NOTES ON FRENCH CHURCHES
III
SOME FRENCH CHURCHES CHIEFLY IN THE ROYAL DOMAIN
(From a notebook of 1855)
June 13.
Somer has lost much of its original interest by the destruction wantonly in 1830 of nearly the whole of the abbey of S. Bertin. It is wicked, but I did not lament this so much as I should have done, had the church been of rather earlier date. From what now remains it appears to have been entirely in one style, and that an early phase of flamboyant—much more like some of our English late middle-pointed than flamboyant, and really very effective in its mouldings and sculpture, the two great tests of all architecture. The west front and the north wall of the nave are all that now remains of the once magnificent church, and the latter has lost all its window tracery and is in a sad state of decay.
The west doorway of the tower (which is central at the west end) is fine, and has cut in the lintel stone of its door an inscription:—“Castissimum Divi Bertini templum caste memento ingredi.” The tympanum had a painted subject and much of the rest of the stone work still retains traces of decorative colour. The west window of the south aisle is an unhappy example of the worst kind of flamboyant, the tower is covered all over with vertical lines of panelling but is nevertheless, from its great size, imposing, and indeed gives S. Omer all the character it has when seen from the railway. A sentinel keeping watch warned me off as I was measuring the aisle: I suppose having lost so much they were nervously alive to the chance of architects’ hacking off what remains!
A long winding street leads from S. Bertin at one end of it to the cathedral of Notre Dame at the other. This is a church well worthy of a visit for several peculiarities and not less for its generally fine effect, especially in the interior.
The original fabric—of which the choir with its aisle and two apsidal chapels thrown out from the aisle, and the south transept and one and a half bays of the north, are all now remaining—is of the earliest pointed, with occasional round arches to windows, etc. The character is very simple and mainly remarkable for the great beauty of the profusion of sculptured capitals to all the shafts. The section of the piers is singular and gives great lightness of effect; they are in fact thin slices of wall, and not piers formed in the usual way, and as the weight of them is not a crushing weight, I look upon them as excessively scientific in their arrangement. The triforium is very lofty as compared with the rest of the design, and consists of a very simple arcade of pointed arches, supported only by long and slender shafts set near together.
The groining is good, and in the chapels a small shaft rises from the capitals for some feet and carries the wall rib: this gets over a difficulty in mitring the mouldings. The Lady-chapel appears to have been remodelled at a later day but upon the foundation of one coeval with the choir. A very grand effect is produced by the great size of the transepts—which have aisles on both sides—and by the placing of a chapel in the re-entering angles between them and the choir-aisle. In this way an internal effect of lightness and space, of very fine character, is obtained.
One of the most remarkable features about this cathedral is, however, the extent to which, in later days, the old design was persisted in: e.g. the remarkable triforium is carried round the entire church, varied a little in its details and quite different in its sculpture, but still evidently a copy and from its great size giving an air of great unity to the whole design. In the clerestory windows generally there is a good deal of poor flamboyant tracery with a little glass of the same date, but in the choir the original windows all happily remain. These are, in the apse, rather wide lancets, and in the rest of the clerestory simple triplets. In the aisle there were windows of two lights with a simple quatrefoil above. Many of the windows have the dog-tooth ornament round the external labels. The choir still retains on the outside a very fine and original corbel table.
In a chapel south of the choir are extensive remains of some most singular work for pavements—they are squares of stone slightly sunk in regular patterns and then filled in with some very hard black or red substance. The same work is carried up against the walls of this chapel, and in other parts of the cathedral are several small fragments of similar pavements. The stone is of a yellow colour and the system seems to admit of being turned to most useful account.
Of the exterior, the south transept door is about the most remarkable feature. It is very simple, almost plain, but nevertheless its great size and the deep shadow cast by its outer arch combine to make it a very magnificent work. The sculpture of the capitals is very good and the delicate arcade, containing figures on either side below the base of the columns, is thoroughly French in its beauty of detail and exquisite finish. Unhappily it has decayed much. There is a stoup inside against the pier dividing the doors; this is not used now. The western tower is like that of S. Bertin, engaged, and has but little to recommend it to notice.
In the interior there is a very fine high tomb of a bishop—I think S. Omer—early in the thirteenth century, about of the same date as the south transept door. The altar now stands on the east side of the crossing; either side of it, a range of music-stools affords fitting accommodation for the clergy, whilst behind, stalls are arranged in the choir around the apse, encircling an organ which stands about where the altar ought to stand. In front of this organ is a group of music stands etc., for the accommodation of the orchestra. The choir is enclosed with high stone screens toward the aisles—old but quite unornamental....
