It was our good fortune to arrive at Andelys on the vigil of the festival of Saint Clotilda. The following morning, at early dawn, the tolling bell announced the returning holiday; and then we saw the procession advance, priests and acolytes bearing crosses and consecrated banners and burning tapers, followed by a joyous crowd of votaries and pilgrims. We had wished to approach the holy well; but the throng thickened around it, and we were forced to desist. We could not witness the rites, whatever they were, which were performed at the fountain; and long after they had concluded, it was still surrounded by groups of women, some idling and staring, some asking charity and whining, and some conducting their little ones to the salutary-fountain. Many are the infirmities and ailments which are relieved through the intercession of Saint Clotilda, after the patient has been plunged in the gelid spring. A Parisian sceptic might incline to ascribe a portion of their cures to cold-bathing and ablution; but, at Andelys, no one ever thought of diminishing the veneration, inspired by the Christian queen of the founder of the monarchy. Several children were pointed out to us, heretical strangers, as living proofs of the continuance of miracles in the Catholic church. They had been cured on the preceding anniversary; for it is only on Saint Clotilda's day that her benign influence is shed upon the spring.
Andelys possesses a valuable specimen of ancient domestic architecture. The Great House[[30]] is a most sumptuous mansion, evidently of the age of Francis Ist; but I could gain no account of its former occupants or history. I must again borrow from my friend's vocabulary, and say, that it is built in the "Burgundian style." In its general outline and character, it resembles the house in the Place de la Pucelle, at Rouen. Its walls, indeed, are not covered with the same profusion of sculpture; yet, perhaps, its simplicity is accompanied by greater elegance.--The windows are disposed in three divisions, formed by slender buttresses, which run up to the roof. They are square-headed, and divided by a mullion and transom.--The portal is in the centre: it is formed by a Tudor arch, enriched with deep mouldings, and surmounted by a lofty ogee, ending with a crocketed pinnacle, which transfixes the cornice immediately above, as well as the sill of the window, and then unites with the mullion of the latter.--The roof takes a very high pitch.--A figured cornice, upon which it rests, is boldly sculptured with foliage.--The chimneys are ornamented by angular buttresses.--All these portions of the building assimilate more or less to our Gothic architecture of the sixteenth century; but a most magnificent oriel window, which fills the whole of the space between the centre and left-hand divisions, is a specimen of pointed architecture in its best and purest style. The arches are lofty and acute. Each angle is formed by a double buttress, and the tabernacles affixed to these are filled with statues. The basement of the oriel, which projects from the flat wall of the house, after the fashion of a bartizan, is divided into compartments, studded with medallions, and intermixed with tracery of great variety and beauty. On either side of the bay, there are flying buttresses of elaborate sculpture, spreading along the wall.--As, comparatively speaking, good models of ancient domestic architecture are very rare, I would particularly recommend this at Andelys to the notice of every architect, whom chance may conduct to Normandy.--This building, like too many others of the same class in our own counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, is degraded from its station. The great house is used merely as a granary, though, by a very small expence, it might be put into habitable repair. The stone retains its clear and polished surface; and the massy timbers are undecayed.--The inside corresponds with the exterior, in decorations and grandeur: the chimney-pieces are large and elaborate, and there is abundance of sculpture on the ceilings and other parts which admit of ornament.
The French, in speaking of Andelys, commonly use the plural number, and say, les Andelys, there being a smaller town of the same name, within the distance of a mile: hence, the larger, all inconsiderable as it is, and though it scarcely contains two thousand inhabitants, is dignified by the appellation of le Grand Andelys.
