III
From Beauvais I made my way to Compiègne, where I found but little of much interest. The principal church is in size, plan, and general design, decidedly conspicuous; yet it is remarkable how little there is in it to detain an architect beyond the general effect. The bulk of the structure is of good uniform first-pointed character. It consists of a nave and aisle (fifty-three feet in width) of six bays, transepts, and an apsidal choir, the lower part of which has been modernized and has a very badly planned flamboyant aisle round it; and there were intended to be two western towers. The groining of the nave is flamboyant. The best feature is the apse, which has a glazed triforium of two lancet windows in each bay, and a clerestory of large single lancets. It is, I think, characteristic of many French churches of this fine scale, that they afford much less matter for study and description than our own churches of one-fourth the size and pretension. Their details are so uniform, and their planning so regular that a description of one bay is, in fact, a description of the whole church, and there is nothing in the shape of monumental effigies, screens, brasses, or other similar relics, to give a special interest to each part of the building. When we lament the general scarcity of examples of groining in our English churches, we ought not to forget that it was, in part at least, to this that we may attribute the extraordinary variety of their character; for it is undoubtedly very much more difficult to obtain those picturesquely irregular effects which charm us so justly in English examples, when groined roofs are used, than when their place is taken by roofs of wood. The points of support must be much more equally spaced, the piers more regularly planned, and each portion more exactly a reproduction of every other portion; and it has sometimes struck me as possible that we owe the much greater variety of designs in the treatment even of our groining, as compared with the French, to the great love of change and variety which our architects had imbibed in dealing so largely with wooden-roofed buildings. In this respect indeed, they sometimes ran into excesses for which they had no example, and happily, no imitators on the Continent; but on the whole, we have undoubtedly reason to be grateful for a feature in our national art which helped to place it in so high a position when compared with that of other countries.
Another church, dedicated to S. Antoine, is of large size and late flamboyant style. It has a fine font (now disused) of the same character and material as the well known fonts at Winchester, East Meon, and Southampton; the bowl of which is no less than three feet nine inches square. The floor of the nave of this church is boarded, and fitted up with very smart chairs, whilst the aisles have tiled floors and common chairs, and there is a rail fixed between the columns to shut in the select occupants of the smart chairs. It is a mistake, therefore, to suppose that the introduction of chairs will necessarily secure the annihilation of the pew system. Here, too, I saw a “mandement” of the Bishop of Beauvais, Senlis and Noyon, dated Dec. 8th, 1856, ordering the adoption of the Roman liturgy, in place of the local uses, of which he says there were no less than nine in his diocese, so that it often happened that the same priest “chargé de deux paroisses, trouve dans l’Église ou il va célébrer une première Messe une liturgie différente de celle qui s’observe dans la paroisse où il réside:”—“le chant, les cérémonies, la couleur des ornemens, les usages, tout est changé.” The Bishop interdicted, among others, the Missals of Beauvais, Noyon, Senlis, Amiens, Meaux, and Rouen, and his order took effect from Whitsunday, 1857.
Of less distinctly ecclesiastical edifices Compiègne retains some remains. A cloister in the Caserne S. Corneille is a good example. The arches have no tracery, and the piers have buttresses to resist the thrust of the groining. This is very simple but good work, though late in the fourteenth century. The old Hôtel-Dieu, too, has a characteristic gable end towards the street, divided by a central buttress, and with a pointed archway below and a large window above in each division.
The very picturesque front of the Hôtel de Ville has been recently very carefully restored, but so completely, that it looks almost like a new building. The effect of the front is very good, though the belfry tower rises awkwardly from behind the parapet of the building. There is an illustration of this building in M. Verdier’s Architecture Civile et Domestique, which will enable your readers to understand the character of this picturesque though late building better than any description that I can give. The roof of the main building, as well as that of the turrets at the angles and the belfry, is covered with slate: and it is worth notice how much the effect of these roofs depends upon the thinness of the slate, its small size and the sharpness and neatness with which it is cut. Foreign slating is in truth just as good in its effect as ours is generally bad and coarse.
The château of Pierrefonds ought to be visited from Compiègne. The ruins must be interesting, and I believe the site is very picturesque. It is a fashionable place of resort, and at a distance of some three hours through the forest from Compiègne. M. Viollet-le-Duc’s description of the buildings is known probably to most of your readers.
