VITRÉ
For the etcher, the painter, the archæologist, and the sculptor, Vitré
is an ideal town. To the archæologist it is an ever-open page from the
Middle Ages, an almost complete relic of that period, taking one back
with a strange force and realism three hundred years and more. Time
has dealt tenderly with Vitré. The slanting, irregular houses, leaning
one against the other, as if for mutual support, stand as by a
miracle.
Wandering through Vitré, one seems to be visiting a wonderful and
perfect museum, such as must needs please even the exacting, the
blasé, and the indifferent. You are met at every turn by the works of
the ancients in all their naïve purity and simplicity, many of the
houses having been built in the first half of the seventeenth century.
One can have no conception of the energy of these early builders,
fighting heroically against difficulties such as we of the present
day do not experience. They overcame problems of balance and expressed
their own imaginations. Common masons with stone and brick and wood
accomplished marvellous and audacious examples of architecture. They
sought symmetry as well as the beautifying of their homes, covering
them with ornamentations and sculpture in wood and stone. Without
architects, without plans or designs, these men simply followed their
own initiative, and the result has been absolute marvels of carpentry
and stone-work, such as have withstood the onslaught of time and held
their own.
When you first arrive at Vitré, at the crowded, bustling station,
surrounded by the most modern of houses and hotels, and faced by the
newest of fountains, disappointment is acute. If you were to leave
Vitré next morning, never having penetrated into the town, you would
carry away a very feeble and uninteresting impression; but, having
entered the town, and discovered those grand old streets--the
Baudrarie, the Poterie, and the Nôtre Dame, among many others--poet,
painter, sculptor, man of business or of letters, whoever you may be,
you cannot fail to be astonished, overwhelmed, and delighted. A quiet
old-world air pervades the streets; no clatter and rattle of horses'
hoofs disturbs their serenity; no busy people, hurrying to and fro,
fill the pathways. Handcarts are the only vehicles, and the
inhabitants take life quietly. Often for the space of a whole minute
you will find yourself quite alone in a street, save for a hen and
chickens that are picking up scraps from the gutter.
In these little old blackened streets, ever so narrow, into which the
sun rarely penetrates except to touch the upper stories with golden
rays, there are houses of every conceivable shape--there are houses of
three stories, each story projecting over the other; houses so old
that paint and plaster will stay on them no longer; houses with
pointed roofs; houses with square roofs thrust forward into the
street, spotted by yellow moss; houses the façades of which are
covered with scaly gray tiles, glistening in the sun like a knight's
armour. These are placed in various patterns according to the taste
and fantasy of the architect: sometimes they are cut round, sometimes
square, and sometimes they are placed like the scales of a fish. There
are houses, whose upper stories, advancing into the middle of the
street, are kept up by granite pillars, forming an arcade underneath,
and looking like hunchbacked men; there are the houses of the humble
artisans and the houses of the proud noblemen; houses plain and simple
in architecture; houses smothered with carvings in wood and stone of
angels and saints and two-headed monsters--houses of every shape and
kind imaginable. In a certain zigzag, tortuous street the buildings
are one mass of angles and sloping lines, one house leaning against
another,--noble ruins of the ages. The plaster is falling from the
walls; the slates are slipping from the roofs; and the wood is
becoming worm-eaten.
It is four o'clock on a warm autumn afternoon; the sun is shining on
one side of this narrow street, burnishing gray roofs to silver,
resting lovingly on the little balconies, with their pendent washing
and red pots of geranium. The men are returning from their work and
the children from their schools; the workaday hours are ended, and the
houses teem with life. A woman is standing in a square sculptured
doorway trying to teach her little white-faced fluffy-haired baby to
say 'Ma! ma!' This he positively refuses to do; but he gurgles and
chuckles at intervals, at which his mother shakes him and calls him
'petit gamin.'
[Illustration: PREPARING THE MID-DAY MEAL]
All Bretons love the sun; they are like little children in their
simple joy of it. A workman passing says to a girl leaning out of a
low latticed window:
'C'est bon le soleil?'
'Mais oui: c'est pour cela que j'y suis,' she answers.
One house has an outside staircase of chocolate-coloured wood,
spirally built, with carved balustrades. On one of the landings an old
woman is sitting. She has brought out a chair and placed it in the
sunniest corner. She is very old, and wears the snowiest of white caps
on her gray hair; her wrinkled pink hands, with their red worsted
cuffs, are working busily at her knitting; and every now and then she
glances curiously through the banisters into the street below, like a
little bright bird.
There are white houses striped with brown crossbars, each with its
little shallow balcony. Above, the white plaster has nearly all fallen
away, revealing the beautiful old original primrose-yellow.
