CHAPTER V
CAEN
The admirers of Caen rank it high. Mr Freeman says: “Caen is a town well-nigh without a rival. It shares with Oxford the peculiarity of having no one predominant object. At Amiens, at Peterborough—we may add at Cambridge—one single gigantic building lords it over everything; Caen and Oxford throw up a forest of towers and spires without any one building being conspicuously predominant. It is a town which never was a Bishop’s See, but which contains four or five churches each fit to have been a cathedral.”
It is quite true that in the richness of its churches Caen rivals Rouen. And if we except the splendid abbey of William and Matilda which flank each end of the town, most of these churches belong to the fifteenth century, and show the marvellous combination of grace and strength, of richness without tawdriness, in which the workmen of that date were unrivalled. After its churches, the most notable feature in Caen is its collection of Renaissance dwelling-houses, called hotels, which are to be found here and there—but not always conspicuously—in its streets. Beyond the churches and hotels, Caen is not otherwise a mediæval town; though many of the streets are narrow and old-fashioned, they do not contain anything like the same number of carved and timber-framed houses as are to be found at Rouen. There are a few of these to be seen, lying for the most part in the narrow streets at the west end of St Pierre. The Maison des Quatrains in the Rue de Geoles is one which visitors most frequently find; it is a large timber house in excellent preservation, but of plain design; on the tower in the court is the date 1541, though the house itself is older than this. A far more fascinating example is to be seen in the little steep street going up to the castle. This house is small, and no line is in its right plane; it looks as if it would very soon fall down altogether, yet it is carved everywhere, with human figures and faces, all animated by that diablerie and wicked mirth which the carvers of the Middle Ages seem to have been able to pour forth from their tools at will.
Beautiful bits and picturesque corners are to be found in Caen in plenty, as in every continental town with a long history, but they are different in kind from those we see in Rouen. The most beautiful part of all the town is to be found around that famous church, St Pierre.
Shady horse-chestnuts in all the glory of delicate foliage and fresh pink flower, show up in contrast with the towering fretwork pinnacles of the church. Close by, a tram crowded with people going home from work stops for a moment, to fill up every foot of space on its two cars before it winds slowly away, toot-tooting to clear the lines.
The pavement near at hand is covered with flowerpots in bloom, azaleas, roses, cinerarias, pelargonium, and fuchsia, showing flashing lights like those of some rich window of stained glass, and the foot traffic flows round about the impediment tranquilly; for in all foreign towns every shopkeeper seems to have a prescriptive right to the bit of pavement before his door.
In front of the church is a space of green grass, with seats and a cool basin of water. The evening sun, which has now left in shadow all the base of the masonry, picks out the lines and curves and angles of the parapet and the buttresses above, those wonderful flying buttresses with bossy pinnacles; it shows up the stiff, eternally yearning gargoyles, and the red-tiled roof. High above, up against the brilliant clearness of a pale-blue sky, swallows skim and wheel around one of the most graceful and perfect spires ever man devised or wrought.
Opposite to the church, in the depth of grey evening shadow, is the great Hotel de Valois or Escoville, a Renaissance palace, built early in the sixteenth century. The lower part is occupied by a row of shops; above rise small engaged pillars, between which are the lofty windows, now cut into two stages. In the courtyard all is gloom and dirt; a huge scaffolding covers most of the building, and grimly down from those once princely walls look the gigantic statues of David and Judith, each carrying the gory burden of a head!
Above, but difficult to see without a crick in the neck, is a lantern tower in two stages, recalling a little the famous domes of Chambord. There was formerly the figure of a white horse carved on the stone above the principal door, and the symbol exercised greatly the imaginations of antiquarians, some of whom went so far as to see in it the Pale Horse of Revelation. In some lines written on the hotel by M. de Brieux, we read:—
“Lorsqu’on porte les yeux dessus chaque figure,
Qui lui sert au dedans de superbe ornament
On croit être deçu par quelque enchantement
A cause des beauté de leur architecture.”