ROUEN CATHEDRAL FROM THE NORTH-WEST

The period of the first coming of Philip Augustus in the ten years after 1210 is strongly marked by the influence of the Ile de France, and by the French Gothic work of Suger, which at first swept out of its path every other style with which it came in contact. But by degrees the Norman transition re-asserts itself, and the northern pointed work made its appearance, whose history is completed in England, and is a different school from the Gothic on the French side of the Channel. But every century and every style seems to have had its say and left its mark upon the fabric of Rouen. After the thirteenth century had built choir and transepts and a great part of the nave, and before its close had begun the decoration of the magnificent side portals, and the refinement of the Lady Chapel, the first thing the fifteenth century did was to enlarge the windows of the choir after its own manner, and widen the windows of the nave as well. The only names we find in the fourteenth century are that of the architect of a rose window in the nave and a tomb of Charles V., which have both disappeared, and that of Jean de Bayeux, the builder of the civic belfry tower at the Hôtel de Ville. But the perpetrator of the enlarged choir windows was Jehan Salvart, who worked for Henry V. during the English occupation, and is forgiven much, because he was with Le Roux at the finishing of the exquisite church of St. Maclou. The glass was put in by Jean Senlis.

I may as well complete the tale of architects now that I have begun it, though the detail of their work is fitter given in the order of its making, later on. But it is so rare that these master-masons have left any traces of themselves at all, that I may perhaps be pardoned for giving the full list that is hardly possible in any other great cathedral in the world. Jean Roussel succeeded to his father of Bayeux in 1430, to be followed in 1452 by Geoffroi Richier for eleven years. Guillaume Pontifz was perhaps the greatest contributor of any of these later men. In the thirty-four years of his office, the stalls of the choir, representing the various crafts, were carved by several workmen, whose names will be given later, at the cost of nearly 7000 livres, borne by the Cardinal d'Estouteville, the Portail de la Calende was completed, a new top placed upon the Tour St. Romain, a frigid and unpleasing staircase built in the north transept to lead up to the canon's library, and the courtyard, with its entrance screen placed in the Rue St. Romain before the Portail des Libraires. He also began the Tour de Beurre, but left it to be finished by Jacques Le Roux, who had done so much for St. Maclou, but died a poor man in 1500, and was buried beneath the organ. Within the part of this tower that he built was hung the great bell "Georges d'Amboise," the biggest outside Russia, which shared with "Rouvel" the affection of the citizens, which rejoiced the heart of Francis the First, and cracked with grief in 1786 at being called upon to ring for Louis XVI. It was his nephew, Rouland Leroux, whose help was called in when the canons desired to embellish their west façade and have a finer central door. This work was begun in 1508 with the money of Georges d'Amboise, and Pierre Désaubeaulx did the central tympanum. Jean Theroulde, Pierre Dalix, another Leroux, Nicolas Quesnel, Hance de Bony, and Denis Lerebours worked at the statuettes. A screen of open work (carrying the clock) was raised in front of the rose window, and four turrets were added, of which but one remains. So Rouland Leroux finished his contract in 1527, having left for himself a greater fame in the masonry of the central tower, whose base he rebuilt after the old stone spire had been destroyed by fire, and especially in the tomb of Cardinal d'Amboise, than ever he will gain by the patchwork of the west façade. What he could do with a free hand and his own designs to begin with, may be imagined from the fact that he built the Bureau des Finances on the opposite side of the Parvis and laid the first plans for the Palais de Justice. No wonder that he worked at Havre, at Beauvais, and at Angers, as well as in his native town.

