RHEIMS
INSTEAD of being in appearance "a most venerable and aged town," as one might be led to expect from the accounts in the various guides, Rheims, or Reims (so variously spelled) was (1910) nothing of the sort. Situated on the right bank of the river Vesle in the midst of a vast plain encompassed by vine-clad hills, a most ideal setting, it was the busy and chief center of the champagne trade, and also otherwise occupied in the manufacture of both woolen and other fabrics. Until recently one of the most picturesque towns in France, it was intersected by wide and handsome streets reminding one of the Parisian boulevards, which although convenient gave it quite another character. And this "Haussmanization" (if one may so style it) did away with its former quaint mediævalness.
Formerly there was an ideally artistic approach to the great cathedral of "Notre Dame," in a quaint narrow street lined with strangely gabled houses and small shops shown in my sketch, but these have been demolished, and a wide straight street, lined with characterless buildings, now forms a very commonplace frame to hold one's first view of this noble and magnificent structure, the master work of the architects Rob. de Coucy and J. d'Orbais, which Fergusson justly names and qualifies as "perhaps the most beautiful structure produced in the middle ages." Far down this commonplace street one could see the exquisite recessed portals (there are three), with its rows of saints, surmounted by the great rose window, nearly forty feet in circumference, and above the forty-two exquisite lancets, each containing a colossal figure representing the Baptism of Clovis, and the Kings of France. All detail softened by distance, like unto carved tracery upon a jewel casket.
The three portals, so exquisitely recessed, were adorned with some five hundred and fifty statues of various sizes, some of them of great antiquity, and many of them on close inspection proving to be much worn by the action of the elements, or having suffered mutilation in the wars.
Without entering into a tiresome architectural description, which would be out of place in these pages, one may call attention to some of the remarkable details of the façade above the three portals pierced by large windows, which was so lavishly decorated with sculpture; to the left, Christ in the garb of a pilgrim; to the right, the Virgin, and the Apostles, David and Saul; and Goliath.