At S. Leu we had a very maigre meal at a small café biliard close to the station and left at 7.45 for Senlis. The road was rather pretty and took us in sight of Chantilly, a prettily situated town on the Oise with a château which belonged to the Duc d’Aumale. In little more than an hour we rumbled through the old narrow street of Senlis and took up our quarters at the Grand Cerf. Before dark we saw the church of S. Pierre, desecrated and used as a cavalry stable. A soldier who spoke some English insisted on our seeing the thirty “Hawks,” as he called them, who occupied the church. This we agreed to in order to see the building, which has, however, little to remark on save its elaborate west front and flamboyant architecture. Near this church is the cathedral and near this a desecrated church, but I must reserve them until to-morrow.
June 16.
My first visit in the morning was of course to the cathedral, of which the west front with its magnificent south-west tower and spire is the most delightful portion. The rest of the church, though retaining many of its old features and arrangements intact, has been overlaid on the exterior with flamboyant work to an unpleasant extent. The two transept fronts are very elaborate and entirely in this late style. At the east end some of the chapels which surround the apse are of Romanesque date, semicircular in their plan outside and roofed with lean-to roofs of stone. The west front was intended to have two similar towers and spires: the towers are both built but only one spire. The detail of the lower portion is very simple, that of the upper part of tower and spire very elaborate and covered with ornament of varied description. The whole surface of spire and turrets is covered with patterns which contribute very much to the general richness of effect. The most remarkable features are however the open pinnacles at the point where the tower becomes octangular, and the delicate spire-lights which are set on every side of the spire and rise nearly half its height. The spire-lights are remarkable in their arrangement at the top; instead of going back horizontally at the ridge they slope down rapidly to the spire so as to produce a very piquant effect. The detail of all the sculpture and mouldings is most carefully executed throughout, and though the scale of the steeple is not large it produces a very great effect of height. The crockets and finials on the spire are very vigorously carved.
The construction of the spire is very ingenious and allows of passage-ways in the wall to the base of the spire-lights. At this point it is constructed in two thicknesses, one of which slopes and forms the outer line of the spire; the other is perpendicular from the inside face until it meets the external sloping portion and dies into it; the two are occasionally bonded together with large blocks of stone, and a passage-way is formed between them. The view from the steeple is fine.
Close to the cathedral on the south is the desecrated church of S. Frambourg, a simple parallelogram in plan and finished with an apse, rather broad and low in its proportions, but nevertheless very effective. The groining is all sexpartite. The original windows remain only in the apse, and there is but little to be said of the building farther than that its west front is remarkable for the outer line of moulding of a prodigious rose window, (now blocked up), and for a west doorway which though mutilated has much beauty. There seems to have been a tower at the north-west of the nave. This church is now used as a store by a builder....
We left the city of Senlis with some difficulty. Imprimis we had an extortionate charge for a bad kind of accommodation at the Hôtel du Grand Cerf, and next had great difficulty in getting places in the omnibus to Pont S. Maxence. But all is well that ends well, and we succeeded, happily, in getting away. The view of the cathedral as the town is left behind becomes very fine, but it is soon lost as the road plunges into the woods through which for the best part of the way it runs. One village, Fleurines, was passed, with a poor late church; some large stone granaries are passed and then the long street of Pont S. Maxence. The Oise is crossed at its end and a few hundred yards bring us to the station; from hence we booked to Noyon, passing on the way Compiègne, which has an old town hall and two churches, one of which, as seen from the distance, seems likely to repay examination. Noyon was reached at four o’clock and we walked off to the cathedral which towers up most conspicuously above the town.
The general character of the church is, internally, much the same as that of S. Leu, etc., but it is very much loftier and has a singular arrangement into four stages in height. There are in the nave:—1. the arcades, 2. the triforium, very large, with windows and groined, 3. a small arcade more like an ordinary triforium, and 4. a clerestory. In the transepts there is no groined triforium and the two upper stages, being of similar height and both of them glazed, give the impression of a double clerestory. I do not at all like this quadruple arrangement of the interior. The columns of the nave are alternately of clustered and single shafts. The groining is divided into compartments of two bays by reason of the transverse ribs from the clustered piers being much larger than any of the others. Both the transepts terminate with apses and there are many very noble points in the internal effect. Here as at S. Leu the aisles are very narrow compared to the width of the nave, and the spaces between the columns of the arcades are also very small indeed. Of the exterior, the west end is perhaps the more striking part. It has two immense and very simple towers with a grand triple porch in front of its three great doorways. This porch was constructed weakly and has been boldly buttressed up. North of the north-west tower is a long building connected with the church, of exquisite beauty, and other old buildings enclose a considerable space on the north side of the cathedral. These buildings are remarkable, inter alia, for the bold foliage which is introduced beneath the parapets in a fashion very popular in this part of France.