As the French seldom neglect the memory of their eminent men, I was rather disappointed at not finding any tribute to the glory of Poussin, nor any object which could recal his name.--The great master of the French school was born at Andelys, in 1594, of poor but noble parents. The talents of the painter of the Deluge overcame all obstacles. Young Poussin, with barely a sufficiency to buy his daily bread, found means of making his abilities known in the metropolis to such advantage, as enabled him to proceed to Rome, where the patronage of the Cavaliere Marino smoothed his way to that splendid career, which terminated only with his life.--And yet I doubt if the example of Poussin has, on the whole, been favorable to the progress of French art. Horace Walpole, in his summary of the excellencies and defects of great painters, observed with much justice, that "Titian wanted to have seen the antique; Poussin to have seen Titian." The observation referred principally to the defective coloring, which is admitted to exist in the greater part of the works of the painter of Andelys. But Poussin, considered as a model for imitation, and especially as a model for the student, is liable to a more serious objection.--He was a total stranger to real nature:--classical taste, indeed, and knowledge, and grace, and beauty, pervade all his works; but it is a taste, and a knowledge, and a grace, and a beauty, formed solely upon the contemplation of the antique. Horace's adage, that "decipit exemplar vitiis imitabile," has been remarkably verified in the case of Poussin; and I am mistaken, if the example set by him, which has been rigorously followed in the French school, even down to the present day, has not contributed more than any thing else to that statuary style in forms, and that coldness in coloring, which every one, who is not born in France, regrets to see in the works of the best of their artists.--The learned Adrian Turnebus was also a native of Andelys; and the church is distinguished as the burial-place of Corneille.
I doubt, however, whether we should have travelled hither, had we not been attracted by the celebrity of the castle, called Château Gaillard, erected by Richard Coeur-de-Lion, in the immediate vicinity of Le Petit Andelys.--Our guide, a sturdy old dame, remonstrated strongly against our walking so far to look at a mere heap of stones, nothing comparable to the fine statue of Clotilda, of which, if we would but have a little patience, we might still procure a sight.--Our expectations respecting the castle were more than answered. Considered as to its dimensions and its situation, it is by far the finest castellated ruin I ever saw. Conway, indeed, has more beauty; but Château Gaillard is infinitely superior in dignity. Its ruins crown the summit of a lofty rock, abruptly rising from the very edge of the Seine, whose sinuous course here shapes the adjoining land into a narrow peninsula. The chalky cliffs on each side of the castle, are broken into hills of romantic shape, which add to the impressive wildness of the scene. The inclosed sketch will give you an idea, though a very faint one, of the general appearance of the castle at a distance. Towards the river, the steepness of the cliff renders the fortress unassailable: a double fosse of great depth, defended by a strong wall, originally afforded almost equal protection on the opposite side.
The circular keep is of extraordinary strength; and in its construction it differs wholly from any of our English dungeon-towers.--It may be described as a cylinder, placed upon a truncated cone. The massy perpendicular buttresses, which are ranged round the upper wall, from which they project considerably, lose themselves at their bases in the cone from which they arise. The building, therefore, appears to be divided into two stories. The wall of the second story is upwards of twelve feet in thickness. The base of the conical portion is perhaps twice as thick.--It seldom happens that the military buildings of the middle ages have such a talus or slope, on the exterior face, agreeing with the principles of modern fortification, and it is difficult to guess why the architect of Château Gaillard thought fit to vary from the established model of his age. The masonry is regular and good. The pointed windows are evidently insertions of a period long subsequent to the original erection.
The inner, ballium is surrounded by a high circular wall, which consists of an uninterrupted line of bastions, some semi-circular and others square.--The whole of this part of the castle remains nearly perfect. There are also traces of extensive foundations in various, directions, and of great out-works. Château Gaillard was in fact a citadel, supported by numerous smaller fortresses, all of them communicating with the strong central hold, and disposed so as to secure every defensible post in the neighborhood. The wall of the outer ballium, which was built of a compact white and grey stone, is in most places standing, though in ruins. The original facing only remains in those parts which are too elevated to admit of its being removed with ease.--Beneath the castle, the cliff is excavated into a series of subterraneous caverns, not intended for mere passages or vaults, as at Arques and in most other places, but forming spacious crypts, supported by pillars roughly hewn out of the living rock, and still retaining every mark of the workman's chisel.
It will afford some satisfaction to the antiquary to find, that the present appearance of the castle corresponds in every important particular with the description given by Willelmus Brito, who beheld it within a few years after its erection, and in all its pride. Every feature which he enumerates yet exists, unaltered and unobliterated:--