Part 19

Another point to be noticed is this: Salisbury does not owe its beauty to size, nor yet altogether to the style in which it is built. This is easily proved. The great French cathedral of Amiens exceeds Salisbury in all its dimensions, and was built, allowing for the difference between France and England, in the self-same style. Both are examples of First Pointed, and Amiens is, according to Fergusson, at least twice as large in its cubic contents. “The French church covers 71,000 square feet, the English only 55,000. The vault of the first is one hundred and fifty-two feet in height, the latter only eighty-five.” There is still a more remarkable difference between the central spires of the two churches. That of Amiens rises to a height of 422 feet; that of Salisbury, the tallest in England, only to 404. Yet the great height of the roof at Amiens robs its spire of any preponderance it might otherwise boast, and leaves the comparatively small steeple of Salisbury a feature of grandeur and beauty only approached by the still lower dome of St. Paul’s, which rises at its highest part, the cross, to 365 feet above the ground level.

It will be seen, therefore, that Salisbury owes its effect to something beyond ornament or size. The extraordinary order and regularity of the masonry may have something to say to it, although the stones, as compared with what may be seen in Egypt, and elsewhere, are not very large. But you can trace the same course all round the church and the same stone, oolite from the quarry at Chilmark, has been used throughout. This communicates a certain look of stability to the structure, which is, in itself, more pleasing to the eye than any amount of ornament out of place, or intended, as in modern Gothic, to divert the eye from the poverty of the materials or the absence of proportion. The proportions of Salisbury, like those of St. Paul’s, or the Parthenon, are calculated to give the building its full measure of beauty, without anything extraneous.

That Salisbury should have this unity of age and design is owing to a curious fact in the history of the place. The “bishop’s stool” had been upon the bleak, chalk down which borders Salisbury Plain. The place was really a castle whose fortifications are still visible; the cathedral within the walls must have been Norman in design, to judge in dry seasons from the marks still visible among the grassy mounds, and from fragments of carved stone built into the wall or cross. Mr. Walcott gives its dimensions as follows: “A nave one hundred and fifty feet by seventy-two feet, a transept one hundred and fifty feet by sixty feet, and a choir sixty feet in length, in all two hundred and seventy feet.” The situation was in every way inconvenient, having been chosen for security not comfort. After the King took the fort and filled it with his own soldiers, a governor superseding the bishop, the position of the ecclesiastics became unendurable. The inhabitants in times of comparative peace and security migrated to the rich pastures by the Avon and the Bourne below, while cold winds in winter, and a scarcity of water in summer, finally determined Bishop Poore and his canons, for Sarum was a church of the old foundation, to seek a better country. The old legend says that the site of the new cathedral was determined by the fall of an arrow in Merrifield (or more likely Mirifield), shot by a stalwart archer from the ramparts. The church was raised in a green vale, surrounded by the downs. Pepys, in describing his journey from Hungerford says, “So, all over the Plain by the sight of the steeple, the Plain high and low; to Salisbury by night.”

“Of the cathedral,” Pepys remarks that it is “most admirable; as big, I think, and handsomer than Westminster, and a most large close about it.” Pepys’ comparison of Westminster and Salisbury is a very just one; both were built in the then new First Pointed style, but there is no doubt about the superiority of Salisbury in either design or completeness.