There is a small porch of fine early pointed character on the east side of the north transept and above it a very fine rose window. The ground at the east end is planted out in a garden and the whole effect of the choir with the restored steep roofs above the apsidal chapels is very noble. There is what appears to be a distinct church (now desecrated) attached to the east side of the south transept. It is of simple early pointed and has in each bay two lancets and a round window above. It has several bays of length, and an apse, and is parallel with the choir. Careful works of restoration are going on here. I saw no trace of any other old building, saving a portion of very late domestic work.
We left Noyon at 8.40 and reached S. Quentin at 10 P.M. ...
June 17.
I turned out early and got a sketch of the great church before breakfast. Its height is very imposing but in its general character it disappointed my rather high expectations. It appears to me to be a kind of late imitation of early work. For instance the triforium and clerestory have almost geometrical tracery differing only in slight points from the best kind of geometrical work. The proportions too are good and the groining very simple. Many of the shafts in the choir are single columns, but the carving of their capitals is very inferior to that I have seen elsewhere. The choir has, too, a triforium which seems to be much earlier than that of the nave, probably early in the thirteenth century. One of the best features is the management of the chapels and aisles round the apse. There are two transepts; the eastern one does not show however in the ground plan. The tower was central at the west end, but has been all modernized and does not now rise above the immense pointed roof of the nave, so that in the distance the church wants distinctness of character and outline, badly. The flying buttresses are very elaborate and are steadied by arches thrown across from pinnacle to pinnacle, so as to keep them from falling laterally; notwithstanding these precautions the church has fallen out so much in some parts as to look very unsafe.
In the market place there is a quaint old town hall standing on open arches and rather elaborate in its details but very late in its date. There was less to interest in S. Quentin than in most places I have visited as yet, so I was very well able to get away at 11 to Tergnier by railway; here we waited for an hour and then started in a slow diligence for Laon through La Fère and Crépy. I could not see any church in the former place, but in the latter—a good sized village—are two, both of first-pointed date and one with a remarkably good chancel having an east window and side windows of two lights with a distinct circular window above, and all adorned with dog-tooth ornaments. The other was remarkable for a very striking western porch. The road was pretty and soon after passing Crépy brought us in sight of the cathedral of Laon crowning its noble hill in right royal style. A drenching storm of rain prevented our seeing much of the beauty of the view as we climbed the steep road that winds round the hill into the town, but in the evening when we walked round the ramparts we found that it was one of most uncommon magnificence—a vast expanse of flat country generally green in its colour, dotted here and there with woods or villages, and bounded in some parts of the horizon with distant hills....
Our first object in the morning was the cathedral. The original idea of the church (which is said to have been built in the extraordinarily short space of two years) was a great nave, choir and transepts, the west front and both the transept fronts being flanked with two towers of nearly equal height and even fairly similar design. Four of these were completed, those on the east side of the transepts having been only carried up to the height of the roof gables. There is a combination of intense simplicity with an intricate and delicate transparent effect in the open pinnacles at the angles which is wonderfully fine. The scale is larger and the whole treatment though similar is finer than that of Senlis, and though it was imitated it was not, I think, rivalled, even in the magnificent steeples at Rheims.
There is a lantern at the intersection of the nave and transepts which, had it been carried up some vast height above the other towers, might possibly have helped to reduce them all to order; but there is no sign of any such intention, and the only reason for it that can be seen is the desire to elevate the groining at the intersection to a great height above the rest of the roof. I have sketched and measured these towers so carefully that I shall say no more about them, save that they are groined just below the summit and that they were evidently intended for some further finish than they now have, probably for spires like those at Senlis.
