nothing. You chose your auto badly, or perhaps your chauffeur, or even
your companions. Three conditions are indispensable for traveling,
or rather for loitering, in an automobile: 1. A firm decision to see
everything, which depends on you alone; 2. A docile chauffeur; 3. A
comfortable auto of moderate speed. My chauffeur and my machine fulfil
the two latter conditions. Arrange the itinerary yourself. We will stop
as often as you please. Will an experience of three days consecrated to
archaeology seem conclusive to you?"
I proposed to my friend to pass in review all the churches of the Oise
Valley from Saint Leu d'Esserent to Noyon.... There is not in this part
of France a single village whose church is not worthy of a visit. It is
the cradle of Gothic art.
My friend was right. You can loiter in an automobile; but it is
necessary, to be successful, to be a lover of loafing almost to a mania,
and to be a lover of sightseeing until it is a passion.
If you are not sustained by a tenacious and obstinate curiosity, you
immediately succumb to the mania of automobilism. Do not speak of the
attraction of rapidity; for, to get rid of this, there is a sure and
simple means, that of choosing a machine of medium speed. But, whatever
may be the rapidity of the machine, you remain exposed to a double
obsession. There is at first the search for a good road, the hatred
of cobblestones, dirt roads and badly kept pavements; doubtless an
automobile, well built and prudently driven, can overcome the most
difficult roads; but the fear of jolts and the terror of breakdowns
cause us to see, always and everywhere, the good road, where the machine
reaches its maximum of speed. Every detour becomes odious if it compels
the abandonment of a smooth road for more dangerous crossroads. The
chauffeur is therefore desirous of following blindly the line marked
on his special map. (Let us remark in passing that maps for the use of
automobilists are generally detestable.) But the essential peculiarity of
the state of mind common to automobilists is a disgust with halts. "Keep
on, keep on!" a mysterious voice seems to cry to us whenever there comes
a desire to stop. Nothing hurries us; we are loafing; we have long hours
ahead of us before we reach the end of the day's rim; nevertheless the
briefest stop seems to be an unnecessary delay. We can no longer admit
the idea of immobility; we experience a sort of ennui when trees, houses
and men cease their regular flight along both sides of the road. Then
we understand how it is that so many automobilists are happy in driving
between moving pictures, without looking at anything, and how they get
from it a pleasure which is both careless and frenzied.
These are unfortunate circumstances for the contemplation of landscapes
and of monuments. It is, however, possible to triumph over them. The
slavery of the good road can be escaped, But do not count upon it
without a veritable effort of the will.
If one is master of himself as of his machine, then traveling in an auto
becomes delightful, for one can modify, shorten, lengthen, the itinerary
of the excursion according to one's fancy. We turn aside at a crossroad
to climb a hill, from which we hope to discover an agreeable outlook,
or perhaps to visit a church of whose spire, rising in the midst of the
woods, a glimpse has been caught. If we perceive that we have passed,
without noticing it, a monument or a picturesque site, we turn back.
Yes, we turn back. This assertion will leave more than one chauffeur
incredulous. But everything is possible when one really has the taste
of travel, even to losing two minutes by turning his machine around on a
straight road.
This way of traversing the highroads of France has, I admit, its
inconveniences, the most serious of which is the necessity of
incessantly watching the map to guide the chauffeur at every fork. The
signboard always appears too late, when the machine has already made
the wrong turn. The speed of the auto is such that it is not possible to
study the map and to enjoy the view at the same time. It is necessary
to choose. The wisest plan is to make up your mind to miss the road
occasionally. The mistake is so quickly corrected!
I also recognize that traveling in an auto will never replace the slow
promenade, in which one stopped at every turn of the route, amused by
people and by things. But it has the great advantage of annihilating
distance, of bringing sites and monuments close to one another, of
permitting rapid comparisons without any effort of memory, and of
revealing the general characteristics of a whole region. It suits
synthetic minds. It repels a little those who have the passion of
analysis. In short it makes us acquainted with the forest, but leaves us
ignorant of the beauty of the trees....
