I stayed at Amiens the whole of the 13th of April, dining at the table d’Hôte, and accustoming myself to French language and French manners. The salle-à-manger was ornamented with a paper which seems very common at the inns, representing the principal buildings of Paris, not badly executed. Although the room is about forty feet long, there is no repetition of the pattern; you may easily conceive that an immense number of blocks must have been used. Indeed, I was once told by a paper-hanger in London, that he had seen papers in England which were executed by means of 150 blocks, and that he used to think that a very great number; but going afterwards to Paris, he had there seen some which required two thousand five hundred. My landlady conducted me into another room, where she shewed me the representation of a chase, in which both the forms and the colouring were really very good, and into a third, which was adorned with the history of Cupid and Psyche. I do not say the execution was such as you would be satisfied with in a painting, but yet all the parts were expressed with a considerable degree of truth and accuracy, the groups were well disposed, and the light well managed.
About noon, on the fourteenth, I again found a place in the cabriolet of the diligence, and proceeded to Beauvais, snow falling almost all the time. It was dusk when we arrived there; and the high, black mass of the choir rising above the houses of the town, all covered with snow, did not prepossess me in favour of the building. During the night the thermometer sunk to 25° of Fahrenheit, and the next morning was excessively cold, with frequent showers. Before reaching the cathedral, I inquired at a bookseller’s shop for some account of it. He had no such work, but shewed me a history of the town, “publiée sur la demande de Monsieur le Maire de Beauvais, et aux frais de la ville.” On looking over it I found little to answer my purpose, and begged permission to copy a few lines which might perhaps be useful to me. He most politely begged me to take the book, and keep it as long as I wanted it. I observed an account of the church of St. Etienne, said to be of very high antiquity, and the bookseller pointed out to me the description of an image, which, he assured me, had been a pagan idol: “Et comment, monsieur,” said I, “peut on s’assurer de la grande antiquité de cette statue?” “Eh,” replied he, “vous le trouverez dans les commentaires de César.” This was said with the greatest air of science imaginable.
On approaching the cathedral I was surprised at the richness and beauty of the external decoration. Seen from the south-east, it is much superior in this respect to Amiens, because the ornaments and their disposition are more dependent on each other, and seem more connected with the construction of the building. There are two ranges of pinnacles on the buttresses of the choir. Those of the inner range are slender, and carried up nearly as high as the walls of the clerestory. The outer are lower, and of more solid proportion; both ranges are ornamented, and their effect is very rich and magnificent. The “portal,” using this word to include the end of the transept, is of late date, and very much ornamented. The entrances are, you know, at the ends of the transepts, the nave never having been erected; and here again, on entering the church, the great window, with its splendid rose, terminating the vista, displays all its beauties. Passing down the centre, the view of the choir is really sublime; and the slender columns, the triple range of windows, and the loftiness of the upper ones, have an appearance almost supernatural. It is considerably higher than that at Amiens; and to judge by the eye, I should say that the ridge of the vaulting does not fall short of a hundred and sixty feet, but I do not think it on that account to be preferred. The columns at Beauvais are too slender, the arches between them too narrow, and the vault too high. Every quality is carried to excess. If the nave were built, the height would not appear so disproportionate; but it would still be too great, and the want of proportionate width would be more conspicuous. Another important objection is in the groining of the roof, which is too complicated. In a common groin one vault crosses another at right angles: in this instance two smaller vaults cross the principal one obliquely; we have therefore three vaults crossing each other in the same point; or, perhaps it would be better to say, that six vaults meet in one point. There are dates on some of the arches of the transept of 1575, 1577, 1578, 1580. This mode of construction was certainly introduced much earlier, but I do not know precisely at what period. In England, I think we find a similar construction in part of Canterbury Cathedral; and it is represented, but not very clearly, in Britton’s work on that edifice, pl. 17. The pillars of the choir are alternately larger and smaller, which renders it probable that the disposition of the vaulting was contemplated at the time of the foundation of the church. It has been suspected that these intermediate piers are posterior to the design of the building, but this does not appear to me to be the case. Whittington says that this roof fell down in 1802; whence could have arisen such an error?
The transept is furnished with side aisles, which are not so high as those of the choir. The choir has at its commencement a double range of side aisles, an arrangement productive of great beauty. The pillars of the choir are formed by small shafts, attached to a circular pier. In those of the transept the smaller shafts are united by curved lines to the principal shaft, so that each pillar on the plan is bounded by an undulating line, without any angle. Even in the earlier part the bases are more capricious than at Amiens; the pillars themselves are more slender, the capitals less distinct: all of which are proofs of its erection posterior to that cathedral.