The interior of Laon is singularly like that of Noyon, having the same double triforium, but being finished at the east with a square end instead of an apse. Going from one church to another differing only in this respect seemed to give the best possible means of ascertaining with some degree of certainty their relative merits; and certainly it seemed to me that, of the two, Noyon was incomparably the superior, and entirely on this account. The east end of Laon is nevertheless fine for a square east end, and has the windows filled with very magnificent old glass of deep colour. The altar is now brought forward one bay so as to leave a passage beneath the east window.
The capitals generally of this church are very finely treated and would afford endless examples of good work in this early style. In studying the church one of the features most to be noticed is the frequent recurrence of carved courses of foliage which everywhere take the place of moulded string courses.
The south transept has double doorways, and above them a very beautiful rose window. This has now become curious because by its side there is the jamb of a middle-pointed window, evidently inserted by some ambitious man who was going on to put in an entirely new window but who was happily stopped here; I say “here” because he was unhappily not stopped in the south transept and so we have to regret the loss of a grand window suitable to the building and the insertion of one which in no way improves it. On the north side of the choir a great alteration was made in the thirteenth century by throwing out the outer walls to the face of the buttresses in order to gain a considerable number of chapels. This was done in very good style indeed and much improves this part of the exterior.
The only apsidal terminations in the whole church are those of two chapels thrown out on the east side of the transepts. They are carried up three stages in height, one of which opens into the transept aisle and the two others form another chapel out of the magnificent triforium.
Round the east end of the cathedral are large remains of old buildings of early date, connected probably with the church (which, by the by, is said to have been built in A.D. 1113 and 1114, dates which seem to me to be at least fifty years too early for such a structure). The main portion of these buildings consists of a long pile opening to a sort of garth or cloister, north-east of the cathedral, with simple pointed arches supported on low circular columns, and showing on the other side the elevation which I have sketched roughly, and which, standing just at the edge of the cliff, looks on a vast expanse of country until the far distance is lost in mist. These buildings are now converted into some Courts of Law, store houses and lumber rooms.
The Bishop of Laon lives elsewhere I fancy, as our landlord made much of his having come expressly to join in a procession through the city which we witnessed on Sunday afternoon. This procession was new to me and may as well be recorded: it visited a number of altars got up in a temporary manner, elevated on high flights of steps, and decorated profusely with flowers, garlands and drapery. These were erected in every available space, and I suppose by the zeal of the neighbors in each locality. As the time for the procession came, all the good people of the city hung up white sheets over the fronts of their shops so that the whole street bore a most singular appearance, though the universal white was here and there relieved by the old pieces of tapestry with some sacred story on it hung out by some more well-to-do person.
Presently through the dense crowd came the procession—first, girls bearing banners and draped in white, then other banners, clergy, acolytes, censer-bearers and lastly the bishop under a square velvet baldachin carried by priests, walking between two priests, bearing a monstrance with the Host.
At intervals the censer-bearers turned and censed and then went on again, till they reached an altar, which the bishop always ascended and gave the benediction from it, displaying the Host to the people all kneeling below. The procession was followed and kept in some order by soldiers whose band, alternately with the choristers, accompanied the march. In half an hour after the return of the bishop from his rather long procession the town had resumed its old look, the white sheets were gone, and the altars pulled down or denuded of all their ornaments. All the towns we had been in had been preparing for the same fête, which was to be greatest at Lille, where “Notre Dame de la Treille”—whose day it was—is looked on as the patron of the city.
From the cathedral we went to the church of S. Martin at the other end of the main street. The general effect of the exterior is very good, and very superior to the interior,—which is very simple, rather bad in its design, and much modernized. The south transept front is very fine and remarkable for the boldness of the mouldings on its buttresses and strings. The west front is, after this, the finest portion of the building, being a very ornate addition in middle-pointed to the old Romanesque church. It is very picturesque and I liked it much.
From the church we turned down into a walk which follows the line of the old ramparts and nearly surrounds the city. The view, from this part of it, of the cathedral standing on a sort of promontory, with the cluster of houses around it, the vine-covered hill sloping down rapidly to the valley on the right, and then the flat vale, lined all over with rows of poplars, and finished against the horizon with fine hills, was most charming. Indeed I have never seen any town of which the views were so invariably magnificent as they are always round old Laon. We saw no other old church here, save one below the hill with a central tower and low spire, which looked at all as though it might be worth visiting. In the street close to the south transept of the cathedral is a gable end of a good middle-pointed house.
We left Laon in the coupé of a small diligence at 6 P.M. for Rheims, grateful in the extreme for the one fine day which we had as yet had—nowhere so grateful as here, where every turn disclosed some view or some subject of which a bright sun was the most indispensable adjunct.