*****
From Paris to Chantilly there is at first the monotonous plateau which
separates the valley of the Marne from that of the Oise. In this gently
rolling plain the villages are numerous, and everywhere, overlooking
the housetops, rise the pointed or saddle-roofed spires of old belfries.
There is not a hamlet of the Ile-de-France which does not possess a
precious and exquisite church. It is here, on the soil of the royal
domain, that the soul of France was formed. It is here that its national
art was born.
We will stop, as the luck of the road wills.
Louvres formerly possessed two churches: one of them has disappeared and
of it there remains only a fine Romanesque belfry; in the other, which
shows the somewhat absurd elegance of the fifteenth century, we see a
frieze of vine leaves running all around the wall. And behold, at the
very first stop, in this petty village, a charming résumé of the whole
of French art; a robust Romanesque tower, finished in the first period
of pointed Gothic and, beside the gray belfry, the excessive and
delightful luxury of flamboyant Gothic. A league farther on, the church
of Marly-la-Ville offers a perfect example of the art of the thirteenth
century; with its little flying buttresses and its low triforium, one
might say that it was the tiny model for a great cathedral. By the side
of the road, a poor half-ruined shed, with a broken roof, a hollowed
pavement and moldy walls, is the church of Fosses; in its misery and its
degradation, the humble nave of the twelfth century still preserves some
remnants of its pure beauty....
A glance at the pleasing Renaissance façade of the church of
Luzarches.... The automobile rolls along the edge of the forest....
Villas of horsebreeders and jockeys.... Some English cottages.... The
immense greensward and the very uneven cobbled street of Chantilly.... A
few more woods, and we behold the wide valley of the Oise.
On the opposite hill rises the church of Saint-Leu-d'Esserent, on a
large terrace, above the houses and the gardens of the town. The apse
turned toward the Oise, the robust flying buttresses and the radiating
chapels, two great square towers which flank the choir, the tower of the
porch with its tapering steeple, the grand and harmonious mass of the
edifice, all give to this church the aspect of a proud and gracious
citadel.
Saint-Leu-d'Esserent is one of the most moving types of the architecture
of the twelfth century, of that architecture which is called
transitional. The façade is still semi-Romanesque, but its openings are
already finer and more numerous. Internally, the mixture of Romanesque
and pointed gives to the monument an extraordinarily varied aspect; the
arches which separate the nave from the low side aisles are broken; the
full semicircle reappears in the triforium, and in the upper windows
the arch is pointed again. The vaulting is formed by the intersection
of pointed arches; but in the chapels of the apse there are trilobes
inscribed in circular arches. And this diversity of styles is here
the result neither of gropings nor of fresh starts; it results from a
marvelously conceived plan in which the builders knew how to mingle and
harmonize the beauties of tradition and the audacities of the new art.
The Romanesque architecture had no period of decadence and, on the other
hand, at the period when Saint-Leu-d'Esserent was built, the time
of research and of trial whence emerged the pointed architecture was
already past. It is the meeting of the two styles which renders
so magnificent certain churches of the twelfth century, such as
Saint-Leu-d'Esserent and Noyons.
[Illustration: 0189]
The ambulatory of the choir was enriched in a free and infinitely
harmonious style; the columns and the capitals, even as early as this,
show an admirable purity of style.
Saint-Leu-d'Esserent was an important priory of the Cluniac order. Some
arcades of the cloister still adhere to the wall of the church. Other
remains of the monastery exist on private property. We would have been
pleased to visit them. The proprietor answered us: "It is impossible;
this is the day I dry my washing." An inhabitant of Saint-Leu-d'Esserent
said to us a few moments later, in a mysterious tone: "The monks were
rich. There is buried treasure there. That man is sifting all the soil
on his land: he is looking for gold..." (Saint-Leu is sixty kilometers
from Paris.)
