George Edmund Street: Unpublished Notes and Reprinted Papers

by George Edmund Street

II

Leaving Paris for Beauvais, the first station at which I stopped was l’Isle Adam, from whence a walk of two or three miles by the banks of the Oise brought me to the fine village church of Champagne. This is very unlike an English village church in its general scheme, but full of interest. In plan it consists of a groined nave and aisles, of six bays, a central tower with a square chancel of one bay, and transepts with apsidal projections from their eastern walls. The date of the whole church (with the exception of the tower arches, which must have been either rebuilt or very much altered in the fifteenth century) is about the end of the twelfth century. It is now undergoing repair at the joint expense of the Emperor and the commune, but this is being done in so careless a manner that it is to be hoped it will not proceed further than is absolutely necessary for the security of the fabric. The western façade has a very singular doorway, the tympanum of which is pierced with a window of six cusps, whilst the abacus of the capitals is carried across the tympanum, and a square-headed door pierced below. Above is a large wheel window of twelve lights. The aisles are lighted with lancets, whilst the clerestory has a succession of circular windows, which internally form part of the same composition as the triforium, the lower part being an unpierced arcade. The chancel is lighted at the east with a circular window enclosed within a pointed arch and on either side with early geometrical windows of two lights. The finest feature is the steeple, which rises in two stages above the roofs. The belfry stage is excessively lofty and elegant in its proportions, having two windows of two lights in each face divided by a cluster of shafts, whilst other clusters of shafts at the angles of the tower run up to a rich corbel-table and cornice, under the eaves of the roof. The finish is a hipped saddle-back roof of steep pitch and covered with slate.

Internally the most rare feature is a very light cusped stone arch of flamboyant character, with pierced spandrils, which spans the western arch of the tower, and no doubt originally carried the Rood. The capitals in the nave are boldly carved, and carry the groining shafts, which are clusters of three. At the west end of the north aisle, and projecting beyond the façade of the church, is the ruin of a small gabled chapel, the object of which I did not understand.

Altogether this church, owing to its fine character, and the retention of almost all its original features and proportions unaltered, deserves to be known and visited by all ecclesiologists, who travel along the north-of-France railway to Paris. A few miles farther on the left rises the fine church of S. Leu, which I have known for a long time, and which deserves, as I think, very much more notice and study than it appears to have received. The plan, situation, details, and style (early first-pointed) are all alike of the best, and I know few, even among French churches, which impress me more strongly with the thorough goodness and nobility of their style. The east end of the church rises from the precipitous edge of a rock, which elevates the whole building finely above the level of the riant valley of the Oise. It was attached, I believe, to a Benedictine abbey, the other buildings of which are all in a most advanced state of decay. The church fortunately, though much out of repair, and in some points altered into flamboyant, is nevertheless sufficiently perfect for all purposes of study. It consists in plan of two western towers (the north-west tower being only in part built) then six bays of nave and aisles, three bays of choir, and an apse (circular on plan) of seven bays; round the apse is the procession path, and four chapels, also circular on plan, lighted by two windows, so that one of the groining shafts is placed opposite the centre of the arch into each, and over the altars. In place of the fifth chapel on the north side, a circular recess is formed in the external wall of the procession path, so as to make space for an altar without forming a distinct chapel. I should be disposed to say that this was the original scheme of the church, afterwards altered and much improved by the substitution of larger and distinct chapels.[16] The central chapel of the apse has the unusual feature of another chapel above it, on a level with the triforium, adding much to the picturesque effect of the east end. In addition to the western steeples there are gabled towers which rise above the aisles on each side of the choir, and the church is remarkable, like the church at Mantes, for the absence of transepts. Perhaps, as the internal length is not quite two hundred feet, this is of some advantage to the general effect. A considerable change has at some time been effected in the external appearance of the east end, for on examination I found that each bay of the triforium was formerly lighted by two lancet windows between the clerestory and the roof over the aisles. My impression is, that this must have been altered when the chapels round the apse were erected and within a very short time of the original construction of the church; but whatever the reason, the church has lost much by the alteration. The six bays of the nave appear to have been built after the west end and the choir. The latter has a noble very early-pointed doorway, rich in chevron ornament, and this seems to have had a porch gabled north and south between the towers so as not to interfere with the window in the west wall of the nave. The south-west tower and spire, though small in proportion to the height of the nave, are of elaborate character. All the arches are round, and there are two nearly similar stages for the belfry. The spire has large rolls at the angles and in the centre of each face (an arrangement seen at Chartres and Vendôme) but in addition it has the peculiarity of detached shafts, standing clear of the rolls on the spire and held by occasional bands. They have a certain kind of quaint picturesqueness of effect, but were never, I think, imitated elsewhere. The whole face of the spire is notched over with lines of chevroned scalloping. On entering the church the first thing that is remarked is the excessive width of the nave (thirty-six feet between the columns) compared to that of the aisles (about twelve feet). The result is, that a grand unbroken area is obtained for worshippers, whilst the aisles appear to be simply passage-ways. The general proportion of the building is, however, rather too low in proportion for its great width. Almost all the arches throughout the church are, more or less, stilted, and with the best possible effect. When the eye is thoroughly accustomed to this it is curious to notice how unsatisfactory any other form of arch is. The fact is, that a curve which commences immediately from its marked point of support is never so fine as where it rises even a few inches perpendicularly before it springs. The capitals throughout the church are finely carved, and those round the apse are of immense size, and crown circular shafts of very delicate proportions, much as at Mantes, and (though on a heavier scale) at Notre Dame, Paris. The construction of this part is of the very boldest character, and exemplifies in a very striking manner the extreme skill in construction to which the architects of the day had arrived.