Curiosity shops are abundant everywhere, dim and rich in colour with
the reds and deep tones of old polished wood, the blue of china, and
the glistening yellow of brass. Ancient houses there are, with
scarcely any windows: the few that one does see are heavily furnished
with massive iron-nailed shutters or grated with rusty red iron; the
doorways are of heaviest oak, crowned with coats of arms sculptured in
stone. Large families of dirty children now live in these lordly
domains.
One longs in Vitré, above all other places, to paint, or, rather, to
etch. Vitré is made for the etcher; endless and wondrous are the
subjects for his needle. Here, in a markedly time-worn street, are a
dozen or more pictures awaiting him--a doorway aged and blackened
alternately by the action of the sun and by that of the rain, and
carved in figures and symbols sculptured in stone, through which one
catches glimpses of a courtyard wherein two men are shoeing a horse;
then, again, there is an obscure shop, so calm and tranquil that one
asks one's self if business can ever be carried on there. As you peer
into the darkness, packets of candles, rope, and sugar are faintly
discernible, also dried fish and bladders of lard suspended from the
ceiling; in a far corner is an old woman in a white cap--all this in
deepest shadow. Above, the clear yellow autumn sunlight shines in a
perfect blaze upon the primrose-coloured walls, crossed with
beams of blackest wood, making the slates on the pointed roofs
scintillate, and touching the windows here and there with a golden
light.
[Illustration: IN CHURCH]
Side by side with this wonderful old house, the glories of which it is
impossible to describe in mere words, a new one has been built--not in
a modern style, but striving to imitate the fine old structures in
this very ancient street. The contrast, did it not grate on one's
senses, would be laughable. Stucco is pressed into the service to
represent the original old stone, and varnished deal takes the place
of oak beams with their purple bloom gathered through the ages. The
blocks of stone round the doors and windows have been laboriously
hewn, now large, now small, and placed artistically and carelessly
zigzag, pointed with new black cement. This terrible house is
interesting if only to illustrate what age can do to beautify and
modernity to destroy.
Madonnas, crucifixes, pictures of saints in glass cases, and
statuettes of the Virgin, meet you at every turn in Vitré, for the
inhabitants are proverbially a religious people. A superstitious yet
guilty conscience would have a trying time in Vitré. In entering a
shop, St. Joseph peers down upon you from a niche above the portal; at
every street corner, in every market, and in all kinds of quaint and
unexpected places, saints and angels look out at you.
The beautiful old cathedral, Nôtre Dame de Vitré, is one of the purest
remaining productions of the decadent Gothic art in Brittany, and one
of the finest. Several times the grand old edifice has been enlarged
and altered, and the changes in art can be traced through different
additions as in the pages of a book. It is a comparatively low
building, the roof of which is covered by a forest of points or
spires, and at the apex of each point is a stone cross. In fact, the
characteristics of this building are its points: the windows are
shaped in carved points, and so are the ornamentations on the
projecting buttresses. The western door, very finely carved and led up
to by a flight of rounded steps, is of the Renaissance period. In
colouring, the cathedral is gray, blackened here and there, but not
much stained by damp or lichen, except the tower, which seems to be of
an earlier date. The stained-glass windows, seen from the outside, are
of a dim, rich colouring; and on one of the outside walls has been
built an exterior stone pulpit, ornamented with graceful points,
approached from the church by a slit in the wall. It was
constructed to combat the Calvinistic party, so powerful in Vitré at
one time. One can easily imagine the seething crowd in the square
below--the sea of pale, passionate, upturned faces. It must have
presented much the same picture then as it does now, this cathedral
square in Vitré--save for the people;--for there are still standing,
facing the pulpit, and not a hundred paces from it, a row of ancient
houses that existed in those very riotous times. Every line of those
once stately domains slants at a different angle now, albeit they were
originally built in a solid style--square-fronted and with pointed
roofs, the upper stories projecting over the pavement, with arcades
beneath. Some are painted white, with gray woodwork; others yellow,
with brown wood supports. Outside one of the houses, once a butcher's
shop, hangs a boar's head, facing the stone pulpit. What scenes that
old animal must have witnessed in his time, gazing so passively with
those glassy brown eyes! If only it could speak!
[Illustration: PÈRE LOUIS]
Convent-bred girls in a long line are filing into church through the
western door--meek-faced little people in black pinafores and shiny
black hats. All wear their hair in pigtails, and above their boots an
inch or so of coloured woollen stockings is visible. Each carries a
large Prayer-Book under her arm. A reverend Mother, in snowy white cap
and flowing black veil, heads the procession, and another brings up
the rear.
The main door facing the square is flung wide open; and the contrast
between the brilliant sunlit square, with its noisy laughing children
returning from school, dogs barking, and handcarts rattling over the
cobble stones, and this dim, sombre interior, bathed in richest gloom,
is almost overwhelming.
