arches and rather elaborate in its details but very late in its
date. There was less to interest in S. Quentin than in most places
I have visited as yet, so I was very well able to get away at 11 to
Tergnier by railway; here we waited for an hour and then started in
a slow diligence for Laon through La Fère and Crépy. I could not
see any church in the former place, but in the latter--a good sized
village--are two, both of first-pointed date and one with a remarkably
good chancel having an east window and side windows of two lights
with a distinct circular window above, and all adorned with dog-tooth
ornaments. The other was remarkable for a very striking western porch.
The road was pretty and soon after passing Crépy brought us in sight
of the cathedral of Laon crowning its noble hill in right royal style.
A drenching storm of rain prevented our seeing much of the beauty of
the view as we climbed the steep road that winds round the hill into
the town, but in the evening when we walked round the ramparts we found
that it was one of most uncommon magnificence--a vast expanse of flat
country generally green in its colour, dotted here and there with woods
or villages, and bounded in some parts of the horizon with distant
hills....
Our first object in the morning was the cathedral. The original idea
of the church (which is said to have been built in the extraordinarily
short space of two years) was a great nave, choir and transepts,
the west front and both the transept fronts being flanked with two
towers of nearly equal height and even fairly similar design. Four
of these were completed, those on the east side of the transepts
having been only carried up to the height of the roof gables. There
is a combination of intense simplicity with an intricate and delicate
transparent effect in the open pinnacles at the angles which is
wonderfully fine. The scale is larger and the whole treatment though
similar is finer than that of Senlis, and though it was imitated it was
not, I think, rivalled, even in the magnificent steeples at Rheims.
There is a lantern at the intersection of the nave and transepts
which, had it been carried up some vast height above the other towers,
might possibly have helped to reduce them all to order; but there is no
sign of any such intention, and the only reason for it that can be seen
is the desire to elevate the groining at the intersection to a great
height above the rest of the roof. I have sketched and measured these
towers so carefully that I shall say no more about them, save that they
are groined just below the summit and that they were evidently intended
for some further finish than they now have, probably for spires like
those at Senlis.
The interior of Laon is singularly like that of Noyon, having the same
double triforium, but being finished at the east with a square end
instead of an apse. Going from one church to another differing only in
this respect seemed to give the best possible means of ascertaining
with some degree of certainty their relative merits; and certainly it
seemed to me that, of the two, Noyon was incomparably the superior, and
entirely on this account. The east end of Laon is nevertheless fine for
a square east end, and has the windows filled with very magnificent old
glass of deep colour. The altar is now brought forward one bay so as to
leave a passage beneath the east window.
The capitals generally of this church are very finely treated and would
afford endless examples of good work in this early style. In studying
the church one of the features most to be noticed is the frequent
recurrence of carved courses of foliage which everywhere take the place
of moulded string courses.
The south transept has double doorways, and above them a very beautiful
rose window. This has now become curious because by its side there
is the jamb of a middle-pointed window, evidently inserted by some
ambitious man who was going on to put in an entirely new window but who
was happily stopped here; I say “here” because he was unhappily not
stopped in the south transept and so we have to regret the loss of a
grand window suitable to the building and the insertion of one which in
no way improves it. On the north side of the choir a great alteration
was made in the thirteenth century by throwing out the outer walls to
the face of the buttresses in order to gain a considerable number of
chapels. This was done in very good style indeed and much improves this
part of the exterior.
The only apsidal terminations in the whole church are those of two
chapels thrown out on the east side of the transepts. They are carried
up three stages in height, one of which opens into the transept aisle
and the two others form another chapel out of the magnificent triforium.
Round the east end of the cathedral are large remains of old buildings
of early date, connected probably with the church (which, by the by, is
said to have been built in A.D. 1113 and 1114, dates which seem to me
to be at least fifty years too early for such a structure). The main
portion of these buildings consists of a long pile opening to a sort
of garth or cloister, north-east of the cathedral, with simple pointed
arches supported on low circular columns, and showing on the other side
the elevation which I have sketched roughly, and which, standing just
at the edge of the cliff, looks on a vast expanse of country until the
far distance is lost in mist. These buildings are now converted into
some Courts of Law, store houses and lumber rooms.
The Bishop of Laon lives elsewhere I fancy, as our landlord made much
of his having come expressly to join in a procession through the city
which we witnessed on Sunday afternoon. This procession was new to me
and may as well be recorded: it visited a number of altars got up in
a temporary manner, elevated on high flights of steps, and decorated
profusely with flowers, garlands and drapery. These were erected in
every available space, and I suppose by the zeal of the neighbors in
each locality. As the time for the procession came, all the good people
of the city hung up white sheets over the fronts of their shops so that
the whole street bore a most singular appearance, though the universal
white was here and there relieved by the old pieces of tapestry with
some sacred story on it hung out by some more well-to-do person.