Great effect is produced by the profusion of chevron and nail-head ornament used on the exterior of the church; a double course of the former of the very simplest kind forms the cornice under all the eaves, and is also used down the edges of all the flying buttresses. On the north side of the nave there still remains a portion of the cloisters, of fine early character; two sides only remain, with a room of the same date with groining resting on detached shafts. Some remains of gateways in the old walls of the abbey are worth noticing, as also the old walls which surround the church, built for the most part against the rock on which it stands, with here and there very small openings, which make them look as though they were intended for defence. Whilst I was in the church some boys came to toll the passing-bell. They said that they always did so on Fridays, at three o’clock.[17]

I saw nothing between S. Leu and Beauvais, though in the part of France bordering on the Oise, I believe that every village would afford something worth seeing in its church. My time, however, was limited.

As you reach Beauvais, the country changes; there is a great deal of wood, a very scattered population, and but few churches. Of course the first object of every one at Beauvais is the cathedral; a building from the study of which I derived less satisfaction than might be expected. It is unpleasant to find an artist striving after more than he is really able to attain, and this was conspicuously the case with the architect of Beauvais. The church was consecrated in A.D. 1272 and fell in A.D. 1284. In order to repair its defects the arches of the choir were subdivided, and from the great size of the columns, and the narrow span of the arches, the present effect is that of a church in which the arches have but little to do, and in which everything has been sacrificed to keep the building from falling again. Then when the roofs and passages about the building are mounted it is seen that the great object of the architect has been simply to obtain one grand effect—that of height and airiness, and that to this everything has been sacrificed, the details throughout being poor, coarse, and slovenly in their mode of execution. The whole gave me the impression of being the work of an unsatisfactory architect, though at the same time it is impossible to deny the excessive grandeur of the vast dimensions of the interior so far as it is completed, or the beauty of arrangement which marked the original scheme of the ground-plan, unpractical and unstable as it was. It may be right, however, to attribute some of the failures, with M. Viollet-le-Duc, to the carelessness of workmen; though no good architect allows himself to be so excused.

It seems very like presumption to criticise such a building, yet I know not the use of architectural study if it is to be pursued with that blind faith which obliges one to admire indiscriminately everything that was built in the thirteenth or fourteenth century. The mere fact that the main intention of the people of Beauvais was to build something finer than their neighbours at Amiens is in itself suggestive; and I am not surprised that a building erected on such terms is unworthy of its age. It is one of the very few buildings of the kind which impresses me in this way; for usually the feeling derived from the study of mediaeval churches is one of respect for the absence of anything but the most thoroughly artistic feeling on the part of their builders. No doubt the architect of Amiens did his work in the best way he could, with little reference to what was being done by his neighbours; and it is curious that the grand success which he achieved should have led, both at Beauvais and (I think also) at Cologne, to unworthy and unsuccessful attempts at rivalry. I can quite see that a claim may be made for the architect of Beauvais, as a man of genius who was not quite so safe a constructor as his contemporaries, but who nevertheless conceived the grandest idea of his age, as far as size and height were concerned. I can only answer that this is not the character of a great architect, and would lead me to class him with the architect of the abbey of Fonthill, rather than with the architect of Amiens or Chartres. The first architect of Beauvais was, however, a better architect, in some respects, than his successor; for though his details (seen in the apse only) were not of the first order, those of the latter are about the worst I have ever met with in a French church of such pretensions.