In the close, which occupies an extent of half a square mile, there are three gates, the South or Harnham, the East or St. Anne’s, and the North or Close Gate, built about 1327. The ground-plan of the church embraces a nave of ten bays, with aisles; a northern porch; a main and a choir transept of four and three bays each; to the east a choir and presbytery, each of three bays, and the so-called Lady Chapel, all having aisles. The cloister is on the south side, and to eastwards of the cloister is the Chapter-house. An octangular canon’s vestry and muniment room is to the south of the south-east transept. The pyramidal disposition of the leading lines is very observable from certain points of view. It is the only ancient cathedral in England begun and finished on a uniform plan and in one style. The foundations were laid under Bishop Poore, on the Feast of St. Vitalis (April 28), 1220, and it was built by Elias of Dereham, clerk of the works, and by Nicholas of Portland, and Richard of Farleigh, his successors, the last named completing the spire in 1375. The Beauchamp and Hungerford Chapels, both subsequently removed, were built in the Lady Chapel in the Fifteenth Century. Bishop Audley’s Chantry in the choir was built in 1502. In the close, near the north aisle of the nave, as at Chichester, was the Clochard or Campanile. There are several points of resemblance, of which this is one, between Chichester and Salisbury. This bell-tower was taken down in “cold blood” as we may say, or by way of “restoration” in 1799. About the same time Wyatt made many structural and other alterations, which are detailed with undisguised approbation by contemporary writers. Dodsworth gives particulars received from Wyatt himself. They are in form and language, and, I may add, conceit, so like what the “restorer” of to-day uses of a building which he has done his best to ruin, and are besides so interesting, historically, that I am tempted to quote some sentences. Wyatt was first let loose on Salisbury about 1789. He went to work without a doubt or a scruple. The Hungerford and Beauchamp Chapels were “defects.” He “expressed his astonishment at the temerity of their builders. They were destroyed, though the consent of their owners had to be obtained first. Their fragments were used in the alterations, some in the organ screen, some in the choir. The walls and buttresses of the Lady Chapel were restored, the windows brought to their proper level, the seats which disfigured it removed, and the pavement was raised a few inches to give an ascent from the choir.” The phrase “proper level” is good. Then came almost the worst of Wyatt’s “restorations.” It was found “necessary” to remove several monuments. New sites were prepared--the result being what we now see in the nave, where the mixture of the fragments of one monument with the ruins of another of a different period has not even the merit of being picturesque. The tomb ascribed traditionally to Bishop Poore and nine others were destroyed, portions being neatly arranged as in a kind of museum “along the plinth between the series of pillars on each side of the nave.” Two small porches, one at the north end of the great transept, and the other on the south side, near the Lady Chapel, “were considered as neither adding to the beauty, nor to the convenience of the building. They were accordingly taken down.” The “accordingly” is another happy expression. We might be reading a report of Sir G. Scott, or Mr. Pearson, or Mr. Butterfield. Yet this was written close on a hundred years ago. A very interesting series of paintings, representing the months or the Zodiac, were on some of the eastern bays of vaulting. They were highly admired, we are told, by those “regard the mere antiquity of an object as a sufficient title to admiration.” These are precisely the words used lately by an architect about the north transept of Westminster Abbey. Wyatt promptly wiped off the traces of these decorations, and “judiciously coloured the arches and ribs of the choir like the original stone. As the Campanile intercepted the most striking view of the structure it was taken down.”

When we enter by the west door the first view is hardly so striking as the first view of the exterior. A closer examination and a comparison with other cathedrals shows how far Salisbury is in advance of everything else of its kind. The exquisite lightness and delicate proportions of the steeple are equally apparent in the nave and its aisles, the slender columns, the pointed arches, the light triforium, the lancets of the clerestory, and the soaring vault. The same “order,” as the classical architect would say, is practically carried round the church. As we advance eastward, and reach the crossing of the transepts, we observe the curious four centred buttressing arches erected by Bishop Wayte, 1415, to increase the supports of the tower. Similar precautions are seen in Canterbury, Hereford and Wells Cathedrals. Under the tower is a brass plate in the pavement which was placed here in 1737, and marks the fact that the spire inclines twenty-two and a half inches to the south-west. This inclination, which is perfectly visible on the outside, was first calculated by Sir Christopher Wren, who put iron “bandages” round the masonry, and made other repairs. No increase of the deflection has been observed since his time, although the spire was struck by lightning in 1741. The choir screen is by Skidmore. The organ is divided. Some ancient glass may be seen in the triplet windows at the ends of the transepts. The altar stood to the eastward of the second or choir transept, and some parts of the old stalls are still to be seen, but almost everything in this part of the church is new. The Audley chantry (1524), in the latest style of Gothic, is on the north side. There are some remains of the very curious and interesting if not unique iron chantry of Lord Hungerford, formerly in the Lady Chapel, made into a kind of pew or cage, about a hundred years ago, by the heirs of the family when Wyatt destroyed it. A somewhat similar example, or part of one, the Chantry of Edward IV. in St. George’s Chapel at Windsor, has already been “restored” away.