I have still to state a few dates of this building. The foundations were laid in 991, by Hervé, fortieth bishop of Beauvais, but nothing of this construction remains to give any character to the present work; the roof and vaults were burnt in 1225. In 1281 the great arches of the choir fell down, and mass could not be said for forty years; and this perhaps may give us the era of the present choir, i. e. about 1324. Yet there are fragments undoubtedly of an older edifice; as, for example, at each end of the aisles of the transept, where there is a small wheel window. The transept was not begun till 1500. It was finished, with a central tower which rose to the height of four hundred and seventy-five feet. If this account be correct, it appears rather remarkable that the transept should contain no trace of Roman architecture. The Chateau de Gaillon, in Paris, begun in 1490, and finished in 1500, contains ample evidence of the introduction of that style, though it still retains much of the Gothic in the ornaments and their arrangement. There are, however, I believe, other buildings in France of the early part of the sixteenth century, perfectly Gothic.
My observations in the cathedral were interrupted by the office, and, as it was the first opportunity I have had of witnessing these ceremonies, I stayed to see what was going forward, paying half a sol for my chair. Each individual crosses himself on entrance. This, the use of holy water, and the bowing to the altar, seem very ridiculous to a Protestant. The first and last may be thought to announce, for the moment at least, attention to sacred things, but it would be difficult to assign any rational motive for the introduction of the holy water. Historically, it may, perhaps, be deduced as a symbol of purification from sin, but in the actual practice such an application appears absurd. I saw some water prepared and consecrated at Amiens, but the ceremony is not very impressive; and neither there nor at Beauvais did the dress of the officiating priests appear to me either dignified or graceful. The kneeling of the congregation consists in this: that each person turns the back of the chair from him; and tipping it a little, places one or both knees against the seat. In one not previously seated, the change of position is hardly observable.
The oldest fragment in Beauvais is a part of the ancient church of Nôtre Dame de Basse Œuvre. The east end presents a pretty large circular-headed window, with a flat, broad reticulated ornament round it in low relief, and some imperfect figures above. A portion of cornice, with the billeted moulding, also remains, and a few of the side arches, the whole being but a portion of the ancient nave. A floor has been inserted internally, to make it suitable for a magazine of wood, and the whole strengthened with brick piers. I can readily believe it to have been erected early in the eleventh century, or perhaps in the tenth, before the full development of the Norman style of architecture; but there is too little of it, and it is in too damaged a condition, to be of great interest. The work already mentioned assures us that it was erected in the third century, and that one of the existing figures was a pagan idol, as proved by its nakedness.
The church of St. Stephen is also very ancient, and it is far more perfect than Nôtre Dame de Basse Œuvre. It is said to have been erected or restored by St. Firmin in 997, but I suspect that this is too early for any part of the present design. The western front presents fragments of about the year 1200, but sadly injured during the revolution. The sides are adorned with a range of very little arches, forming, not an arcade, but an ornament under the cornice; a few of them, however, rest on slender shafts. This, I apprehend, is somewhat more ancient. The northern end of the transept has three semicircular-headed windows: the southern has two, and over them a fine wheel window, with figures representing the wheel of fortune; the gable is ornamented with interlacing rods of stone. There is also a fine Norman doorway on the north side. Internally the nave appears to have undergone no considerable alteration since its erection. The pillars are formed of square piers, with four large semi-elipsoid shafts attached, and four smaller cylindrical ones, nearly detached. The bases are attic, but of a form which indicates the beginning of the Gothic taste in that particular; and perhaps we may say that the whole, both inside and out, announces an erection of about the middle of the twelfth century. There were, I apprehend, no pointed arches in the original edifice. The transept is of mixed architecture, and the choir is of a late style. Its vaulting bears date 1548, but the design of this part must be attributed to the fifteenth century.
There are several other fragments in Beauvais. Two ancient towers, at the entrance of the episcopal palace, with high French roofs, and two Norman towers behind. Four Saxon arches, opposite the flank of the palace, have belonged to some richly ornamented building; and there is some mixed construction in the ancient walls. Parts of these are said to be of the fourth century, but internal evidence of this is wanting.
The soil about Beauvais is chalky, divided by small, narrow valleys, with steep sides, which afford situations for the vines: the little hill of Ste. Symphorienne, just out of the town, presents a very good view of it. The stumps of the vines rise about a foot from the ground; the poles were disposed in conical heaps, much as our hop-poles are, but the vine-poles are shorter. In some of the orchards, which are abundant, there are gooseberry bushes among the larger fruit trees, and these are the only things which look green. In the evening I again found a seat in the cabriolet of the diligence, and arrived at Paris about nine o’clock this morning. I have established myself in a small room in the Hotel du Phôt, Rue du Phôt; for which I am to pay forty francs per month, and two francs per month to François, who makes the bed, cleans the room, blacks shoes, brushes coats, and, in short, performs the united services of valet and chambermaid. The situation is pleasant, but rather too much out of town.