But I have found myself more occupied than I had expected. It has been nearly a month since I embarked and the expectation I had towards the frequency of, say, an invitation of stay, has been wonderfully enhanced. Up until Quettehou, and the charming inn, La Chaumière, I was very much feeling alone, but I distracted myself from this feeling with the journey at hand. It worsened temporarily at Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte when the sisters of the abbey refused me quarters for a couple of days. They left me wet in the increasing downpour.

This refusal, this rejection, compounded my emotions. In the garden of the abbey, I sat beside the gracious statue of a Madonna as the heavy droplets fell from the brim of my hat. The thought that my journey would continue onwards in this fashion of refusal absorbed my sentiments, that I would be unfortunate each day and at every doorstep.

We live a life of judgement, and each of us holds our own little set of scales, and with them, we attempt to weigh Man by the experiences we have of him. Each day we find we must change the counter-weights and are bemused that there seems to be a lack of consistency or permanence to the values we write in the ledger. I felt the desire to judge this circumstance and think unkindly of the sisterhood.

I was stumped to have been turned away, even as a sort of pilgrim, and given only a perplexing reason:‘à cause de Covid’. Why perplexing? Because I was very aware that everywhere else was open and society had relaxed in the face of the disease. If the gites and hotels were open for business, why not the abbey? Moreover, they were Christians whose very religion and culture purports to have an affection towards the voyaging pilgrim. I think the truth is that the sisters had provided themselves with an excuse.

But maybe God had other plans for me. I resolved to find somewhere for the night and visited the local bar. After asking around, I was given a telephone number and spoke to a lady called Melanie. She was a Normand farmer whose family had toiled the land in the little domain of Catteville for many a generation. She collected me from the bar. I found myself charmed by the compound of the farm. I stayed there two nights and troubled myself with my video and writing tasks.

There was a general activity outside my window as the farmhands came and went. The customary cat and dog roamed and presented themselves to me with great curiosity and friendliness (especially the cat). In the stables were retired horses enjoying their mounds of hay.

My quarters had the air of hunting lodge in a very Normand fashion. The season had just come to an end for the year, although I had heard the oft shotgun firing in the distance. In the farmhouse, there were ornaments everywhere denoting the sport (notably the taxidermy neck, head and antlers of a deer). A map on the wall showed the extent of the family’s chasse (hunting grounds). In the bocage, I had been fortunate to have seen a few timid deer in the fields; and of course, their bobbing white bottoms as they took flight from me.

Read the rest of this letter at my Substack: https://dominicdebonhomie.substack.com/