The Lady Chapel is probably not correctly described by that name. The whole church is dedicated to the Blessed Virgin. It is perhaps more correctly called Trinity Chapel. Here the colouring, modern, of the roof, and other amendments and improvements made and suggested by Scott, for the most part, though Clutton also showed himself a worthy successor of Wyatt, are exceedingly offensive.

The cloisters are entered from the south-western transept. They are slightly later, in the same style as the church, but were evidently not built till it was finished. In churches of the old foundation cloisters were an ornament, a luxury, and not a necessity, as at Canterbury or Gloucester, where they were needed for the use of the monks. The cloisters of Salisbury are the largest in England, each walk being, within, 181 feet long, or from wall to wall, without, 195 feet. Over the east walk is a fine Library, containing many illuminated and other manuscripts, including some early liturgies.

THE CASTLE OF ANGERS

HENRI JOUIN

On the 7th of September, 1661, as night was falling, a company of musketeers crossed the drawbridge of the Castle of Angers. Scarcely had they entered the fortress when these musketeers expelled the garrison. This was the King’s order. A sub-lieutenant commanded these men: it was d’Artagnan. A prisoner had been confided to him: this was Nicholas Fouquet. The superintendent’s servant, La Vallée, and his physician, Pecquet, taking pity upon Fouquet, who was the prey of a quartan fever, obtained leave to share his captivity. The Castle then had shut within it three prisoners, who were subjected to the most rigorous treatment. We know by the official account of Fouquet’s detention that the bed in which he had to sleep on the 7th of September “was not of the cleanest.” Now for the rest, d’Artagnan, and his two officers, Saint Mars and Saint Leger, maintained an extreme reserve towards their guests. There is no news from outside. Pecquet, before leaving Nantes, had, it is true, fortuitously met Gourville. It was from him that Pecquet got the news of the arrest of Pellisson and the exile of Madame Fouquet. Sorrowful presage! The accused one began first of all to prepare his defence. He wrote several memoirs, but at the end of a few days, writing was prohibited. The president of Chalain, suspected of having wished to bribe a musketeer was also apprehended to be conducted to the Bastille. Louis XIV., Colbert, Le Tellier, and Séguier kept their eyes fixed on Angers. Fouquet lived there until the first of December, having no other pastime between his two attacks of fever than to contemplate with a melancholy look “_la fillette du Roi_.” This was the name by which they designated an iron cage, in which, according to legend, a queen of Sicily had been shut up by her husband “for having built the church of Saint-Maurice at Angers too magnificently.” This legend was not calculated to reassure the Superintendent. He knew that he was accused precisely of having used the money of the Treasury to build Vaux-le-Vicomte, the magnificence of which had offended the King. If, through misfortune, the thought of keeping him under such good guard, between these bars, had entered the heads of his enemies, of what advantage was the little bit of liberty that he still enjoyed? Moreover, he was not unaware of the refinements of cruelty that had been practiced for the past two centuries upon the prisoners of State. The “_fillette du Roi_,” made at the order of Louis XI., had not been empty at any period. Had not Cardinal Balue, bishop of Angers, known this instrument of torture at the _Château d’Onzain_, near Blois? Fouquet might well be afraid, for there entered perhaps far more passion than justice in his disgrace. They did not go so far, however, as to put him in a cage. The vigilance and the loyalty of d’Artagnan, and the thickness of the walls of the Castle seemed to Fouquet’s enemies, a sufficient safeguard against all danger of his escape. What is then the Castle of Angers?