From Compiègne I made my way to Soissons. It was here that on this journey I came first on the grand style which distinguishes the buildings of this part of France. Laon, chief in grandeur, both natural and architectural, Noyon, S. Quentin, Meaux, and Soissons, are magnificent illustrations of the main features of the style: whilst smaller churches, remains of abbeys, such as those of Ourscamp (near Noyon) and Longpont (near Soissons), and of castles, such as Coucy-le-Château, enable us to appreciate all its varieties. It is to be hoped that the stream of English travellers will for the future set more in this direction than it has hitherto done, since it is now possible in going to Strasbourg to take the railway through this country to Rheims, and in so doing to make acquaintance with a group of churches, which impress me more and more each time that I see them. They are remarkable evidence also of the wonderful vigour of the age in which they were built: for they are all of very nearly the same date—the end of the twelfth and early part of the thirteenth century, and conceived on the grandest possible scale. Indeed, France, under Philip Augustus, affords a spectacle such as perhaps no other country in the world can show. For if we think of the wars which characterized his reign, it is almost incredible that it should nevertheless at the same time have been possible to found such cathedrals as those of Paris, Bourges, Chartres, Amiens, Laon, Meaux, Soissons, Noyon, Rouen, Séez, Coutances, Bayeux: yet such was the case, and some of them were completed in but a few years with extraordinary energy.
THE SOUTH TRANSEPT AT SOISSONS
Few things are more impressive than the cathedral of Laon, even in its present state: and what must it not have been with its central steeple and the six towers and spires which once adorned its several fronts, rising, as they all did, from the summit of a mighty hill, seen on all sides for many a long mile by the dwellers in the plain which stretches away from its feet! And yet, magnificent as is the cathedral of Laon, it is one only among many; and such a city as Soissons, inferior as it is in situation, affords nevertheless in its architectural remains, matter of almost equal interest.
The general view of Soissons, obtained from the distance, is striking only for its architectural character. The effect is mainly attributable to the fact, that in addition to the cathedral, with its lofty south-west steeple, the town also contains the west front, with two towers and spires, of the ruined abbey of S. Jean des Vignes. It is to this ruin that the eye first turns in anticipation of discovering the famous cathedral of the city; but a little acquaintance with the details of the two buildings leaves no room to doubt that the cathedral, with its lonely steeple, is nevertheless by very much the most interesting and noble example of art which the city contains.
Let us at once, then, bend our steps thither. We shall find a church, the greater part of which dates probably from the end of the twelfth or the first years of the thirteenth century, whilst its plan is very remarkable, and its details in some parts of exquisite beauty. In plan it consists of two western towers (one of which only is built), nave and aisles of seven bays, transepts (of which more presently), a choir of five bays, and an apse of five sides; chapels are obtained between the buttresses of the choir, and the apse is surrounded by an aisle and five chapels; these chapels are circular in plan at the ground line, octagonal above, and are groined with a vault which covers the aisle also; this is a mode which is seldom satisfactory in execution, and a falling off from the structural truth of those plans in which the groining of each chapel is complete in itself, and distinct from that of the aisle. The south transept is finished with an apse, and has a small circular chapel of two stages in height attached on its south-eastern side. The north transept is square-ended and of later date.
It is impossible to examine Soissons cathedral without having recollections of several other churches forced upon the mind. At Noyon, for instance, we have a grand example of a church of the same date, both of the transepts of which are apsidal; but the south transept of Soissons has a great advantage over its neighbour, in that it has an aisle round the transept opening with three arches, supported upon slender and lofty shafts, into each bay, both on the ground level and in the triforium. Indeed there are few fairer works of the period than this south transept of Soissons; for whether we regard its plan, general scheme, or detail of design and sculpture, all alike show the presence of a master hand in its conception and execution;—the same hand, I suppose, as is seen at Noyon, but at a slightly later period. Then, again, a comparison of Soissons with Meaux will show so great a similarity of plan, dimensions, and design in their eastern apses, that it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that they were the works of the same man, and at about the same time. And each of these churches has nevertheless some one special feature of its own, wherein it is unique and unmatched; Soissons has its exquisite south transept, Noyon its western porch, and Laon its cluster of steeples, by which every one who has seen them must especially have been struck.
