Part 9

At 12.20 we left Paris for Evreux, going by railway to Vernon station. I expected much here and was much disappointed. The cathedral is a building whose substratum is good first-pointed, but this has been overlaid by an accumulation of late flamboyant work, so as to be almost invisible. The west front has been rebuilt in bad classic. The north transept is a rich and picturesque piece of flamboyant work of the most ornate kind, and has across its angles internally some immense squinches to carry a passage from the aisle to the end walls. A great deal of very good grisaille glass of the thirteenth century has been retained in the flamboyant windows, and in the others there is a good deal of late stained glass which seems to be of fair quality. The church internally is very narrow in proportion to its height and looks consequently more lofty than it really is. The other church at Evreux, S. Taurin, is a Romanesque church altered in flamboyant and adorned with a west front of pseudo-classic. It is a fine church, and its main ornament is the magnificent shrine of S. Taurin, of which I managed to get some slight sketches. It is of silver or other metal, gilt, with some very good ornamentation in enamel and niello. In the south transept wall is an arcade filled in with coloured tiles, but it hardly looks as if it would be original; nevertheless, it is said to be so and I see no reason for supposing it likely that such an enrichment would have been subsequently added in such a place.

_June 23._

We left Evreux at 7 A.M. for S. Pierre station and passed through Louviers on the way. I had only time to run in for two minutes to look at the cathedral. It is like Evreux, an early pointed church with flamboyant alterations, but its scale is small. The triforium and clerestory in first-pointed are very good, with relieving arches inside....

We reached Rouen at 11 and though I had seen all its curiosities before, I was glad to have another opportunity of looking at them. The cathedral gains rather than loses in my estimation. Its general proportions are fine and all its detail admirably good. Unfortunately it is whitewashed and not much cared for, and so people fancy it a poor church. It is on the contrary very fine, and much finer in all ways than its rival S. Ouen....

After the cathedral almost everything in Rouen is very late in style and unsatisfactory therefore; it is an interesting town in many ways but in no way to be compared with such a town as Cologne for real architectural interest.

In the evening I made a sketch of the north-west tower, which with its quaint slated roof is a most picturesque composition. Indeed the whole west front is very grand and broad in its effect, whenever it can be seen without the detestable new cast-iron spire of the central steeple....

_June 24._

We left Rouen by diligence for Lisieux at 7 A.M. The ride is for much of the way very pretty, notably so between Rouen and Elboeuf, and again about Brienne, a small town with two churches, one of them undergoing some restoration of not good character. At Bourgtheroulde I went into the church and found all the roofs of wood, arched and boarded, with tie-beams and ring-posts....

We reached Lisieux at 3 P.M. It was a fair day, and the _place_ in front of the cathedral was crowded with people, shows and booths. The church was very full, and in the choir, suspended on a beam, were three great new bells just made, and I suppose in process of being blessed before being hung in the tower.

The whole church is very fine and of nearly uniform date, the choir rather more advanced first-pointed than the nave and with a late Lady-chapel added. The triforium of the choir is very charming; and here and in the side windows of the choir aisle--also very beautiful--there is a great fondness displayed for cusped circles sunk slightly in plain walling-spaces, as also in the spandrels of arches, etc. This is the case notably in the west front and again in the fine north-west steeple, where bands of circles are used as strings. This was seen also in the steeple of Senlis. In the west front, which has been elaborately restored, the side doorways are small but very beautiful, finishing with trefoil heads and remarkable for the great masses of regular foliage round their arches in place of mouldings. These are used with the happiest effect.[11] The exterior of the south transept is also a fine simple composition and the interior of this and of the north transept are specially good. The church is apsidal with two chapels besides the Lady-chapel.

The music used here was strictly Gregorian; so also at S. James’s, where the congregation joined most heartily.... The two western towers are very different, that on the south-west early and for a number of stages of Romanesque work; the other very beautiful, and in its belfry stage giving a type for others--as especially S. Pierre and others in Caen--to copy. The north-west steeple has no spire and that of the other has been much modernized. There is a low central tower which forms a fine lofty lantern internally.

The only other mediaeval church in Lisieux is on a large scale but entirely of poor flamboyant work. We were there whilst a collection was being made; a Gregorian psalm was sung and the collection was made by a priest first and then by a little girl dressed up very smartly in white. There was a crowded congregation composed mostly of women.