A stained-glass window at the opposite end of the church, with the
light at the back of it, forms the only patch of positive colour, with
its brilliant reds and purples and blues. All else is dim and rich and
gloomy, save here and there where the glint of brass, the gold of the
picture-frames, the white of the altar-cloth, or the ruby of an
ever-burning light, can be faintly discerned in the obscurity. The
deep, full notes of the organ reach you as you stand at the cathedral
steps, and you detect the faint odour of incense. The figure of a
woman kneeling with clasped hands and bent head is dimly discernible
in the heavy gloom. One glance into such an interior, after coming
from the glare and glamour of the outside world, cannot but bring
peace and rest and a soothing influence to even the most unquiet soul.
The château of Vitré is an even older building than the cathedral. It
has lived bravely through the ages, suffering little from the march of
time: a noble edifice, huge and massive, with its high towers, its
châtelet, and its slate roofs. Just out of the dark, narrow, cramped
old streets, you are astonished to emerge suddenly on a large open
space, and to be confronted by this massive château, well preserved
and looking almost new. As a matter of fact, its foundation dates back
as far as the eleventh century, although four hundred years ago it was
almost entirely reconstructed. Parts of the château are crumbling to
decay; but the principal mass, consisting of the towers and châtelet,
is marvellously preserved. It still keeps a brave front, though the
walls and many of the castle keeps and fortresses are tottering to
ruin. Many a shock and many a siege has the old château withstood; but
now its fighting days are over. The frogs sing no longer in the moat
through the beautiful summer nights; the sentinel's box is empty; and
in the courtyards, instead of clanking swords and spurred heels, the
peaceful step of the tourist alone resounds. The château has rendered
a long and loyal service, and to-day as a reward enjoys a glorious
repose. To visit the castle, you pass over a draw-bridge giving
entrance to the châtelet, and no sooner have you set foot on it than
the concierge emerges from a little room in the tower dedicated to the
service of the lodge-holder.
She is a very up-to-date chatelaine, trim and neat, holding a great
bunch of keys in her hand. She takes you into a huge grass-grown
courtyard in the interior, whence you look up at the twin towers,
capped with pointed gray turrets, and see them in all their immensity.
The height and strength and thickness of the walls are almost
terrifying. She shows you a huge nail-studded door, behind which is a
stone spiral staircase leading to an underground passage eight miles
long. This door conjures up to the imaginative mind all kinds of
romantic and adventurous stories. We are taken into the Salle des
Guardes, an octagonal stone room on an immense scale, with bay
windows, the panes of which are of stained glass, and a gigantic
chimneypiece. One can well imagine the revels that must have gone on
round that solid oak table among the waiting guards.
The chatelaine leads us up a steep spiral staircase built of solid
granite, from which many rooms branch, all built in very much the
same style--octagonal and lofty, with low doorways. One must stoop to
enter. On the stairway, at intervals of every five or six steps, there
are windows with deep embrasures, in which one can stand and gain a
commanding view of the whole country. These, it is needless to say,
were used in the olden days for military purposes.
[Illustration: IDLE HOURS]
As the chatelaine moves on, ever above us, with her clanking keys, one
can take one's self back to the Middle Ages, and imagine the warrior's
castle as it was then, when the chatelaine, young, sweet, and pretty,
wending her way about the dark and gloomy castle, was the only humane
and gentle spirit there. Easier still is it to lose yourself in the
dim romantic past when you are shown into a room which, though no fire
burns on the hearth, is still quite warm, redolent of tapestry and
antiquity. This room is now used as a kind of museum. It is filled
with fine examples of old china, sufficient to drive a collector
crazy, enamels, old armour, rubies, ornaments, sculpture, medals,
firearms, and instruments of torture.
Sitting in a deep window-seat, surrounded by the riches of ancient
days, with the old-world folk peering out from the tapestried walls,
one can easily close one's eyes and lose one's self for a moment in
the gray past, mystic and beautiful. It is delightful to summon to
your mind the poetical and pathetic figure of (let us say) a knight
imprisoned in the tower on account of his prominent and all-devouring
love for some unapproachable fair one; or of that other who, pinning a
knot of ribbon on his coat,--his lady's colour--set out to fight and
conquer. But, alas! no chronicle has been left of the deeds of the
castle prisoners. Any romantic stories that one may conjure to one's
mind in the atmosphere of the château can be but the airiest fabrics
of a dream.