I shall hardly be blamed, I think, if among the full tones of a praise that must become monotonous, a single note of regretful misunderstanding cannot remain quite unheard; and I must confess that in this western front so many unfinished and supervening designs occur that I find myself unable to imagine the meaning of its builders. Considering, first of all, the arrangement of its detail, I find elaborate flower-mouldings and renaissance-work placed so high up that they can barely be distinguished as anything save light and shade, whereas upon the Portail des Libraires all such delicate work ceases at about 9 feet high, and the upper carving is done boldly in broad, simple masses for an effect of distance. But if this is bad flamboyant work, the central gate itself is purer, and perhaps among the finest examples existing of the flamboyant style. There are four strings of niches round this porch from the ground to the top of the arch, each holding two figures; every detail in them and about them is worked with the most elaborate and tender patience, full of imaginative carvings, trellised with leaves and blossoms deep wrought in the stone. At this part of the western front and at the northern side-door I could never tire of looking. But the whole façade I had to give up in despair, save when the moonlight softened it into a tracery of lacework climbing to the sky, as delicate as the pattern of white spray upon a rising wave.

The masonry upon the central tower I have already mentioned. In 1544 it was crowned, by Robert Becquet, with a light spire of wood, 132 metres in height, that was burnt by the lightning in 1821.[27] The new cast-iron erection, with which it has been replaced, may best be described as possessing half the height of the Eiffel Tower with none of the excuses for the Colonne de Juillet, of which M. Alavoine, its architect, was also the designer. For the present I need only add that both the western towers could actually be placed, all but their last two metres, inside the nave of Beauvais. The nave of Rouen is but 28 metres high, and 136 in length, from the Portail to the apse of the Chapelle de la Vierge; and as a matter of possible proportion it is interesting to note that the old spire could just have lain down inside it. At first it had no chapels, but these were built later on between the buttresses, as was done at Notre Dame in Paris. The transept measures 50 metres in breadth, which is just the height of the great lantern above it, that is beneath the central tower.

From here, as from the heart of Normandy, flowed the life blood of Rouen through her arteries of traffic clustering round the great Cathedral. Within its walls the noblest of her dead are gathered, returning to the central shrine that gave them birth and being. With the completion of the first main bulk of its design the story of the town that built it is brought to a definite point of development. I shall no longer be obliged to go even as deeply as I have hitherto felt necessary into the details of the civic history, for Rouen is henceforth a part of France, and the seal of her nationality is stamped large upon her. Till now, she has been slowly growing out of the mists of aboriginal antiquity, through Merovingian bloodshed, to become the pirate's stronghold, and then the capital of the Northmen's Duchy. When she had fulfilled her mission by carrying French arts and Norman strength into the English kingdom, she lost a little of that individuality of character which I have traced through former pages, just as a mother loses the first bloom of her girlhood when her son is born. Though Rouen once more passed for some years into the possession of an English king, the days of her captivity—with its culminating shame—are as little agreeable for us to hear, as for her citizens to remember, and Englishmen will no longer take that vital interest in her each year's growth, with which a grandson reads the memoirs of his forefather.

So I have somewhat altered the plan of the next chapters in accordance with what I suspect to be the sympathies of those who have done me the honour to follow me thus far.

If you are content to let me guide you further among the many buildings, whose very origin I have not yet had time to trace, you will find that to nearly every one of them may be attached some brilliant episode that stands out in a century, or some overshadowing personage whose life-story dominates a generation of his fellow-citizens. So that, as we visit these old walls together, they shall speak to us in no uncertain voice, of the lives of those who built them, and of the progress of the town. Until now, there have been but few buildings to which I could point as the visible witnesses of my written word. So that my story has had to proceed but slowly on its way, without the illustration which your eyes in Rouen streets could give it, making a gradual ground-work of which there are hardly any traces left. But with the building of the Cathedral I have reached a point where the tale of civic, or religious, or private houses that are still to be seen, is the tale of Rouen, told on pages well-nigh imperishable. These mile-stones on our road henceforth become so frequent, that in passing from one to the other, I shall have hardly any need to fill the gaps in a history that is at once more modern, and more easily understood. And as we left off with the highest expression of religious fervour, the Cathedral, we may well pass on, for the sake of contrast, to the most visible sign of purely municipal development, the belfry of the old Hôtel de Ville, the famous buildings of the Rue de la Grosse Horloge.