Dominique Denry in Fécamp (76), Seine-Maritime (76)

'L'Heure du Bain'

Dominique DENRY sculpteur

2017'

A meditation on women bathers on the seafront, Fécamp.

Louis-Arsène Bigot in Fécamp (76), Seine-Maritime (76)

This plaque dedicated to the 'super-human' efforts of Louis-Arsène Bigot (1810–53) bringing the springs of Grainval to Fécamp involved what, exactly? Ah, he dug tunnels into the chalk and flint cliffs in order to give water to the people of Fécamp. Amazing for a twenty-six-year-old illiterate guy. And the town now (occasionally) does visits to the tunnels. Pity we couldn't make it, as this sounds fascinating.

Maupassant in Fécamp (76), Seine-Maritime (76)

La fontaine du Précieux-Sang. Legend has it that a little of Christ's blood, concealed in the trunk of a fig tree, fell from the cart carrying it in Fécamp. A (healing) well sprang from this, and Fécamp, along with the Mont-Saint-Michel, became the greatest places of pilgrimage in Normandy. In the second half of the nineteenth century through to the first half of the twentieth century the pilgrimages were so successful that a train service was set up specifically to cater for religious tourists. Maupassant mentions the tale in his short story 'Histoire d'une fille de ferme' (1881).

Jean Lorrain (Paul Duval) in Fécamp (76), Seine-Maritime (76)

'PAUL DUVAL

DIT JEAN LORRAIN

1855 – 1906'

Paul Duval was born in Fécamp, where he is buried. He wrote as Jean Lorrain and was one of the most colourful characters of the period. He was a homosexual who wore corsets, make-up, dressed as a woman, dressed in disguises, and frequented the literary world as well as the shadier areas of Paris. His first novel, Les Lepillier (1985), caused a scandal in Fécamp because he drew some his characters from actual people in Fécamp. His childhood friend Maupassant was incensed by the depiction of Beaufrilan in his second novel, Très Russe (1886). In 1887 he fought a duel with Proust over his negative reaction to Proust's first work: Les Plaisirs et les Jours, of which Proust himself later sought to prevent republication. His health disintegrated under the effects of ether and syphilis, and he died at the age of fifty.

Le Chat Pitre, Fécamp (76), Seine-Maritime (76)

I couldn't resist taking a shot of this bookshop I noted in Fécamp, called 'Le Chat Pitre' ('The Clown Cat'), as it is of course a pun on 'Chapitre', or 'Chapter'.