One of the features which most marks the churches of this school is the fourfold division in height of the main walls. There is first the arcade, then the triforium[24] (which is large, groined, and lighted with its own windows), then a blank arcade which is analogous to the triforia of our English churches, and lastly the clerestory. I cannot say that this arrangement is ever pleasing. The clerestory always looks disproportionately small and dwarfed, and the blank arcade below it rather unmeaning, whilst all the divisions have the appearance of being cramped and confined. At Soissons it occurs in the south transept, but not in the nave—where we see the usual triple division. Some of the capitals here are well sculptured, though generally very simply, and in the transept they are often held with iron ties (as in Italian examples) to resist the thrust of the groining. I should notice that the whole of the walling in this transept is circular on plan; this is generally a mark of early date, and though it gave rise to some complexity in the arches and groining, it undoubtedly often produces a very charming effect. The windows of the three eastern chapels are full of richly-coloured early glass, rather rudely drawn and executed; some of it, I suspect, came from the clerestory, the eastern portion of which is still full of similar glass. The clerestory has large lancet windows and flying buttresses of two stages in height, with the arches supported upon detached shafts, and a passage behind the lower order on a level with the sill of the clerestory windows.
On the exterior, one of the most noticeable features is that the ridge of the south transept roof rises no higher than the eaves of the rest of the church. Yet such is the care with which the design is managed, that this smallness of scale is not noticed, until from a distance a general view of the building is obtained, when it looks undoubtedly very lop-sided.
From the cathedral one goes naturally to the ruined but still imposing church of the great abbey of S. Jean des Vignes. The west front of this church is exactly in a line with that of the cathedral, at a distance of about a furlong; and standing on higher ground, and still retaining its two towers and spires, it produces a greater effect in the general views of the city. It is now the centre of the arsenal, with powder-stores, piles of shot, and various other preparations all around it, which afford subject for rather gloomy forebodings, in case Soissons should again suffer (as it has so often already suffered) the danger of a siege. The remains of the church are almost confined to the steeples and west front. The lower portions of these date from the thirteenth century, but the upper portion is all of a very ornate and rather late middle-pointed style; they are very pyramidal in their outline, and have a rather heavy arrangement of pinnacles at the base of the spires. The belfry-window of the north-west tower has a very large stone crucifix contrived against its monial and tracery; there is a canopy in the tympanum over the head of our Lord, and the tracery seems to have been designed with a special view to the introduction of the figure. The spires are crocketed on the angles, scalloped on the face, and pierced with alternate slits and quatrefoils. The sculpture of this front is not of very good character. From the south of the south-west tower extends a remarkably fine portion of the domestic buildings of the abbey, two stages in height, and eight bays in length. Its south end has the favourite French arrangement of a central buttress between two large circular windows, with two lancet windows in the gable. On the west side each bay has a fine simple pointed window: whilst on the east side the lower part is concealed by the cloister, and the upper stage has a row of plain circular windows, similar to those at the south end. The steep-pitched roof still remains, and the whole building is a very fine relic, even among the relics of this kind in which France is so peculiarly rich. The remains of the cloister are in a very dilapidated state. Drawings which I had seen of it had prepared me for earlier and better work than I found. I imagine that it is not earlier than circa A.D. 1300. The sculptured foliage is in exact imitation of nature, very pretty, and no more. It is, however, singularly instructive, as it illustrates just the kind of work which our English carvers are most prone to introduce just now, and which is generally (as it is here) very ineffective for want of due architectural subordination. The windows of this cloister are of four lights, with geometrical tracery; but the chief peculiarity is the treatment of the buttresses, which are angular on the face, and above the springing of the windows crocketed on the angles. Had the sculpture been fifty years earlier in date, it would, I have no doubt, have been a singularly beautiful cloister. A doorway which opened from the cloister to the church is peculiarly flat in its mouldings and sculpture, but remarkable for the still existing traces of painting over its whole surface. The foundations of the east wall show that the church was not of any great length from east to west.