Presently through the dense crowd came the procession--first, girls
bearing banners and draped in white, then other banners, clergy,
acolytes, censer-bearers and lastly the bishop under a square velvet
baldachin carried by priests, walking between two priests, bearing a
monstrance with the Host.
At intervals the censer-bearers turned and censed and then went on
again, till they reached an altar, which the bishop always ascended
and gave the benediction from it, displaying the Host to the people
all kneeling below. The procession was followed and kept in some order
by soldiers whose band, alternately with the choristers, accompanied
the march. In half an hour after the return of the bishop from his
rather long procession the town had resumed its old look, the white
sheets were gone, and the altars pulled down or denuded of all their
ornaments. All the towns we had been in had been preparing for the
same fête, which was to be greatest at Lille, where “_Notre Dame de la
Treille_”--whose day it was--is looked on as the patron of the city.
From the cathedral we went to the church of S. Martin at the other end
of the main street. The general effect of the exterior is very good,
and very superior to the interior,--which is very simple, rather bad
in its design, and much modernized. The south transept front is very
fine and remarkable for the boldness of the mouldings on its buttresses
and strings. The west front is, after this, the finest portion of the
building, being a very ornate addition in middle-pointed to the old
Romanesque church. It is very picturesque and I liked it much.
From the church we turned down into a walk which follows the line of
the old ramparts and nearly surrounds the city. The view, from this
part of it, of the cathedral standing on a sort of promontory, with the
cluster of houses around it, the vine-covered hill sloping down rapidly
to the valley on the right, and then the flat vale, lined all over with
rows of poplars, and finished against the horizon with fine hills, was
most charming. Indeed I have never seen any town of which the views
were so invariably magnificent as they are always round old Laon. We
saw no other old church here, save one below the hill with a central
tower and low spire, which looked at all as though it might be worth
visiting. In the street close to the south transept of the cathedral is
a gable end of a good middle-pointed house.
We left Laon in the coupé of a small diligence at 6 P.M. for Rheims,
grateful in the extreme for the one fine day which we had as yet
had--nowhere so grateful as here, where every turn disclosed some
view or some subject of which a bright sun was the most indispensable
adjunct.
Our going to Rheims afforded no incidents. When we crossed the hills
from Laon and descended towards the broad valley of Champagne we had
a most glorious view, simple in all its detail, but full of beautiful
colour, and rich and verdant in the extreme. One small village we
passed on the way had a church of which I managed to get a sketch while
we changed horses. I went inside and found the whole church fitted with
open seats on a raised wooden floor. The central tower is groined and
has only a small apse to the east, and the effect of this inside is
exceedingly good. The south aisle consists of a series of compartments
running north and south, the roofs boarded on the under side and coved
or canted, and descending not on arches across the aisle but on beams.
The steeple was, I think, the only part groined. From this village to
Rheims our journey was made in the dark and it was nearly eleven as we
drove along under the shadow of the great walls of the cathedral and
into the gate of the inn which faces its west front, where happily we
found rest for our weary limbs....
_June 19._
It rained fast when I turned out early this morning and continued to do
so perseveringly all the day. This was miserable and perhaps has made
my recollection of Rheims less pleasant than it ought to be.
The west front with its three great doorways is very magnificent. The
two steeples, which are developments from the Laon idea, and like Laon
unfinished, are at present not large enough for the porch and look too
much like turrets, and yet they are of immense size. The substitution
of second-pointed mouldings in these steeples for the first-pointed
shafts of those at Laon, is unfortunately not an improvement. The whole
porch is covered in the most lavish manner with elaborate sculpture of
the very finest character and detail, but it is generally spread over
the whole surface and gives perhaps an effect of littleness and fritter
to the whole front. The detail of the pinnacles and flying buttresses
at the sides is unusually fine, and all of the same fine early
middle-pointed date--that of the apse and the chapels surrounding it is
equally fine. The northern transept is also a fine composition, but the
parapets were intended to have flanking towers and these are carried
up in the same way as those both at Rouen and Chartres, hardly on a
sufficient scale to be looked on as towers. Their great open belfry
windows produce a fine effect. The three doors of the north transept
are all very fine, though the sculpture on some of them is of earlier
date than that of the west front, and of very ingenious execution.