*****
For two days we are going to follow the valley where the river slowly
coils its long bends through the wheat fields and the poplars. The low
hills, covered with forests, lie in the distance and never come near
enough to force the Oise to sudden detours. This river is not like
the Marne, incessantly turned aside by the spur of a hill. It flows
indolently under a pale horizon, in a vast landscape whose shades are
infinitely delicate, and whose lines are infinitely soft. It bears
silent barges through the fertile plains. Daughter of the north, it
reflects in its clear green waters villages of brick. The smoke of
workshops mingles with the mist-banks of its sky. At night the lights of
the glass furnaces brighten its banks. By talking with the men who drive
their horses upon the towpath, it is easy to guess that the Oise is born
in Belgium.
Bell-towers dot the valley on both banks of the river. That of
Montataire rises above the trees of a park at the top of a bluff.
The church possesses an exquisite portal surmounted by a frightfully
mutilated bas-relief of the Annunciation; but how much grace the
draperies still possess!
It is useless to stop at Creil, since a barbarous municipality thought
it advisable to pull down the church of Saint Evremont, one of the most
beautiful specimens of the architecture of the twelfth century.
The people of Nogent-les-Vierges are not barbarians: they have preserved
their church. It is not as pure in style as that of Saint Evremont. But
its belfry--terribly restored--is adorned with original details. The
rectangular choir, which the thirteenth century added to the Romanesque
nave, possesses a rare elegance, with its slender pillars. What
a diversity there is in the creations of Gothic architecture! How
inventions in construction permitted infinite variation in the plans of
churches! It is only by thus traversing the countrysides of France
that one can admire the abundant imagination of the builders of the
thirteenth century. There are many churches, especially in the north,
which, like that of Nogent-les-Vierges, possess a choir terminated by a
flat wall. But the type is diversified from edifice to edifice. Open a
manual of archæology; take the most recent and the most complete of all,
that of M. Enlart, and you will observe what difficulty the author has
in classing and characterizing such work, after the last years of the
twelfth century. At no other period was architecture so profoundly
individual an art. We may say that every building was then original, not
only in the details, but especially in the plan.
I have written that the people of Nogent-les-Vierges were not
barbarians, but I am on the point of taking it back, when I think of a
sort of panoramic Calvary which they have installed in their beautiful
church. Let them look at this picture which might seem beautiful to
a Kanaka: then let them look at the two beautiful bas-reliefs of the
fifteenth century which are placed at the extremity of the nave, and let
them blush!
A little farther on, the church of Villers-Saint-Paul also possesses a
Romanesque nave on low, squat pillars, and a Gothic choir whose columns
expand into wide branches of stone. This choir is square, like that of
Nogent-les-Vierges. The two villages are only a league apart; without
doubt only a few years separated the two buildings, yet it will always
be impossible for us to confound these two churches in our memory!
Rieux also had its Romanesque nave and its Gothic choir. The nave has
been made into a schoolhouse. As to the choir, it is being restored, but
the orientation of the altar is being changed in the process, so that
the width of the choir becomes the length of the church. And they are
executing this lovely transformation without any thought of the ancient
plans, or any more respect for the wishes of the dead who, buried under
the pavement of the sanctuary, will no longer occupy the position with
respect to the altar in which they had wished to rest forever.
On the left bank of the Oise, Pont-Sainte Maxence: a pointed-arched
church of the Renaissance, heavy, massive. This type of architecture,
which has produced so many elegant works in Normandy, has been less
happy in the Isle of France. Pontpoint: a Romanesque nave, a pointed
choir, at the end of which they have preserved an old apse of the
eleventh century, and these patchings are delightful! We salute at the
portal of the church of Yerberie an adorable statue of the Virgin. We
cross back to the right bank of the Oise to admire the stone steeple of
Venette, pleasingly planted on the pedestal of a Romanesque tower: we
reach Compiègne.
*****
[Illustration: 0195]
Compiègne has a beautiful château which everybody knows, and Compiègne
is a charming town which many sojourners do not know. More than one
traveler has gone through it without ever having seen the chapel of the
ancient Hôtel-Dieu, whose grand reredos of carved wood is one of the
most brilliant masterpieces of the French sculpture of the seventeenth
century.