The glass in the clerestory windows has a band of figures and canopies crossing them at mid-height, with light glass above and below: this is an arrangement often met with, and generally productive of good effect, especially in windows of such great height. A museum attached to the west side of the north transept contains a few antiquities; but the feature of most interest is a late, but good cloister, noticeable for the extreme delicacy of the shafts and piers between the trefoiled openings. In the museum is a fair embroidered mitre, which belonged to F. de Rochefoucald, Bishop of Beauvais, in 1792.

The church of S. Étienne[18] is, after the cathedral, the great architectural attraction of Beauvais. Its west front has a grand arched doorway, with a sculptured tympanum, containing the Nativity, the Adoration of the Magi, and the Coronation of the Blessed Virgin, and four rows of figures of angels and others in the arch. The jambs and central pier are completely denuded of all their shafts and statues, and the whole work is much mutilated in all its parts; nevertheless, it is the best thing remaining in the city, as far as goodness of sculpture and detail can make a work good. The gable of this porch runs back into a triplet, and the main gable has a cusped circular window, now blocked up. The date of the whole front is early in the thirteenth century. On the north side of the nave there is a fine doorway, of very ornate Romanesque; it has been carefully repaired. An arcade of semicircular arches above the doorway is diapered with a pattern sunk in the stone and marked at regular intervals by red tiles inlaid, and about two inches square. The effect is good, and it is, I suppose, a restoration. The circular window on the north side of the church is remarkable for the figures sculptured outside its label; it is evidently a Wheel of Fortune window.[19] The buttresses of the aisles are valuable examples of late Romanesque work. They have a fair projection, but are weathered off some five or six feet below the eaves’ corbel-table; and from their summit in some cases one, and in others two, shafts rise to support the corbel-table. The choir is lofty flamboyant work, but ugly. The nave, of early Transition character, internally has very heavy groining-shafts, and the far from admirable peculiarity of a triforium with arches formed of very flat segments of circles, and the string under the clerestory rising in the same line, and forming, as it were, a label to the arch below.

The gateway to the bishop’s palace, with its steep and picturesque roofs; the palace itself, with its valuable remains of Romanesque work at the back; a portion of a Romanesque house near it; and a fine fourteenth-century gabled house in the Rue S. Véronique, with three pointed and canopied windows in its first floor, are the principal features of interest after the cathedral and S. Étienne. There is, too, a great store of fine timber houses, one of which, in the Rue S. Thomas, is particularly noticeable for the elaborate filling in of encaustic tiles between all the timbers.

From Beauvais I made an excursion of some ten or fifteen miles, to see the abbey church of S. Germer. It is a church little known, I suspect, to most English tourists, but of very rare interest, and equal in scale to our churches of the first class. The drive thither among woods and low undulating hills is pleasant. The church consists of a nave and aisles of eight bays, transepts, and an apse of seven sides, with an aisle and two chapels on either side. The place of the central chapel at the east is occupied by a low passage of three bays, leading to a grand Lady-chapel of four bays, with an apse of seven. The whole of the nave and choir are of fine style, in transition from Romanesque to pointed. Externally, hardly any but round arches are seen, but internally the main arches are pointed. I know few things much more striking than the treatment of the apse. The main arches have their soffits composed of a very bold round member, with a large chevron on each side; and the effect of this, in connection with the acutely pointed arches, is strikingly good.[20] Above this is the groined triforium, opening to the church with an arcade of semicircular arches, subdivided into two, and supported on coupled detached shafts. Immediately under the rather plain clerestory windows is a corbel-table, and in each bay square recesses, now blocked up, but which look as though they had opened to the roof of the triforium. The groining-ribs of the apse are large, and profusely adorned with sculpture. The aisle round the apse is all built on the curve (as is usually the case in early work), and the groining, constructed in the same way, has those ungraceful and difficult curves which result from this arrangement. Very good low metal parcloses divide the choir from the aisles. In the nave some of the capitals appear to be of very early date (especially along the north wall, where the acanthus is freely used); the whole of the triforium is stopped up, but the design of this part of the church seems to have been similar to that of the choir, with the exception of the chevron round the arches. The groining, too, save of the two eastern bays of the nave, is of later date. At present the only steeple is an eighteenth century erection over the crossing; but there was evidently an intention originally to build two western towers. An altar of the same date as the church, which remains in it, is of much interest, as from its rather ornate character it seems probable that it was never intended to be covered with a cloth. It is figured at p. 180 of M. de Caumont’s Abécédaire.