Our going to Rheims afforded no incidents. When we crossed the hills from Laon and descended towards the broad valley of Champagne we had a most glorious view, simple in all its detail, but full of beautiful colour, and rich and verdant in the extreme. One small village we passed on the way had a church of which I managed to get a sketch while we changed horses. I went inside and found the whole church fitted with open seats on a raised wooden floor. The central tower is groined and has only a small apse to the east, and the effect of this inside is exceedingly good. The south aisle consists of a series of compartments running north and south, the roofs boarded on the under side and coved or canted, and descending not on arches across the aisle but on beams. The steeple was, I think, the only part groined. From this village to Rheims our journey was made in the dark and it was nearly eleven as we drove along under the shadow of the great walls of the cathedral and into the gate of the inn which faces its west front, where happily we found rest for our weary limbs....
June 19.
It rained fast when I turned out early this morning and continued to do so perseveringly all the day. This was miserable and perhaps has made my recollection of Rheims less pleasant than it ought to be.
The west front with its three great doorways is very magnificent. The two steeples, which are developments from the Laon idea, and like Laon unfinished, are at present not large enough for the porch and look too much like turrets, and yet they are of immense size. The substitution of second-pointed mouldings in these steeples for the first-pointed shafts of those at Laon, is unfortunately not an improvement. The whole porch is covered in the most lavish manner with elaborate sculpture of the very finest character and detail, but it is generally spread over the whole surface and gives perhaps an effect of littleness and fritter to the whole front. The detail of the pinnacles and flying buttresses at the sides is unusually fine, and all of the same fine early middle-pointed date—that of the apse and the chapels surrounding it is equally fine. The northern transept is also a fine composition, but the parapets were intended to have flanking towers and these are carried up in the same way as those both at Rouen and Chartres, hardly on a sufficient scale to be looked on as towers. Their great open belfry windows produce a fine effect. The three doors of the north transept are all very fine, though the sculpture on some of them is of earlier date than that of the west front, and of very ingenious execution.
On entering, the impression produced is one of exquisite proportions, colour, and decoration, but perhaps a little too much of all this and not so much of that indescribable feeling which some noble churches so eminently produce. It is in fact a work of faultless art rather than religious feeling, though so noble a work of art cannot help inspiring great religious feeling. The whole design is extremely simple and as free from superfluous decoration as the west front is crowded with it. Its triforium appeared to be poor and insignificant in the extreme, after the magnificent triforia of Noyon and the other early churches with their ampler open spaces and fine groinings. The treatment of the west wall on the inside is very curious. It is divided into a great number of trefoiled niches with very little in the way of moulding, each niche having a figure; and the background being coloured white throws out these figures remarkably. Borders, spandrels, etc., are filled in profusely with much delicately carved and very flat foliage, all most accurately copied from natural forms. In the north transept is a curious wooden clock-case of the fourteenth century.... We left Rheims at 6 o’clock in the evening by railway for Meaux where we arrived to sleep at 11.
June 20.
As is my wont, I was very early at the cathedral this morning. The scale is not large, and in particular the nave is singularly short, only three bays east of the towers. One tower only is completed, and that in a flamboyant style. The church is very open inside, having two aisles, and chapels on each side of the nave and a good arrangement of chapels, etc., around the choir. The great beauty of the interior is its generally fine style—very early third-pointed—the beauty of the triforia, and the particularly fine interior of the transepts. I managed to get some sketches to show its general character before we left, which was at 11 A.M. for Paris, and there seemed to be no old buildings of any interest in Meaux, though I saw one old pile with corner turrets near the cathedral.
We reached Paris at 12.30 having noticed a fine-looking church on our way, at the station of Lagny, which well deserves a visit....
June 22.
Wrote letters and then to Notre Dame.... A fee gave me admittance to the new sacristy and small cloister. The detail of this is all very good, save the doorways; and the glass, which is a grisaille with subjects boldly drawn on glass of very pale tincture but thick in texture, was very good indeed. The encaustic tiles used here are very inferior to ours.... On our way we just looked at the S. Chapelle, the new turret on which appears to me to be most unsatisfactory.
