Normandy Picturesque

by Henry Blackburn

It was from a door in this house that, in the year 1431, the unfortunate Joan of Arc was led out to be 'burned as a sorceress' before the people of Rouen. We need not dwell upon the story of the 'fair maid of Orleans,' which every child has by heart, but (mindful of our picturesque mission) we should like to carry the reader in imagination to the same spot just four hundred years later, when an English artist, heedless of the crowd that collects around him, sits down in the street to sketch the lines of the old building, already tottering to ruin. Faithfully and patiently does the artist draw the old gables, the unused doorway, the heavy awnings, the piles of wood, the market-women, and the grey perspective of the side street with its pointed roofs, curious archways and oil lantern swinging from house to house; and as faithfully (even to the mis-spelling of the word 'liquer,' on a board over the doorway) almost indeed, with the touch of the artist's pencil, has the engraver reproduced, by means of photography, the late Samuel Prout's drawing on the frontispiece of this volume.[41]

Few artists have succeeded, as Prout succeeded, in giving the character of the old buildings in Normandy, and certainly no other drawings with which we are acquainted, admit of being photographed as his do, without losing effect. It is scarcely too much to say that in this engraving we can distinguish the different washes of colour, the greys and warmer tints, the broad touches of his pencil on the white caps of the women, and the very work of his hand in the bold, decisive shadows.

It is pleasant to dwell for a moment on Prout's work, for he has become identified with Normandy through numerous sketches of buildings now pulled down; and they have an antiquarian as well as an artistic interest. They are 'mannered,' as we all know, but they have more couleur locale than any of the drawings of Pugin; and are valued (we speak of money value) at the present time, above the works of most water-colour painters of his time.

But we must not dream about old Rouen, we must rather tell the reader what it is like to-day, and how modern and prosaic is its aspect; how we arrive by express train, and are rattled through wide paved streets in an 'omnibus du Chemin de Fer,' and are set down at a 'grand' hotel, where we find an Englishman seated in the doorway reading 'Bell's Life.'

Rouen is busy and thriving, and has a fixed population of not less than 150,000; situated about half-way between Paris and the port of Havre, there is a constant flow of traffic passing and repassing, and its quays are lined with goods for exportation. In front of our window at the Hôtel d'Angleterre, from which we have a view for miles on both sides of the Seine, the noise and bustle are almost as great as at Lyons or Marseilles. The Rouen of to-day is given up to commerce, to the swinging of cranes, and to the screeching of locomotives on the quays; whilst the fine broad streets and lines of newly erected houses, shut out from our view the old city of which we have heard so much, and which many of us have come so far to see. As we approach Rouen by the river, or even by railway, it is true that we see cathedral towers, but they are interspersed with smoking factory chimneys and suspension bridges; and although on our first drive through the town, we pass the magnificent portal of the cathedral and the old clock-tower in the 'rue de la Grosse Horloge,' we observe that the cathedral has a cast-iron spire, and that the frescoes and carving round the clock-tower are built up against and pasted over with bills of concerts and theatres.

The streets are full of busy merchants, trim shopkeepers, and the usual crowd of blouses that we see in every city in France. There are wide boulevards and trees round Rouen; and if we look down upon the city from the heights of Mont St. Catherine (perhaps the best view that we can obtain anywhere) it may remind us, with its broad river laden with ships and its cathedral towers, of the superb view of Lyons that we obtain from the heights near the cemetery: the view so well known to visitors to that city. The people of Rouen who have spread out into the enormous suburb of St. Sever, on the left bank of the Seine,[42] are busy by thousands in the manufactories,—the sound of the loom and the anvil comes up to us even here; and down by the banks of the river, away westward, as far as the eye can see, up spring clean bright houses of the wealthy manufacturers and traders of Rouen,—rich, sleek, and portly gentlemen with the thinnest boots, who never even pass down the old streets if they can help it, but whom we shall find very pleasant and hospitable; and with whom we may sit down at a café under the trees and play at dominoes in the open street, in the middle of the day, without creating a scandal.

But if Rouen will not compare with Lyons in size, or commercial importance, it surpasses it in antiquarian interest; and we have chosen our illustrations to depict it rather as it was, than as it is. We give a drawing of Joan of Arc's house rather than of a building in the 'rue Imperiale;' and a view of the old market-place in front of the cathedral rather than of the trim toy-garden at the west end of the church of St. Ouen; and we do this, not only because it is more picturesque, but because the modern aspect of Rouen is familiar to the majority of our readers.

But we must examine the old buildings whilst there is time, for (as in other towns of Normandy) the work of demolition grows fast and furious; and the churches, the Palais de Justice, the courts of law, and the tower of the Grosse Horloge will soon be all that is left to us. The narrow winding streets of gable-ended houses, with their strange histories, will soon be forgotten by all but the antiquary; for there is a ruthless law that no more half-timbered houses shall be built, and another that everything shall be in line.

We are surrounded by old houses, but cannot easily find them, and when discovered they almost crumble at the touch—they fade away as if by magic; and there is a halo of mystery, we might almost say of sanctity, about them which is indescribable; it is as if the blossoms of an early age still clung to the old walls and garlanded with time-wreaths their tottering ruins.