The church of S. Léger is the finest edifice after these of which the city can now boast. Anywhere its transepts and choir would be of great interest for their early thirteenth-century date, and their good architectural character. The church consists of a nave and aisles of six bays (of which the four western are Renaissance), transepts of two bays in depth, and a choir without aisles, which has one bay of sexpartite groining, and an apse of seven sides. The detail is very much the same as in the cathedral. The clerestory windows in the apse are lancets, and in the rest of the church of two lights with tracery, consisting of a cusped circle within an enclosing arch. In these Soissonnais churches the label generally has a ball or four-leaved flower at intervals. There is a procession path or passage, with openings in the buttresses, round the church outside the clerestory windows, dividing the church very markedly into two divisions in height, and recalling to memory the very similar arrangement in the church of S. Elizabeth at Marburg. The transept has fine angle pinnacles and a large three-light window with early tracery, whilst the cloister is somewhat similar to that of S. Jean des Vignes. Stepped gables are a favourite feature here even in early work. The aisles of S. Léger are so finished, as is also an early building by the side of the cathedral.
The church of S. Pierre, which is desecrated, has a west front of much interest. It has a nave and aisles, three western doorways (whereof the central is pointed, the others round), and a single wide, round-arched window over each door. The detail is peculiar,—of late Romanesque character, and effective. Only two bays of the nave remain. The labels and string-courses have a dogtooth enrichment, whilst the cornice above them is adorned with a regular acanthus-leaf. The shafts of the west door are fluted; and in this, as in the quadruple arrangement in height, which I have already noticed as a frequent characteristic of the Soissonnais churches, I suspect we may trace the influence of the grand church of S. Remi at Rheims.
Of domestic buildings there are but few traces in Soissons. The best are: a building near the west front of the cathedral, with stepped gables, central buttresses in the end, and good simple three-light windows in each bay;—a house in the Cloître S. Gervais, near the north transept of the cathedral, with a steep unpierced gable and three two-light windows in the stage just below it, and an unpierced ground story;—and an old hospital near the cathedral, of good early-pointed work, without groining, but with transverse arches from column to column,—the capitals being carved, and the arches quite square in section.
From Soissons, an excursion ought to be made to the abbey of Longpont.[25] I was not aware at the time I was there that it was in this neighbourhood, but I believe that it is only some eight or ten miles distant, and that the church is of rare interest and grandeur. I regret extremely my inability to give any notes of it.
A walk of a mile across meadows took me to the remains of the great abbey of S. Médard. These are very slight and consist of some remains of crypts, in which are preserved portions of buildings or monuments which have been dug up from time to time. An old view of S. Médard shows it surrounded by fortified walls, enclosing a vast range of buildings and two or three churches. Of all this nothing now remains, beyond a modern house, converted into an asylum for deaf and dumb, in one portion of which remains an old vaulted apartment, now used as the chapel of the institution.
From Soissons, I made my way across country to Château Coucy ... and from Coucy, I made a considerable détour to visit the abbey of Prémontré. The situation is very striking, in a narrow valley, closed in on all sides with steep, thickly-wooded hills, and with only a few dependent cottages leading up to the gate of the abbey. This was the chief house of the Premonstratensian Order, which established as many as thirty-five houses in England. The abbots of the order were bound to meet once a year at Prémontré, and as there were as many as a thousand abbeys belonging to them, the wild valley must then have presented a singular contrast to its present deserted state. Until lately the buildings have been used as a glass manufactory: but they have just been purchased by the Bishop of Soissons (who seems to have a great character for piety and liberality among the people) for an orphanage. I saw the nun who holds the post of superior of the institution, and obtained permission to search for remains of the old buildings: she seemed much surprised at my demand, and with some reason, as the only traces left of them are a portion of (I think) a crypt under the church, which has fallen with its groining, and is left a confused mass of stones, just as it fell. On my way from Prémontré, I passed, between Anizy-le-Château and Laon, a very interesting example of a village church at (I believe) Chalvour. It is cruciform, with a good central gabled tower. The chancel has single lancet windows to the east and south, and the south transept a large boldly-cusped circular window, and a small projection on the east for the altar, also lighted with a circular window. The chancel, tower, and transepts, are groined: the nave (with its aisles) is of inferior work. Altogether, this is a very characteristic thirteenth century church, of bold and vigorous character, and severely simple in all its details.
An ascent of about two miles leads up the side of the mountain, on which Laon is perched, to the western extremity of the city. And here I must pause, trusting another time to say somewhat of the architectural glories of the place, upon which I suppose I can scarcely descant too enthusiastically.