One may certainly ride from Calais hither, and say “it is all barren.” The soil seems a deep sand, and we wondered that it could produce even thin wheat and dry grass; crossed the “Pont Sans pareil,” which is thrown over the two canals, where they meet at right angles. Twenty-six miles of broad straight road, only enlivened by a few pollarded trees, a great many windmills, some melancholy red chateaux with great gates and long avenues, and here and there villages of wretched cabins each in its unwholesome enclosure; the green pond in front and the tall trees around it: the group surmounted by a spire. Such as they are, they give the dead flat a look of the living: but they are scantily scattered. Left Ardres to the right: it has been a strong place, and is going to decay. Guines is farther on, and the field of “Cloth of Gold,” which still bears its name, lies between them, but not on the road: but for D——’s recollection of 1815, and some interest in tracing his old quarters, it would have been duller still.
Approached St. Omer at last: rode between rows of stripped elms with deplorable heads; through a long suburb; along a fine avenue skirting the fortifications, over bridges and drawbridges unending, and we were in the town. This is a good inn. We walked after dinner to see the Abbey of St. Bertin; our guide the “grosse fille d’auberge.” Its interior was burned in the old revolution, and the “Conseil Municipal,” judging the safety of the townsmen endangered, has caused all to be taken down, saving a side wall and its beautiful tower. English visitors still ascend the latter for the sake of the view, but it must be a work of danger; it is cracked to the very top, and bends awfully. Over its porch was a fresco painting, whose outline and some faded colours remain, and above it, sown there by some of the winds of heaven, grows and flourishes a young pear tree.
We seated ourselves on some timber to look at the sunset and the falling abbey, and the fille d’auberge sat down also. She said all the small houses round were inhabited by English, who admire ruins “furieusement.” When she was tired of talking she remembered she was wanted and left us. We returned ourselves through handsome desolate streets, passing some hotels of Louis the Thirteenth’s time, and many Spanish houses, of I presume Queen Elizabeth’s date, for they exhibit the gable peaked or in-steps of stone, but have an ugly addition of shell-like ornaments over doors and windows. The Place du Haut Pont, which we crossed, is surrounded by these. The Place itself, with its crooked canal crossed by a wooden bridge and disappearing under a dark arch of some ancient building—the boats lying on the water ready to depart for Dunkirk—a group of people collected on its edge round a street singer—looked in the red indistinct light like a Dutch picture or a fragment of opera scenery.
July 9th.
The cathedral is very fine, and we regretted that an exceedingly gruff Suisse would not allow us to stay more than five minutes in the lovely Gothic chapel behind the altar, which would be faultless, but that it is over-painted and gilded. Above the altar is a Crucifixion in stone, with a background of stained glass, through which the light comes on it with great effect, but rather theatrically. At the foot of the altar steps was a female figure in almost modern costume, seated on the floor, looking like a great wooden doll. What she does there I cannot say, and the Suisse left me no time to examine. We were obliged to rest satisfied with a passing glimpse of this, and the “grilles de chapelles,” on either side, in fine Italian marble, and the tomb in the nave of some monk or bishop who lies here in costly effigy. We went thence to St. Denis. Its exterior in some degree resembles St. Bertin and Nôtre Dame, as its square tower has the same character, but it has been pieced and renewed within. It was “fête” in this church, an old man said, and to do it honour the high altar was ornamented with hundreds of roses, and myrtle and orange-trees in their tubs, ranged in the choir beneath the church banners. On the right of the choir is the altar of the “Sacré Cœur,” on either side of which hang strings of silver hearts as big as the palm of the hand, offerings of the faithful!
On the left, in a hole sunk in the wall, framed and lined with room-paper, except on festivals screened from profane eyes by little pink calico curtains, is a gilded bust of St. Bertin, adorned with steel court buttons. Walking down the aisle on this side we arrived before the chapel of St. Hubert; we looked through the grille, and saw on the opposite wall a larger recess, its folding-doors thrown back for the holiday. Within, the saint (a foot high) kneels in a flowing wig and Roman toga! a tiny tin cor de chasse, such as you have seen on the caps of the light infantry of the National Guard, tacked to his side! The background, a piece of room-paper representing a great green tree; on which (in relief of course) shines out a second and similar hunting horn! The saint’s dog, in an attitude of astonishment, gazes, as does Hubert, on a small wooden stag, who stands on a rock; the Crucifix and two Thieves springing from his forehead in place of antlers. Below is written, “The Conversion of St. Hubert.”
In a second recess of the same chapel, St. Hubert reappears, rewarded; in gilded canonicals and holding a bunch of flowers, but still hangs at his girdle, to prove his identity, the tin cor de chasse of the bonnet de Voltigeurs.
I saw lower down a devout inscription praying that “St. Joseph’s presence in that spot might protect all carpenters,” and near the entrance an ancient basso relievo brought from the tomb of the Abbot of St. Bertin.
We walked on to the college, and round its fine courts. Some of the buildings bear the date of Francis the First, but the church and college themselves were erected by the Jesuits in the time of their power—1629. The former merely presents to the street a high ornamented gable, and a vast space within not worth looking at. Its curiosities (placed here temporarily) are some bassi relievi of Spanish processions, dug up some miles from St. Omer, and a group representing St. Pepin (who was the dwarf of his century) killing with his fist a lion, who is gnawing a bull.
The fire-engines are also here till the Hôtel de Ville, which is in progress, shall be ready to house them. I was surprised to see their buckets are baskets saturated with pitch, and hempen vessels of the same form, and to hear they answer perfectly. We walked on the ramparts which command the view of the prodigiously strong fortifications, and the flat, which can at pleasure be inundated a mile round; but like the broad desolate streets, the prospect is surpassingly melancholy.