Stained Glass Tours in France

E-text prepared by D Alexander and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
Copyright, 1908, by JOHN LANE COMPANY

INTERIOR OF SAINTE CHAPELLE, PARIS.
TO THAT REMORSELESS CRITIC MY WIFE THIS BOOK IS GRATEFULLY DEDICATED

The purpose of this book is a very simple one. It is to provide an answer to the question, “Where does one find good stained glass in France, and how can it most conveniently be seen?” All the books upon this subject are more or less technical and are intended rather for the student than the sightseer. During the six years that the writer has been studying glass, he has so often been asked the above question, as to finally conclude that an answer in the form of a simple touring handbook might be of service. To that end he has put together notes taken on sundry vacation trips. The reader should be indulgent, for the writer is not an authority on glass—just a lawyer on a holiday. In addition to the purpose already described, it is hoped that this little book may also serve to lure forth into the charming French country some who have hitherto neither heard nor cared much about glass, so that they may see the wonderful beauty that the stained-glass window can alone reveal.
Charles Hitchcock Sherrill.
20, East 65th Street, New York, Christmas, 1907.

The reason for the existence of a window is obvious. When the dwelling ceased to be a cave and became a house, the need for a light aperture at once arose. Neither the house nor the window concern us until long after the house had been made thoroughly habitable, and its windows after much evolution are finally filled with a sheet of translucent substance, which, while excluding the weather, would admit the light. Our interest does not begin until the wish to decorate the house naturally brought about a desire to decorate the window. We will pass over the story of the discovery of glass and its gradual improvement; nor will we pause to consider the very earliest examples now extant, nor examine the steps through which it must have passed to reach so advanced a stage as we find in the twelfth century. This is a book to tell where to see windows, and therefore it must not take up stained glass until a period is reached when examples are sufficiently numerous and beautiful to repay a visit to them. At what date then, shall we make our beginning? There is practically nothing until we come to the charming remains of the twelfth century; but because these latter are very few and those few in churches which also contain glass of the next century, we shall commence with the heading of “Thirteenth Century and Earlier.” That explains why we have selected this particular epoch as the starting point of our investigations. Our windows will themselves disclose to us that the Golden Age of French stained glass falls of itself into three subdivisions—the first comprising the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the second the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and the third the sixteenth century. Of the second subdivision we shall find but few examples, of the first more, and of the third most.