At 12.20 we left Paris for Evreux, going by railway to Vernon station. I expected much here and was much disappointed. The cathedral is a building whose substratum is good first-pointed, but this has been overlaid by an accumulation of late flamboyant work, so as to be almost invisible. The west front has been rebuilt in bad classic. The north transept is a rich and picturesque piece of flamboyant work of the most ornate kind, and has across its angles internally some immense squinches to carry a passage from the aisle to the end walls. A great deal of very good grisaille glass of the thirteenth century has been retained in the flamboyant windows, and in the others there is a good deal of late stained glass which seems to be of fair quality. The church internally is very narrow in proportion to its height and looks consequently more lofty than it really is. The other church at Evreux, S. Taurin, is a Romanesque church altered in flamboyant and adorned with a west front of pseudo-classic. It is a fine church, and its main ornament is the magnificent shrine of S. Taurin, of which I managed to get some slight sketches. It is of silver or other metal, gilt, with some very good ornamentation in enamel and niello. In the south transept wall is an arcade filled in with coloured tiles, but it hardly looks as if it would be original; nevertheless, it is said to be so and I see no reason for supposing it likely that such an enrichment would have been subsequently added in such a place.
June 23.
We left Evreux at 7 A.M. for S. Pierre station and passed through Louviers on the way. I had only time to run in for two minutes to look at the cathedral. It is like Evreux, an early pointed church with flamboyant alterations, but its scale is small. The triforium and clerestory in first-pointed are very good, with relieving arches inside....
We reached Rouen at 11 and though I had seen all its curiosities before, I was glad to have another opportunity of looking at them. The cathedral gains rather than loses in my estimation. Its general proportions are fine and all its detail admirably good. Unfortunately it is whitewashed and not much cared for, and so people fancy it a poor church. It is on the contrary very fine, and much finer in all ways than its rival S. Ouen....
After the cathedral almost everything in Rouen is very late in style and unsatisfactory therefore; it is an interesting town in many ways but in no way to be compared with such a town as Cologne for real architectural interest.
In the evening I made a sketch of the north-west tower, which with its quaint slated roof is a most picturesque composition. Indeed the whole west front is very grand and broad in its effect, whenever it can be seen without the detestable new cast-iron spire of the central steeple....
June 24.
We left Rouen by diligence for Lisieux at 7 A.M. The ride is for much of the way very pretty, notably so between Rouen and Elboeuf, and again about Brienne, a small town with two churches, one of them undergoing some restoration of not good character. At Bourgtheroulde I went into the church and found all the roofs of wood, arched and boarded, with tie-beams and ring-posts....
We reached Lisieux at 3 P.M. It was a fair day, and the place in front of the cathedral was crowded with people, shows and booths. The church was very full, and in the choir, suspended on a beam, were three great new bells just made, and I suppose in process of being blessed before being hung in the tower.
The whole church is very fine and of nearly uniform date, the choir rather more advanced first-pointed than the nave and with a late Lady-chapel added. The triforium of the choir is very charming; and here and in the side windows of the choir aisle—also very beautiful—there is a great fondness displayed for cusped circles sunk slightly in plain walling-spaces, as also in the spandrels of arches, etc. This is the case notably in the west front and again in the fine north-west steeple, where bands of circles are used as strings. This was seen also in the steeple of Senlis. In the west front, which has been elaborately restored, the side doorways are small but very beautiful, finishing with trefoil heads and remarkable for the great masses of regular foliage round their arches in place of mouldings. These are used with the happiest effect.[11] The exterior of the south transept is also a fine simple composition and the interior of this and of the north transept are specially good. The church is apsidal with two chapels besides the Lady-chapel.
The music used here was strictly Gregorian; so also at S. James’s, where the congregation joined most heartily.... The two western towers are very different, that on the south-west early and for a number of stages of Romanesque work; the other very beautiful, and in its belfry stage giving a type for others—as especially S. Pierre and others in Caen—to copy. The north-west steeple has no spire and that of the other has been much modernized. There is a low central tower which forms a fine lofty lantern internally.
The only other mediaeval church in Lisieux is on a large scale but entirely of poor flamboyant work. We were there whilst a collection was being made; a Gregorian psalm was sung and the collection was made by a priest first and then by a little girl dressed up very smartly in white. There was a crowded congregation composed mostly of women.
A good many old wooden houses remain in the streets of Lisieux; few however are of very rare character and all seemed of the latest date. Our inn was dirty, disagreeable, but cheap,—two dinners, two beds and servants coming to 8 francs only! But its merits were so questionable that we were very glad to find ourselves on our way to Caen. We left at 6 A.M. and arrived there at 10. There were one or two fine views on the road, but otherwise it had no interest until the many towers and spires of Caen rose before us.... I had seen Caen before, but five years had left me so far forgetful of the detail of its beauties as to be heartily glad to discover them again.