A good many old wooden houses remain in the streets of Lisieux; few however are of very rare character and all seemed of the latest date. Our inn was dirty, disagreeable, but cheap,--two dinners, two beds and servants coming to 8 francs only! But its merits were so questionable that we were very glad to find ourselves on our way to Caen. We left at 6 A.M. and arrived there at 10. There were one or two fine views on the road, but otherwise it had no interest until the many towers and spires of Caen rose before us.... I had seen Caen before, but five years had left me so far forgetful of the detail of its beauties as to be heartily glad to discover them again.

The church of S. Pierre was close to our inn and its spire was first of all looked at. It is certainly very glorious but not original. The spire is copied from S. Étienne and the tower is a repetition of what seems to have been the one idea of a tower in this part of France. Lisieux has an early example, and so too have Bretteville, Norrey and others; but giving up the point of his originality, the architect of S. Pierre must nevertheless have great credit for his mode of working up old ideas. S. Jean and Notre Dame in Caen have steeples copied from S. Pierre, so that we have here an instance of the same design being reproduced for three hundred years again and again, dressed only in different detail. This is a most curious fact and one not often paralleled, I think....

_The discussion in detail of the many churches in Caen seems hardly to call for printing as mere record, for the ground has been well covered by later travellers and not, this time, reached by the German army._

_June 26._

To-day we changed our diligence travelling for a more agreeable mode, by hiring a phaeton to take us to Bayeux in order that we might be able to stop on our way at one or two churches.

At 8 A.M., we started; the view of Caen on leaving is fine, its towers and spires standing up well against the sky. A village is passed very soon with an early church whose bell-tower on the chancel end is of good character. One or two steeples with saddleback roofs are seen near the road, and at the end of about seven or eight miles the tall spire of Bretteville l’Orgueilleuse rises on the road. The design is most curiously like S. Pierre, Caen, but it is earlier and has been much mutilated. All the piercings in the spire are filled in, and one only of the spire-lights remains in its place, though there are evident traces of others having existed. The tower rises above the chancel and east of it is a sacrarium of the same date, square-ended and with two lancets in the east wall, but groined in such a way as to make one think that its architect could not forget his apsidal terminations. The nave is modern, or perhaps I should rather say modernized. The windows of the tower and sacrarium and the doorway in the north wall of the former, are of very good detail--the transition from Romanesque. There is a piscina in the south wall. East of this chancel has been built within the last year or two a most frightful sacristy, intended I suppose to be pagan but at present not very definite, as all the stones which compose its wall are built up in block to be hewn out afterwards. This of course blocks up the curious east end, but the priest to whom I protested against this wanton piece of barbarism made very light of the matter. I cannot see that the clergy anywhere take the interest that one would expect in such matters, for I have seen nowhere any restorations of at all proper character, except such as are being carried out by government with public funds.

From Bretteville a drive of about a mile brought us to Norrey, whose church is so remarkable that I measured its plan and sketched many of its details.

It consists of a nave without aisles and a choir and transepts with aisles and two apsidal chapels to the choir aisle. The nave is similar in its detail of windows and doors to Bretteville, and in no way worth particular notice, but the rest of the church is most singular. Its decorations are extremely elaborate, the mouldings and ornamental carvings being carved out with a depth of elaborate elegance seldom rivalled. The mouldings are singularly deep and effective, and the carving all very good. The style is thoroughly good pure first-pointed, and looks more like English work than foreign. The dimensions are exceedingly small, the width in the clear of the choir being only about sixteen feet and of the aisle not seven feet, whilst some of the intercolumniations are not more than three feet and a half and three feet ten inches. The plan is nevertheless similar in all respects to that of a large church of the first order, save in the absence of a central chapel at the east end, and it is therefore much more properly called a “model cathedral” than churches so dignified generally are. The piscinae of the chapels are good and have one orifice and a large space of shelf. One of the altars is original and has a mass of masonry under it for, I suppose, relics. The whole church is in the most wretchedly damp, dirty and neglected state, and a disgrace to all who have any charge of it.

The main entrance is now by a beautiful porch to the north transept, which is, unfortunately, rapidly decaying--as much of the other work executed in Caen stone is doing everywhere. The small chapels of the apse are roofed with most extraordinary stone roofs, of very steep pitch, which at a little distance look like two great pinnacles, and when seen close at hand look like nothing else that ever was built or designed. There are very curious marks, in the exterior, of a change of plan in some respects as the work went on, some of the choir windows having been commenced with most elaborate mouldings outside as well as inside, but altered either in one jamb or at their heads into a plain double chamfer, in a most singular manner. There is some good arcading commenced outside, and a beautiful arcade runs all round the inside wall below the windows. The tower is just like Bretteville, but the spire must have differed considerably from it; unhappily it was struck by lightning some twelve years since, and there is now a poor slated roof in place of the spire. The angle pinnacles still remain and I think they prove that the transition from the tower to the spire must always have been very abrupt. I think from the character of all the detail and especially from the great love shown for the round trefoil, that this church must have been designed by the same man who built the eastern part of the cathedral at Bayeux. The mouldings are excessively similar and the abaci are constantly used octangular in plan in conjunction with square and circular.