At the top of the spiral staircase is a rounded gallery, with
loopholes open to the day, through which one can gain a magnificent,
though somewhat dizzy, view over town and country. It was from this
that the archers shot their arrows upon the enemy; and very deadly
their aim must have been, for nothing could be more commanding as
regards position than the château of Vitré. Also, in the floor of the
gallery, round the outer edge, are large holes, down which the
besieged threw great blocks of stone, boiling tar, and projectiles of
all kinds, which must have fallen with tremendous violence on the
assailants.
Wherever one goes in Vitré one sees the fine old château, forming a
magnificent background to every picture, with its grand ivy-mantled
towers and its huge battlemented walls, belittling everything round
it. Unlike most French châteaus, more or less showy and toy-like in
design, the castle of Vitré is built on solid rock, and lifted high
above the town in a noble, irresistible style, with walls of immense
thickness, and lofty beyond compare. All that is grandest and most
beautiful in Nature seems to group itself round about the fine old
castle, as if Nature herself felt compelled to pay tribute of her best
to what was noblest in the works of man. In the daytime grand and
sweeping white clouds on a sky of eggshell blue group themselves about
the great gray building. At twilight, when the hoary old castle
appears a colossal purple mass, every tower and every turret strongly
outlined against the sunset sky, Nature comes forward with her
brilliant palette and paints in a background of glorious prismatic
hues: great rolling orange and pink clouds on a sky of blue--combination
sufficient to send a colourist wild with joy.
Every inch of the castle walls has been utilized in one way or another
to economize material. Houses have been built hanging on to and
clustering about the walls, sometimes perched on the top of them, like
limpets on a rock. Often one sees a fine battlemented wall, fifty or
sixty feet in height, made of great rough stone, brown and golden and
purple with age--a wall which, one knows, must have withstood many a
siege--with modern iron balconies jutting out from it, balconies of
atrocious pattern, painted green or gray, with gaudy Venetian blinds.
It is absolute desecration to see leaning from these balconies,
against such a background, untidy, fat, dirty women, with black, lank
hair, and peasants knitting worsted socks, where once fair damsels of
ancient times waved their adieux to departing knights. Then, again,
how terrible it is to see glaring advertisements of _Le Petit
Journal_, Benedictine Liqueur, Singer's Sewing Machines, and Byrrh,
plastered over a fine old sculptured doorway!
[Illustration: LA VIEILLE MÈRE PEROT]
There are in certain parts of the town remains of the ancient moat.
Sometimes it is a mere brook, black as night, flowing with difficulty
among thick herbage which has grown up round it; sometimes a
prosperous, though always dirty, stream. You come across it in
unexpected places here and there. In one part, just under the walls
of the castle, where the water is very dirty indeed, wash-houses
have been erected; there the women kneel on flat stones by the banks.
The houses clustering round about the moat are damp and evil-smelling;
their slates, green with mould, are continually slipping off the
roofs; and the buildings themselves slant at such an angle that their
entry into the water seems imminent.
At the base of the castle walls the streets mount steeply. This is a
very poor quarter indeed. The houses are old, blackened, decayed,
much-patched and renovated. Yet the place is extremely picturesque; in
fact, I know no part of Vitré that is not.
At any moment, in any street, you can stop and frame within your hands
a picture which will be almost sure to compose well--which in
colouring and drawing will be the delight of painters and etchers. In
these particular streets of which I speak antiquity reigns supreme.
Here no traffic ever comes; only slatternly women, with their wretched
dogs and cats of all breeds, fill the streets. Many of the houses are
half built out of solid slate, and the steps leading to them are hewn
from the rock.
One sees no relics of bygone glory here. This must ever have been a
poor quarter; for the windows are built low to the ground, and there
are homely stone settles outside each door. Pigs and chickens walk in
and out of the houses with as much familiarity as the men and women.
On every shutter strings of drying fish are hung; and every window in
every house, no matter how poor, has its rows of pink and red
geraniums and its pots of hanging fern. Birds also are abundant; in
fact, from the first I dubbed this street 'the street of the birds,'
for I never before saw so many caged birds gathered together--canaries,
bullfinches, jackdaws, and birds of bright plumage. By the sound one
might fancy one's self for the moment in an African jungle rather than
in a Breton village.
The streets of Vitré are remarkable for their flowers. Wherever you
may look you will see pots of flowers and trailing greenery, relieving
with their bright fresh colouring the time-worn houses of blackened
woodwork and sombre stone. Not only do moss and creepers abound, but
also there are gardens everywhere, over the walls of which trail vines
and clematis, and on every window-ledge are pots of geranium and
convolvulus.
It is impossible in mere words to convey any real impression of the
fine old town of Vitré: only the etcher and the painter can adequately
depict it. The grand old town will soon be of the past. Every day,
every hour, its walls are decaying, crumbling; and before long Vitré
will be no more than a memory.
[Illustration: A VIEILLARD]