Péan de la Tuilerie--the _d’Argenville angevin_--comes to tell us. “The Castle is at one of the extremities of the city, on a rock, and surrounded with deep moats, cut in the rock, which is an escarpment on the bank of a river that flows at its base, and from which they lift, by means of a very convenient machine, all the munitions which are necessary. It is of a triangular form, all built of slate and flanked by eighteen round towers and a crescent, which is the gate of the faubourg.”

Péan de la Tuilerie wrote in 1778. His description is still very nearly exact. To speak the truth, this military post forms less of a triangle than a pentagon, but the appearance of the Castle remains what it was in the last century. The girdle of moats has been, however, a little changed. The Maine rolls no longer beneath its towers. It is not, as you will readily believe, that the course of the river has been turned. To change the position of the fortress would have been difficult. They considered it simpler to fill up the canal. Some factories, some counting-houses, and some private dwellings occupy the place of the moat, and the traveller seeks vainly at the present moment for that “very convenient machine,” of which Péan speaks. Moreover, it would be useless. The Castle has no more need of munitions. English, Bretons and Normans have left it. Their attacks are ended. Angers ignores to-day those savage incursions and perpetual threats, which for several centuries, troubling its repose, kept its independence in check. Then the Castle had to sustain repeated sieges. The silence that envelops it has grown out of the clank of arms and the cries of the combatants, who many times made this stone colossus tremble to its very foundations. Ah! the noble rampart of the city! Its great days and its glorious past, haunt my memory.

Who chose its site? Count Eudes, under the royal approbation of Charles the Bald. The Plantagenets seem to have embellished and fortified the north turret of the building, but it is to Louis IX. that the primitive castle is indebted to its transformation into a military post. Its imposing towers, firmly planted on their bases of schist, are the work of Louis IX. Its large canals hollowed out of the slate date from the last years of the Fifteenth Century. They give character to the citadel. You judge it most impregnable in measuring the depth of its moats with your eye; but how many times had the enemy been repulsed by the rain of projectiles thrown from the Castle?

In 1444, the English approached the city. They ravaged the country mercilessly, and pillaged and ruined according to their good pleasure. The army encamped near the fortress, intending to open the siege on the following day. On the following day the English troops took their departure. What could have been the cause of their retreat? One of the English chiefs was hit in the forehead by a shot and instantly killed. This occasioned such confusion that the assailants fled. An artilleryman thus saved the city.

The Fifteenth Century was, moreover, the great epoch for the Castle of Angers. Louis XI., profound politician and crafty of action, meditated upon uniting the Duchy of Anjou to the crown of France. This was shown on two occasions. The second time, the Prince being at war with Bretagne had levied previously upon the city of Angers for subsidies for his troops. He came again. Behnard Guillaume Cerizay, his secretary, and three chamberlains entered Angers. They convoked and consulted with the notables. At this time _plébiscites_ were unknown. People did not have the character to defend their rights and their interests. They were minors. But if the Angevin populace could have spoken, it would not have spoken better than its representatives. The notables chose for France. “The assembly,” wrote M. Port, “through the voice of the Chancellor of Anjou, pledged its faith to the King. On the following day, Louis XI. had come to the Castle offering a favourable reply to all requests, granting to the most zealous petitions leave to have a house in the city.” The Castle in which this act of submission to the King of France took place, was formerly the property of the Duc d’Anjou, who was at the same time Count of Provence and King of Sicily, René, son of Yolande, poet, amateur, bibliophile, collector, and patron of poets, sculptors, goldsmiths, tapestry-workers and illuminators who filled his court,

“_René le prince populaire, Doux artiste aux yeux éblouis Des peintres que, pour lui plaire Lui fait offrir le roi Louis._”