Compiègne possesses a historical society, which shows much zeal in
causing the preservation of the appearance and the monuments of the old
town. Let us praise in passing the efforts of these worthy men: we must
not lose a chance for exalting the good and saying evil of the wicked,
On one occasion this historical society intervened to prevent that,
under pretext of straightening a line, the remnants of an old bastion
should be destroyed because they injured, it was said, the beautiful
perspective of the subprefecture. It also undertook the defense of the
old tower called the Tower of Joan of Arc, and succeeded in saving this
venerable monument. Alas, it did not succeed in protecting the bridge
of Compiègne against the engineers who wrapped it up in an iron apron,
under pretext of facilitating traffic.... Yes, the traffic of the bridge
of Compiègne!
From belfry to belfry, we continue our route toward Noyon.
At the junction of the Aisne, in a pleasing landscape, the church of
Choisy-au-Bac seems to watch over the tombs of a little cemetery filled
with flowers. It is Romanesque, fairly well restored, and charmingly
picturesque.
At Longueil-sous-Thourotte, the poor old church is about to
disappear. By its side they have built a grand new church, a copy of
twelfth-century architecture. Was it worth while to demolish the modest
and venerable edifice of earlier days? Could it not be preserved
beside the proud modern construction, even if it were tottering
and dilapidated? It contained beautiful funeral slabs of the
Renaissance, which are going to be exiled, no one knows where; it
contained, above all, superb stained glass of the thirteenth century.
Two windows have been placed in the new church; but there remains a
third, and there remain also remarkable monochromatic frescoes. What is
going to be done with these precious remnants? They have not been listed
as national treasures.
... Tomorrow, perhaps, they will go to decorate the dining room of a
Chicago millionaire: what a disgrace! And all the windows of the new
church are adorned with stained glass whose banal horror makes the
magnificence of these ancient windows apparent to every eye!
The church of Thourotte--it is of the twelfth century, but has lost
much of its character--contains a fine altar screen of gilded wood,
representing the different scenes of the Passion. It is said to be
Flemish work; judging by the types of certain personages, this might
be doubted; but the shutters which close upon the screen bear paintings
whose origin is not in the least doubtful. Poor paintings, whose
restoration was confided by a too-zealous curate to a pitiable dauber!
Now, the Commission of Historic Monuments has fisted the beautiful
sculptures and has put them under glass: the effect of this is
abominable, but we live among barbarians and second-hand dealers, and we
are actually forced to put our works of art under lock and key to defend
them. As for the painted shutters, they are hung up on the wall: a
few were spared by the dauber. In the same church we may still see two
beautiful altars supported by torsos of the seventeenth century. How
many beautiful works of art still remain in our little churches of
France, in spite of revolutions and dealers in antiques!
The Cistercian abbey of Ourscamp is now a cotton spinning mill. Behind
a magnificent iron fence stretch vast buildings of the seventeenth
century. In the center rises a grand pavilion. We pass through an open
door between the high columns which support the balcony of the upper
story, and suddenly discover that this immense construction is a mere
veneer to hide the old church of the monastery. Of the nave there is no
longer anything remaining; but a little farther on, in the midst of
the park, the choir still lifts its arches of magnificently pure
architecture. The roof has fallen, but the columns and the walls still
stand. It is a picture like that of the church of Long-pont, in the
forest of Villers-Cotterets. (There is also great similarity between
the architecture of Longpont and that of Ourscamp.) It seems that the
intimate beauty of Gothic art is better revealed to us when we thus
discover the ruin of one of its masterpieces among the trunks and
branches of trees; we then can better feel the living grace of its
columns and the freedom of its arches.... There is so much truth in this
admirable page from the _Génie du christianisme_: "The forests of the
Gauls have passed in their turn into the temples of our fathers, and our
forests of oak have thus maintained their sacred origin. These vaults
carved into foliage, these jambs which support the walls and end
suddenly like broken trunks, the coolness of the vaults, the darknesses
of the sanctuary, the obscure wings, the secret passages, the lowly
doorways, all retrace the labyrinths of the woods in the Gothic church:
everything makes us feel in it religious horror, mysteries and divinity,
etc...." The centuries have accomplished their work, and, in the ruins
of the edifice, which is surrounded and invaded by the verdure of the
forest, we recognize still better what art learns from nature. [13]
Of the old abbey, there still remains a superb hall with Gothic vaults
and a triple nave. It is called the "Hall of the Dead," because it is
said that the bodies of the monks were placed there for two days before
the funeral. So great a room for this use? Was it not rather the chapter
room of the monastery?
