George Edmund Street: Unpublished Notes and Reprinted Papers

by George Edmund Street

From Notre Dame to the cathedral it is a descent from the finest early first-pointed to commonplace middle-pointed, full of German character in its detail. The west front and the whole of the apse have been much modernized, and the finest remaining portion of the exterior is the north transept front. The windows are geometrical middle-pointed of four lights, and the flying buttresses on a large scale, double, and surmounted by pinnacles. There is some good stained glass of late date in some of the aisle windows.

Another church, dedicated, I think, to S. Alpin, has a nave and aisles of six bays groined, without a triforium, and of the same date as Notre Dame. There are transepts and a central tower, and a choir in flamboyant style, and of a most unusual plan; the two arches east of the tower diverge from each other, so that the width of the choir gradually increases up to the point at which it is finished with an apse of three sides. An aisle surrounds the whole, the windows of which retain some very rich stained glass. This choir is the most remarkable example that I have met with of a very late revival of, perhaps, the earliest type of chevet. There are a great many altars in this church, pews throughout with doors, and no sign whatever of any improvement. In Notre Dame, where pews had disappeared and everything was being restored, all the side altars had disappeared, and there was only one altar left besides the principal altar in the choir.

And here I might well conclude these notes of French architecture. From Châlons I went to Toul, and thence by Metz to Trèves, and I found, as might be expected, nothing but German work. At Toul there are two churches, the cathedral and S. Gengoult, both of some interest, and with good cloisters; but it is very remarkable how we find here, not only German detail, but the favourite German ground-plans also; S. Gengoult is a cruciform church, with an apsidal chancel, and a small apsidal chapel on each side opening into the transepts; whilst the cathedral has an apsidal choir without aisles, and a square-ended chapel on each side opening from the transepts. The window tracery in S. Gengoult is perhaps the ugliest ever devised even by German ingenuity, and yet of early geometrical character (circa A.D. 1300), and still retaining much very beautiful glass of the same date. The nave of the cathedral has been recently seated with very smart fixed open seats, of the kind which might have been erected fifteen or twenty years ago in England.

Of Metz I can say but little more than of Toul. The cathedral is undoubtedly magnificent in its scale and general proportions; but its detail throughout is miserably thin and meagre, and the church appears to me to be utterly undeserving of the praise I have heard bestowed on it by some English authorities. Of course, however, the degree of admiration felt for such a building depends very much upon the standard of perfection which each man sets up for himself. If he comes to Metz strongly possessed with a sense of the noble character of German Gothic, of course he will admire this extremely German edifice; if, however, he have the slightest feeling for early French art, I imagine that he will turn away with disappointment and sorrow from this church, so vast, and yet, as compared with fine French churches, so tame, poor, and weak.

The best of the other churches in Metz is that of S. Vincent, a work of better style than the cathedral, and with a well-planned German east end, showing undoubtedly marks of the same hand as (or at least of imitation of) the famous Liebfraukirche at Trèves.

NAVE AND TRANSEPT, THE NEW CATHEDRAL, SALAMANCA

From Metz I made my way by Sierck (whose small church has a groined roof forty feet in clear width) to Saarburg; here the church is noticeable for a tower oblong in plan, and roofed with two thin octagonal spires which unite together at the base; and from Saarburg I went to Trèves.

Trèves well deserves a long notice. Its churches are full of interest, the cathedral for students of early art, and the Liebfraukirche, as being (I think) the most beautifully planned thirteenth century church in Germany. The close juxtaposition of these two churches is singularly effective in all points of view. Then there are the very fine Roman remains, and finally a really enormous number of houses of the thirteenth and fourteenth century, all in very fair preservation. From Trèves, by the interesting abbey of Laach, I reached Cologne, and at once made my way to the cathedral, anxious to see whether the opinions which have grown on me more strongly the more often I have visited it would remain unshaken now that so great progress has been made in the new work. It is impossible to overrate the excellence of all the new constructions; nor are they obviously open to any hostile criticism in regard to their conformity with the general character of the old work; but it is at the same time useless to conceal the fact, that the work is of a poor kind, and that it certainly does not improve as one sees more of it. The only comfort is that the interior will be much finer than the exterior, and that it is worth while therefore, to put up with some shortcomings in the latter in order to obtain what will, no doubt, be the sumptuous effect of space, height, and (I hope) colour, which the former promises to afford. It is much more difficult to spoil the interior than the exterior; it must of necessity be simple and uniform, and it admits of less attempt at enrichment with such crockets and pinnacles as cover the exterior. The south transept front, which is the most conspicuous portion of the new work finished, is, I think, thoroughly unsatisfactory. The crocketed gable over the great window, repeated again just above up the roof gable, is perhaps the most unhappy repetition of a leading line that could have been hit upon. If a gable was necessary over the window, it should have been different in its pitch from the other; and then again, however much the old architect indulged in reedy mouldings and endless groups of crockets, it does seem to be a sad thing that a nineteenth century artist should feel bound to emulate his enthusiasm for such worthless things. I grant at once, that he has done no more than follow precedents. In the old west front of the cathedral, there is scarcely a moulding three inches in diameter, whilst the central doorway between the steeples is very small, and made up of a repetition usque ad nauseam of orders of reedy mouldings and small flowers, and admits not for one instant of comparison with any good examples of French doorways; and, it is indeed very striking how, as one comes fresh from French churches, all this work looks thin, petty, and wanting in expression.

In the sculpture of foliage in the new works, the system seems to be to take sprigs of two or three leaves and fasten them against a circular bell, with no evidence of any kind of natural growth, and no proper architectural function to perform. They seem to require a piece of string or a strap round them to attach them to the bell. The copying of the foliage is perfectly naturalesque, even to the marking of the fibres on leaves which are to be elevated to a great height in the building. I have heard all this sculpture so often referred to in terms of the highest praise, that unpleasant as it is to criticize work executed at the present day, I feel that I am bound to express my dissent from those who so speak of it. The whole work is so famous that all the world is interested in it. English tourists, year after year, going in great numbers on their travels, admire thoughtlessly everything that they see, and architects even seem to me to follow in their wake, forgetting that our true function is not simply to admire the work, because it is a vast and noble enterprise, but to weigh and compare it with the most perfect work we can find, and to endeavour, if the faults we see in it are great, to point them out by way of warning for ourselves and others. Indiscriminate admiration of such a building does enormous mischief, just as a wild enthusiasm for the fourteenth century work which we see throughout Germany would be fatal to the eye and taste of the enthusiast.