An interesting road took us from Norrey to Bayeux, where we arrived at 3 P.M.

The general view of this cathedral is most magnificent,--owing to its two completed and similar western spires and to the great height of a central tower of flamboyant work capped with a pagan cupola which, though of bad details and inconsistent with all the rest of the work, certainly aids much in making the magnificence of the whole so great. This central steeple is on the point of being taken down, I believe, as the piers below are giving way; and the church is now filled with timber shores, etc. I do not like the steeple but cannot help regretting its loss....

There is a curious old chimney near the west front of the cathedral, rising out of a modern house. Attached to a seminary near the Hôtel Dieu is a good simple chapel of first-pointed date. It is a parallelogram groined simply and lighted with windows of two lights in each bay. The whole is wretchedly whitewashed everywhere and contrasts strongly with the magnificent colour of the stonework throughout the interior of the cathedral.

_June 27._

We left Bayeux at 11 A.M. in the diligence for S. Lô--I in the _coupé_, my unfortunate wife in the dusty _rotunde_. The country was very pretty indeed, quite like _good_ parts of England, and very grateful to my eyes. The church of S. Loup, passed just after leaving Bayeux, has a good Romanesque steeple capped with a low square spire and remarkable for the great richness of its belfry stage and the eccentric narrowness of the windows with buttresses between them. Two miles before entering the town the cathedral of S. Lô comes in sight; and by the graceful proportions of its two western spires gives promise of pleasure to the ecclesiologist....

_June 29._

We left Coutances this morning at 7.30 for Hambye en route for Avranche. The road was all the way excessively pretty, and gave an admirable view of Coutances, with the cluster of towers and spires which crowns the hill on which it stands.... I walked off alone to the abbey. The situation is pretty; under a steep woody and rocky hill, with a clear stream near, and woods and _riant_ hills and dales all around. The entrance is by a very simple gateway, double in front and single-arched behind.... A few paces from this gateway stands the church, of whose west front no traces now remain, and some old and rustic buildings to the south of it, which have only one old doorway remaining.

The church is remarkable in its plan, having a nave without aisles, a central tower, transepts with eastern chapels, aisles and chapels round the choir. The end of the north transept is divided off by two arches from the church, and was I think intended for a sacristy, corresponding somewhat in position to the beautiful sacristy at Coutances--of which cathedral this abbey church bears most marked evidence of being in great degree a reduced and simplified copy. Two small chapels are placed at the re-entering angles of the nave and transept, and, supposing the choir to have extended to the western side of the tower, these would have been most useful in allowing access to the choir-aisles and transepts without passing through the choir itself. The same point of arrangement occurs at Rayham abbey--also an aisleless church--and would be necessary in all conventual churches of this type. The effect of the interior is striking, owing to the excessive lightness of the nave and to the great extension given by its aisles to the width of the choir. The design of the choir is much like that of Coutances--the same lofty proportions of columns, the same caps, the same kind of clerestory window, and the same double lean-to roof all round the choir, one side over the aisle and the other over the chapels of the apse. The whole work looks early, though there are here and there suspicious-looking mouldings and Murray says that the whole church is of late date. If he is correct, it can only be, I think, on the assumption that the builders of the present church used very nearly stone for stone a large portion of the original first-pointed edifice. The cloisters occupied the angle between the nave and south transept, but no trace remains of them save the corbels which supported their roof. A long range of old buildings still remains, south of the south transept. On the ground floor they consist of: first, a small groined room with a central column, and its groining and walls painted rudely with patterns in distemper; second, of a long building divided by a row of columns down the centre and entered by three open arches at the west end, which we may assume to have been the chapter room; third, another square room with a rude central column, also painted, and then another room of that same kind; all these rooms are groined, and above them, along the whole length of the building, extends a great hall with an old timber roof, of such great size that it is difficult to surmise its probable use unless it was that of a great dormitory arranged with cubicles down its sides.[12]

ARCHITECTURAL NOTES IN FRANCE

(From the _Ecclesiologist_, 1858–59)