The church of S. Pierre was close to our inn and its spire was first of all looked at. It is certainly very glorious but not original. The spire is copied from S. Étienne and the tower is a repetition of what seems to have been the one idea of a tower in this part of France. Lisieux has an early example, and so too have Bretteville, Norrey and others; but giving up the point of his originality, the architect of S. Pierre must nevertheless have great credit for his mode of working up old ideas. S. Jean and Notre Dame in Caen have steeples copied from S. Pierre, so that we have here an instance of the same design being reproduced for three hundred years again and again, dressed only in different detail. This is a most curious fact and one not often paralleled, I think....
The discussion in detail of the many churches in Caen seems hardly to call for printing as mere record, for the ground has been well covered by later travellers and not, this time, reached by the German army.
June 26.
To-day we changed our diligence travelling for a more agreeable mode, by hiring a phaeton to take us to Bayeux in order that we might be able to stop on our way at one or two churches.
At 8 A.M., we started; the view of Caen on leaving is fine, its towers and spires standing up well against the sky. A village is passed very soon with an early church whose bell-tower on the chancel end is of good character. One or two steeples with saddleback roofs are seen near the road, and at the end of about seven or eight miles the tall spire of Bretteville l’Orgueilleuse rises on the road. The design is most curiously like S. Pierre, Caen, but it is earlier and has been much mutilated. All the piercings in the spire are filled in, and one only of the spire-lights remains in its place, though there are evident traces of others having existed. The tower rises above the chancel and east of it is a sacrarium of the same date, square-ended and with two lancets in the east wall, but groined in such a way as to make one think that its architect could not forget his apsidal terminations. The nave is modern, or perhaps I should rather say modernized. The windows of the tower and sacrarium and the doorway in the north wall of the former, are of very good detail—the transition from Romanesque. There is a piscina in the south wall. East of this chancel has been built within the last year or two a most frightful sacristy, intended I suppose to be pagan but at present not very definite, as all the stones which compose its wall are built up in block to be hewn out afterwards. This of course blocks up the curious east end, but the priest to whom I protested against this wanton piece of barbarism made very light of the matter. I cannot see that the clergy anywhere take the interest that one would expect in such matters, for I have seen nowhere any restorations of at all proper character, except such as are being carried out by government with public funds.
From Bretteville a drive of about a mile brought us to Norrey, whose church is so remarkable that I measured its plan and sketched many of its details.
It consists of a nave without aisles and a choir and transepts with aisles and two apsidal chapels to the choir aisle. The nave is similar in its detail of windows and doors to Bretteville, and in no way worth particular notice, but the rest of the church is most singular. Its decorations are extremely elaborate, the mouldings and ornamental carvings being carved out with a depth of elaborate elegance seldom rivalled. The mouldings are singularly deep and effective, and the carving all very good. The style is thoroughly good pure first-pointed, and looks more like English work than foreign. The dimensions are exceedingly small, the width in the clear of the choir being only about sixteen feet and of the aisle not seven feet, whilst some of the intercolumniations are not more than three feet and a half and three feet ten inches. The plan is nevertheless similar in all respects to that of a large church of the first order, save in the absence of a central chapel at the east end, and it is therefore much more properly called a “model cathedral” than churches so dignified generally are. The piscinae of the chapels are good and have one orifice and a large space of shelf. One of the altars is original and has a mass of masonry under it for, I suppose, relics. The whole church is in the most wretchedly damp, dirty and neglected state, and a disgrace to all who have any charge of it.
The main entrance is now by a beautiful porch to the north transept, which is, unfortunately, rapidly decaying—as much of the other work executed in Caen stone is doing everywhere. The small chapels of the apse are roofed with most extraordinary stone roofs, of very steep pitch, which at a little distance look like two great pinnacles, and when seen close at hand look like nothing else that ever was built or designed. There are very curious marks, in the exterior, of a change of plan in some respects as the work went on, some of the choir windows having been commenced with most elaborate mouldings outside as well as inside, but altered either in one jamb or at their heads into a plain double chamfer, in a most singular manner. There is some good arcading commenced outside, and a beautiful arcade runs all round the inside wall below the windows. The tower is just like Bretteville, but the spire must have differed considerably from it; unhappily it was struck by lightning some twelve years since, and there is now a poor slated roof in place of the spire. The angle pinnacles still remain and I think they prove that the transition from the tower to the spire must always have been very abrupt. I think from the character of all the detail and especially from the great love shown for the round trefoil, that this church must have been designed by the same man who built the eastern part of the cathedral at Bayeux. The mouldings are excessively similar and the abaci are constantly used octangular in plan in conjunction with square and circular.
