CHALONS-SUR-MARNE
Certain travellers and most tourists think they can, from studying maps and reading books, obtain a very fair impression of a town before they visit it, and that the chief result of their visit will be to fill in sundry local details. If people of that ilk desire to remain high in their own estimation, they had best omit Chalons from their travels. Let us assume that one of these aforesaid folk plans a visit to Chalons. He will probably begin by studying the map, which shows a city seemingly drawn out along both sides of a long, straight street. His practised mind will conclude this the proper method to enter the town and that he can easily find his way about. Step number two will be the consultation of histories. Here he will fall upon the account of the great Battle of Chalons, in which Attila, the “Scourge of God,” met in 451 his final check, the combined army of Romans, Franks and Visigoths there putting a bloody end to his dream of an anti-Christian empire erected upon the crumbling remains of “the power that once was Rome’s.” Anyone who has noticed how surprisingly few decisive victories have been followed by widespread or lasting results must have remarked that the Battle of Chalons stands out prominently as an exception to this rule. So much for what the maps and the histories have disclosed to our experienced tourist. He is doomed to a bitter disappointment. To-day in this quiet little city of yellowish-grey houses he will find nothing reminiscent of that old-time victory. Not only will his dip into history thus prove to have been in vain, but what is more, the street plan has given him a very wrong idea of a really very pretty place. The writer himself well remembers how the map misled him. He remarked thereon the long straight street; therefore, on emerging from the railway station, he proceeded up this tiresome thoroughfare, which he found equipped with the usual provincial tram-line, both trying to tie the older part of the town to the distant railway station that bears its name. As a disappointment this first impression of Chalons was a pronounced success! Don’t fall into the same error. This was the wrong way to enter the town, but there is also a right way, especially for one who believes in first impressions.
If you want to be in a mood to enjoy the glass, branch off to the right when you reach the canal (which is not far from the station), and you will come into a park called the Jard, one of the prettiest combinations of green trees and water to be found in any provincial French city. On a later visit the writer stumbled upon this park, with the result that instead of a mental picture of an ugly town built on both sides of an ugly street, he carried away pleasantly revised memories not only of the charming Jard, but also of several little water-courses meandering through the town, affording lovely vistas every now and again in most unexpected ways. It seems certain that these streams feel equally bitterly about the ugly street, because as soon as they come near it, they promptly hide their heads and pass under it, carefully keeping out of sight in small tunnels. Wait until you see the street, and you won’t blame the streams. Now that you have by means of the woody refreshment of the green Jard purified your perceptions from the taint of railway dirt, let us enter the cathedral. We shall find the glass more interesting and instructive than impressive, but to this general observation we must make an exception on behalf of the thirteenth century windows in the clerestory behind and above the altar; they undeniably leave little to be desired. The blue of their backgrounds combines excellently with the tones of the figures. In one of the panels which shows the Crucifixion, we can readily discern that the bars supporting it at the back (called saddle bars) have been moved to one side so as not to interfere with the two figures on either side of the cross. This displacement of the saddle bars to leave undisturbed the drawing of an important personage was quite usual at that time. Later on the glazier seemed to have no objection to the intrusion of the iron bars, just as he grew to disregard the running of his leads across faces, arms, etc. This church also boasts of a fine rose window in the north transept, which is rendered even more effective by the gallery of lancets beneath it. The especial interest of the cathedral to a student of glass is undoubtedly its grisaille windows, some plain and some banded across by highly-coloured panels of the medallion type. This latter arrangement we find along the north wall of the nave, while those containing grisaille alone are in the triforium and clerestory. In the case of the banded ones we shall notice that it is only the middle third of each which has the highly-coloured panels, all the rest being grisaille, doubtless for the purpose of giving plenty of light to the nave. Although a most interesting arrangement, the effect is not that of great beauty. Some of the narrow triforium panels have a border of plain grisaille surrounding the central panel of colour work in which there are no figures; this is quite unusual. A study of the use of colour with grisaille in that century is not complete without a visit to Chalons, but this having been said we must admit that notwithstanding the splendid panels in the choir clerestory and the fine rose window in the north transept, there are several more inspiring places for one wishing to learn how greatly thirteenth century glass can beautify a religious interior. Some of the finest and most valuable twelfth and thirteenth century panels have been removed from the cathedral, and are now the property of the Musée des Arts Decoratifs, in Paris. Unfortunately they are not always on exhibition. On the south side of the nave is a fine series of Renaissance windows, but these, together with the grey and gold figure panels of St. Alpin, and the excellent coloured ones of the fine church of Notre Dame, will be discussed in our sixteenth century pilgrimages (see page [233]).