I

A short holiday among French churches has left so many pleasant recollections of new ideas received, new thoughts suggested, ancient memories revived afresh, that it is as impossible as it would be churlish to refuse to communicate some notes of what I have seen; and as they are asked for I proceed to give them, though they must be more slight and generalizing than I could wish; for I have a very profound conviction of the great grandeur of ancient French art, and a corresponding sense of the danger of so treating it as to convey too small a sense of its value to those who have not studied it for themselves, or of offending those who are so happy as to have realized that value to the fullest extent and from actual inspection of its remains. It is needless to say that as the France of the present day is an agglomeration of ancient and distinct provinces, so also in its ancient buildings we can trace, without any difficulty, a variety of different national or provincial styles: it would be strange indeed were it not so. Even in England we have most striking varieties in style confined, generally, within the boundaries of particular dioceses; so that to understand ancient art aright, it is necessary to have an exact acquaintance with the third-pointed work of Devonshire and Cornwall as well as that of Norfolk and Suffolk, and to be able to perceive all the difference between the first-pointed work of the Yorkshire abbeys and that of Wells and Salisbury.

And if we have such marked differences in a country like this, we may well expect a much greater variety in a country which, like France in the Middle Ages, was not as now one great nation but divided into sections antagonistic to each other and exercising little if any reciprocal influence. It is easy, therefore, to map our France into certain divisions, each containing within its boundaries a special individual style of Gothic architecture, distinguished by notable peculiarities, and each affording a separate field for very careful study. Thus we have in the north of France distinct French styles, in, first, Normandy, and secondly, the old Île de France and the surrounding country, and thirdly, in the country bordering on Germany, a style which is rather German than French in all its leading features. Then going southward, we have, fourthly, a distinct Burgundian style, and another, marked by extreme peculiarities, in Poitou and Anjou, and (judging only by drawings, for I have never myself visited the extreme south of France), again other styles, whose centres are respectively at Clermont and at Arles. Of these various styles that of Normandy presents a very great affinity to our own. It is there, and almost only there, that we see the circular abacus, there only that we see much attempted in the way of deep and complicated architectural mouldings, whilst the general effect of many--especially among the larger churches--is extremely English. The likeness is one of which we may well be proud, for the architecture of this province is full of beauty and interest to a degree second only to that of the district of the old Île de France. Its very deficiencies, too, are English in their character, for in going from Paris into the heart of Normandy, the one thing which we notice more perhaps than anything else, is the general absence of the figure sculpture to which we have become accustomed; and this is the case also in England, where we have really hardly any at all extensive remains of sculpture, and certainly none which can be named with those whose pride it is to be the guardians of such churches as the cathedrals of Chartres, Paris, Amiens, Laon, or Rheims.[13] The study of the architecture of Normandy is therefore the proper and natural sequel of a complete and careful study of English architecture, and may be entered on with the less hesitation as I believe I may safely venture to say, that what is learned there will be in no sense foreign either to the precedents or the sympathies of England.

The churches of Anjou, Poitou, and Touraine, appear to me to be of much less value for architectural study: though from the connection which was maintained between our own country and those parts of France during a long period of the Middle Ages, it is impossible but they should present much that is of the greatest interest to the English student. I have looked, however, in vain for evidence, either in the general design or in the details of their architecture, of any influence exercised by the English upon their art. In fact, when we held the country, we held it as conquerors not as colonists, and we left no mark of ourselves, but let the people go on building for us and for themselves in their own way. And their way was full of peculiarity, perhaps more so than that of any other part of France. They had their own system of planning, their own system of groining: and this, it should be remarked, is sure, if it has any peculiarity, to exercise a most powerful and obvious effect upon the whole architecture. There is, however, a heaviness, a repetition of the same idea, and an absence of delicate skill, as well as of bold architectural inspiration, which to my mind marks all the buildings in these parts inferior, not only to the best French work, but also to that of Normandy and of England. And now I go on naturally to say that I believe the best work in France is that which I described shortly as that of the old Île de France and the surrounding country; it is that which I have studied the most carefully, and love the most of any architecture that I know; it is one which presents no features unsuitable for our country, or inconsistent with the demands of our climate; it is one from the study of which I believe we should all derive an immense benefit, for it were wellnigh impossible to spend much time among the works of art which it so bountifully affords without being strongly impressed with the stern grandeur and masculine character of the men who conceived it, and without being elevated in our whole tone of mind so far as we have been impressed. A district which affords examples such as Rouen cathedral, S. Quentin, Amiens, Noyon, Laon, Soissons, Meaux, Rheims, Troyes, Chartres, Notre Dame of Paris, Mantes, S. Leu, S. Germer, Senlis, Beauvais, and others, must be conceded to be, if not the best, certainly the richest field for the study of our art in all Europe; and it is mainly to this district that I will take you, with this expression of my extreme veneration for the art enshrined in its architectural remains.[14] ...