An interesting road took us from Norrey to Bayeux, where we arrived at 3 P.M.
The general view of this cathedral is most magnificent,—owing to its two completed and similar western spires and to the great height of a central tower of flamboyant work capped with a pagan cupola which, though of bad details and inconsistent with all the rest of the work, certainly aids much in making the magnificence of the whole so great. This central steeple is on the point of being taken down, I believe, as the piers below are giving way; and the church is now filled with timber shores, etc. I do not like the steeple but cannot help regretting its loss....
There is a curious old chimney near the west front of the cathedral, rising out of a modern house. Attached to a seminary near the Hôtel Dieu is a good simple chapel of first-pointed date. It is a parallelogram groined simply and lighted with windows of two lights in each bay. The whole is wretchedly whitewashed everywhere and contrasts strongly with the magnificent colour of the stonework throughout the interior of the cathedral.
June 27.
We left Bayeux at 11 A.M. in the diligence for S. Lô—I in the coupé, my unfortunate wife in the dusty rotunde. The country was very pretty indeed, quite like good parts of England, and very grateful to my eyes. The church of S. Loup, passed just after leaving Bayeux, has a good Romanesque steeple capped with a low square spire and remarkable for the great richness of its belfry stage and the eccentric narrowness of the windows with buttresses between them. Two miles before entering the town the cathedral of S. Lô comes in sight; and by the graceful proportions of its two western spires gives promise of pleasure to the ecclesiologist....
June 29.
We left Coutances this morning at 7.30 for Hambye en route for Avranche. The road was all the way excessively pretty, and gave an admirable view of Coutances, with the cluster of towers and spires which crowns the hill on which it stands.... I walked off alone to the abbey. The situation is pretty; under a steep woody and rocky hill, with a clear stream near, and woods and riant hills and dales all around. The entrance is by a very simple gateway, double in front and single-arched behind.... A few paces from this gateway stands the church, of whose west front no traces now remain, and some old and rustic buildings to the south of it, which have only one old doorway remaining.
The church is remarkable in its plan, having a nave without aisles, a central tower, transepts with eastern chapels, aisles and chapels round the choir. The end of the north transept is divided off by two arches from the church, and was I think intended for a sacristy, corresponding somewhat in position to the beautiful sacristy at Coutances—of which cathedral this abbey church bears most marked evidence of being in great degree a reduced and simplified copy. Two small chapels are placed at the re-entering angles of the nave and transept, and, supposing the choir to have extended to the western side of the tower, these would have been most useful in allowing access to the choir-aisles and transepts without passing through the choir itself. The same point of arrangement occurs at Rayham abbey—also an aisleless church—and would be necessary in all conventual churches of this type. The effect of the interior is striking, owing to the excessive lightness of the nave and to the great extension given by its aisles to the width of the choir. The design of the choir is much like that of Coutances—the same lofty proportions of columns, the same caps, the same kind of clerestory window, and the same double lean-to roof all round the choir, one side over the aisle and the other over the chapels of the apse. The whole work looks early, though there are here and there suspicious-looking mouldings and Murray says that the whole church is of late date. If he is correct, it can only be, I think, on the assumption that the builders of the present church used very nearly stone for stone a large portion of the original first-pointed edifice. The cloisters occupied the angle between the nave and south transept, but no trace remains of them save the corbels which supported their roof. A long range of old buildings still remains, south of the south transept. On the ground floor they consist of: first, a small groined room with a central column, and its groining and walls painted rudely with patterns in distemper; second, of a long building divided by a row of columns down the centre and entered by three open arches at the west end, which we may assume to have been the chapter room; third, another square room with a rude central column, also painted, and then another room of that same kind; all these rooms are groined, and above them, along the whole length of the building, extends a great hall with an old timber roof, of such great size that it is difficult to surmise its probable use unless it was that of a great dormitory arranged with cubicles down its sides.[12]
THE AMBULATORY, CATHEDRAL OF TOURS