It was at the Castle of Angers, in a kind of little manor-house flanked by four turrets, that René first saw the light on the 16th of January, 1409. The Maugine was his nurse in the citadel, the Maugine, Tiphaine, to whom in after years he erected a tomb, the touching inscription upon which is from his hand. Married at the age of twelve to Isabelle de Lorraine, René d’Anjou, fighting everywhere for twenty-five years, made only rare appearances at the Castle of Angers; but soon comes the death of Isabelle and upon it quickly follows the second marriage of the prince with Jeanne de Laval, upon which he establishes his residence at Angers. Farewell war, diplomacy, treaties and conquests! René yields himself up to the charm of his young wife. To her the poet consecrates his loving stanzas of _Regnault and Jeanneton_, a kind of autobiography of the husband and wife. _The Shepherd and the Shepherdess_, a delicate pastorale composed in honour of Jeanne de Laval, will be put into its final form under the skies of Provence, at Tarascon; but it is in the Angevin country that the poet finds all his ideas as he strolls at the side of the beautiful Jeanne. The writers of the time show us René going out of the Castle without escort, accompanied solely by his royal spouse, and taking the _chemin de la Baumette_. After passing through the field-gate, the illustrious personages got into a fisherman’s boat below the _Basse-Chaîne_, and descended the Maine to that solitary hermitage, where Rabelais will presently come to study at the Cordeliers.

It is also from this Castle that René d’Anjou issues to cross his “beautiful city” on foot to his dear hermitage, where he loved to consort “with the citizens of Angers, the artists and the men of learning of his Court.”

René disappeared; Louis XI. reigned. A century elapsed. Henri III. yielded to the request of the common people of the city who wished for the destruction of the Castle. The citadel suffered. Letters patent from the King authorized the governor of Anjou to “raze to the ground the stones of all the walls, towers, lodgings, buildings and fortifications of the Castle.” Already the workmen are called. Who will direct this barbarous piece of work? Donadieu, Sieur de Puycharic, claims this honour. Puycharic is the governor of the Castle. They grant his wish. But a man of heart, a soldier, can he conscientiously annihilate the ramparts of a city? This military post of which he is the keeper has its past of glorious traditions. It is worthy of respect. Its services, it seems to him, ought to be taken into consideration. This is what Puycharic thought aside, and for ten years--you have read of this--for ten years--with clever ingenuity, Puycharic kept his army of destroyers busy without destroying anything. He yielded to the necessities of the hour by demolishing the outside buildings of the Castle which he had inherited from his predecessors; a garden pavilion, built by Louisa of Savoy, disappeared; the field-gate, whose defence was difficult, was altered; two useless towers lost their turrets, and in proportion as the waggons full of stones left the Castle, the common people exulted, proud of their success. From time to time, it is true, public opinion complained of the slowness of the workmen at the town’s expense. “Isolated during the troubles,” M. Port has said of him, “in the heart of the Angevin league, the valiant captain was not merely satisfied to guard the place but bravely attacked the foe in the field, one day the Lion d’Angers, another Brissac, Rochefort, Beaupreau, and Chemillé, fighting for about ten years in every kind of warlike adventure, fought against and fighting, holding the country in hand and preparing the place for the King.” His headquarters were at the Castle. It was here that he rallied his men and came to heal his wounds between encounters. Peace being restored, Puycharic, being appointed senechal of Anjou, dismissed his workmen, who were greatly astonished and perhaps greatly pleased at having repaired, embellished and fortified the Castle that they thought they were pulling down.

Puycharic died in 1605. His funeral was magnificent. He rests in the chapel of the Jacobins; and his brothers, the bishops of Saint-Papoul and d’Auxerre erected to his memory a monument surmounted by his statue.

THE PAGODA OF TANJORE

G. W. STEEVENS

Southward out of Madras you still run through the new India, the old India of the nursery. Now it is vivid with long grass, now tufted with cotton, then dark-green with stooping palm-heads or black with firs; anon brown with fallow, blue with lakes and lagoons, black with cloud-shadowing pools starred with white water-lilies. Presently red hills break out of the woods, then sink again to sweeping pastures dotted only with water-hoists and naked herdsmen.