The exterior affords many features of interest. It is, as I have said, almost entirely round-arched, and the choir affords a good example of the triple division in height, rendered necessary by the groined triforium and the projecting chapels of the apse. The clerestory and triforium are each lighted with one window in each bay, whilst the chapels have three windows,—a wide one in the centre, and a much smaller one in each side. There are no flying buttresses to the clerestory, but small quasi-buttresses, formed of three-quarters of a shaft, finished under the eaves with a conical capping. The eaves cornice all round the church, of intersecting round arches, resting on corbels, is so similar in its character to some of the work in the beautiful chapter-house of S. Georges de Boscherville, that I can hardly doubt that they were executed under the same influence, if not even by the same workmen.

The feature, however, which lends the most interest to the building and aids so much in its picturesque effect externally, is the grand Lady-chapel,[21] said to have been built by the Abbot, Peter de Wesencourt, between the years 1259 and 1266. In plan, disposition and general arrangement it appears to be as nearly as possible identical with the destroyed Lady-chapel of S. Germain-des-Prés at Paris, built by the celebrated Pierre de Montéreau, between the years 1247 and 1255. Pierre de Montéreau built also the S. Chapelle at Paris, between 1241 and 1248, and died on the 17th March, 1266. A comparison of the design of these three buildings has induced me to believe that in this Lady-chapel of S. Germer we have another genuine work of this great architect, for it was built before his death, and is identical in many of its features with work which we know to be his. The plan of all these buildings is identical.[22] They all had two staircase turrets and a large rose-window at the west end, a parapet above the rose-window, and a smaller rose in the otherwise plain gable. The design of the window tracery, the gables over the windows, the detail of the staircase turrets, buttresses and parapets, are all so similar that my suggestion really scarcely admits of a doubt. The main differences are, that at S. Germer the original western rose-window is perfect, whilst in the S. Chapelle it is a flamboyant insertion, and that the chapel is of one story in place of two. In this last point, and in its complete separation from the church, it agrees entirely with the destroyed chapel at S. Germain-des-Prés. The passage between the apse and the chapel is of three bays, with a doorway at the side, but, so far as I could see, no trace of an entrance from the apse. It is groined: the windows (of four lights) are much elaborated with mouldings, and have trefoiled inside arches: and an ascent of six steps leads from it under a fine archway into the chapel. There is a north doorway in the chapel, and the whole is groined. The dimensions appear, as nearly as I can make out, to be precisely the same as at S. Germain, but less than in the S. Chapelle, being about twenty-seven feet six inches in the clear between the groining shafts, and between seventy and eighty feet in length. The original altar of stone, supported on a trefoiled arcading, remains fixed against the east wall. This is six feet five and a quarter inches long by three feet three inches high. In the museum at the Hôtel Cluny, at Paris, one of the most valuable relics is a stone retable, painted and gilded, formerly in this chapel. I have not its dimensions, but it is of much greater length than this altar, and I have no doubt, therefore, that the principal altar stood in its proper place under the chord of the apse, and that the retable belonged to it. This arrangement was not uncommon; it was identical with that of the altars in the S. Chapelle, the same arrangement existed originally at Amiens; and we have an instance of it in England in the choir of Arundel church.

The retable has subjects from the life of our Lord, and illustrative of the legend of S. Germer. In the centre is the Crucifixion, SS. Mary and John; to the right of the Virgin is the Church, and to the left of S. John the Synagogue; then come figures of SS. Peter and Paul, the Annunciation and Salutation, S. Ouen (uncle of S. Germer) healing a knight, a noble speaking to a pilgrim, and S. Germer asking Dagobert to allow him to leave the court, in order to found his abbey. The whole of the figures are painted and gilded in the most sumptuous and yet delicate fashion, and though much damaged, are still sufficiently perfect to be intelligible.

M. de Caumont has given a drawing in the Abécédaire[23] of what seems to be a remarkably fine shrine, of twelfth or thirteenth century character, still in the possession of the commune of Coudray, S. Germer. I believe this is within a few miles of S. Germer, and it ought not to be missed by ecclesiologists who take this route. It has an arcade of four trefoiled arches on each side, and one at each end, and has a steep roof with a fine open cresting at the ridge.

Of the other buildings of the abbey very slight traces now remain. Close to the west end there is, however, a very simple gate-house, and the modern conventual buildings appear to be now used for a school, superintended by nuns.

S. Germer is certainly one of those churches which no ecclesiologist who goes to Beauvais should on any account miss seeing. Its rare scale, dignity, and architectural interest, and its secluded situation afford attractions of the highest kind, and I am confident that no one who takes my advice in this matter will come back disappointed.