I will say nothing of Noyon today. On another occasion we will return
to this lovable and silent town, which is adorned with one of the most
perfect religious edifices of our country.
* * * * *
Upon the return trip, in the forest and valleys adjacent to the valley
of the Oise, the obedient auto stopped before many other exquisite
churches.
[Illustration: 0201]
The belfry of Tracy-le-Val is one of the pearls of French art. The tower
rests upon a square subbasement; when it has reached the height of the
apse, two long, narrow windows open upon each side, framed by little
columns of adorably fine workmanship, and monsters and grotesques
grimace on all sides under the arches and upon the capitals. Above these
strange details, the tower suddenly becomes octagonal, but, to mask the
abrupt change in the architectural scheme, statues with outstretched
wings are placed at the four angles. A conical tower of stone crowns
this strange belfry, twice admirable, by the richness of its decoration
and by the grace of its proportions.
Saint-Jean-aux-Bois, in the midst of the forest of Compiègne, is a
church of the twelfth century which the restorers have rebuilt. Perhaps
it will still interest a few archaeologists by the originality of its
plan: designed in the form of a Latin cross, its crossarms have double
bays, like the nave; but this singularity of construction is the only
merit which the church retains today: it is clean, new, frozen and dead.
Morienval, with its three towers, its triple nave, and its ambulatory,
is a beautiful church. In the interminable controversies which have
raged over the date and the place of the origin of the Gothic style,
Morienval has been cited a hundred times, and it has been much discussed
because of its ambulatory, which is vaulted with pointed arches and
which certain historians affirm to have been built in the middle of the
'eleventh century.... I do not know. But what I know well, is that, in
future controversies, one will do well to hold to the texts and to the
drawings, and not to attempt to reason from the monument itself; for
this exists no longer, or at least it is restored, which amounts to the
same thing. Yes, they have restored the ambulatory of Morienval,
and they have not half restored it, I can assure you. For they have
completely recarved certain capitals.... It is truly a singular
spectacle to see in the twentieth century so many stone carvers
occupied, some in producing Romanesque, others Gothic, and still others
classical architecture. It is also diverting to think of the mistakes
into which future archaeologists will fall, led astray by all these
copies. But, in spite of all, as it is the old monuments which pay
for these debauches of sculpture, as it is at the expense of their
conservation that this fury of restoration is exercised, we would
willingly renounce these ironical joys. Oh, if the restorers would only
consecrate each year to the placing of tiles or slates the sums which
they squander in having capitals recarved!
Since the fancy of this archaeological excursion has taken me into the
valley of the Authonne, a pretty name for a pretty brook, I desire to
see that chateau of Vez which its owner, M. Dru, recently bequeathed to
the nation. It is a magnificent fortress on the summit of a wooded hill.
The donjon and the encircling wall have been skillfully restored. Of the
main body of the building, of which only ruins remain, a part only was
rebuilt by M. Dru.... Will the nation accept the legacy? I hope so,
because it appears that M. Dru left a sum sufficient to finish the work.
This sort of archaeological restitution seems to me very unnecessary; it
would be far better to leave such things to theatrical scene builders.
But it is not necessary to discourage the worthy who diminish the
profits of the house wreckers by bequeathing their castles to the
public.
Irony of geographical names! At the foot of the hill which sustains the
donjon of Vez, we see, in the midst of the fields, a Gothic church of
the flamboyant period, remnant of a Premonstraten-sian monastery. It
is now used as a farmstead. Ï consult my map to know the name of the
hamlet: it is called _Lieu-Restauré _(Restored Place).
I took the road back to Paris through the great plains of Valois,
overlooked by the sublime spire of the cathedral of Senlis.
IX. GALLARDON
[Illustration: 0207]