On entering, the impression produced is one of exquisite proportions,
colour, and decoration, but perhaps a little too much of all this and
not so much of that indescribable feeling which some noble churches so
eminently produce. It is in fact a work of faultless art rather than
religious feeling, though so noble a work of art cannot help inspiring
great religious feeling. The whole design is extremely simple and as
free from superfluous decoration as the west front is crowded with it.
Its triforium appeared to be poor and insignificant in the extreme,
after the magnificent triforia of Noyon and the other early churches
with their ampler open spaces and fine groinings. The treatment of the
west wall on the inside is very curious. It is divided into a great
number of trefoiled niches with very little in the way of moulding,
each niche having a figure; and the background being coloured white
throws out these figures remarkably. Borders, spandrels, etc., are
filled in profusely with much delicately carved and very flat foliage,
all most accurately copied from natural forms. In the north transept
is a curious wooden clock-case of the fourteenth century.... We left
Rheims at 6 o’clock in the evening by railway for Meaux where we
arrived to sleep at 11.
_June 20._
As is my wont, I was very early at the cathedral this morning. The
scale is not large, and in particular the nave is singularly short,
only three bays east of the towers. One tower only is completed, and
that in a flamboyant style. The church is very open inside, having two
aisles, and chapels on each side of the nave and a good arrangement
of chapels, etc., around the choir. The great beauty of the interior
is its generally fine style--very early third-pointed--the beauty of
the triforia, and the particularly fine interior of the transepts. I
managed to get some sketches to show its general character before we
left, which was at 11 A.M. for Paris, and there seemed to be no old
buildings of any interest in Meaux, though I saw one old pile with
corner turrets near the cathedral.
We reached Paris at 12.30 having noticed a fine-looking church on our
way, at the station of Lagny, which well deserves a visit....
_June 22._
Wrote letters and then to Notre Dame.... A fee gave me admittance to
the new sacristy and small cloister. The detail of this is all very
good, save the doorways; and the glass, which is a _grisaille_ with
subjects boldly drawn on glass of very pale tincture but thick in
texture, was very good indeed. The encaustic tiles used here are very
inferior to ours.... On our way we just looked at the S. Chapelle, the
new turret on which appears to me to be most unsatisfactory.
At 12.20 we left Paris for Evreux, going by railway to Vernon station.
I expected much here and was much disappointed. The cathedral is a
building whose substratum is good first-pointed, but this has been
overlaid by an accumulation of late flamboyant work, so as to be almost
invisible. The west front has been rebuilt in bad classic. The north
transept is a rich and picturesque piece of flamboyant work of the
most ornate kind, and has across its angles internally some immense
squinches to carry a passage from the aisle to the end walls. A great
deal of very good grisaille glass of the thirteenth century has been
retained in the flamboyant windows, and in the others there is a good
deal of late stained glass which seems to be of fair quality. The
church internally is very narrow in proportion to its height and looks
consequently more lofty than it really is. The other church at Evreux,
S. Taurin, is a Romanesque church altered in flamboyant and adorned
with a west front of pseudo-classic. It is a fine church, and its main
ornament is the magnificent shrine of S. Taurin, of which I managed
to get some slight sketches. It is of silver or other metal, gilt,
with some very good ornamentation in enamel and niello. In the south
transept wall is an arcade filled in with coloured tiles, but it hardly
looks as if it would be original; nevertheless, it is said to be so and
I see no reason for supposing it likely that such an enrichment would
have been subsequently added in such a place.
_June 23._
We left Evreux at 7 A.M. for S. Pierre station and passed through
Louviers on the way. I had only time to run in for two minutes to
look at the cathedral. It is like Evreux, an early pointed church
with flamboyant alterations, but its scale is small. The triforium
and clerestory in first-pointed are very good, with relieving arches
inside....
We reached Rouen at 11 and though I had seen all its curiosities
before, I was glad to have another opportunity of looking at them.
The cathedral gains rather than loses in my estimation. Its general
proportions are fine and all its detail admirably good. Unfortunately
it is whitewashed and not much cared for, and so people fancy it a poor
church. It is on the contrary very fine, and much finer in all ways
than its rival S. Ouen....
After the cathedral almost everything in Rouen is very late in style
and unsatisfactory therefore; it is an interesting town in many ways
but in no way to be compared with such a town as Cologne for real
architectural interest.
In the evening I made a sketch of the north-west tower, which with
its quaint slated roof is a most picturesque composition. Indeed the
whole west front is very grand and broad in its effect, whenever it
can be seen without the detestable new cast-iron spire of the central
steeple....
_June 24._
We left Rouen by diligence for Lisieux at 7 A.M. The ride is for much
of the way very pretty, notably so between Rouen and Elboeuf, and again
about Brienne, a small town with two churches, one of them undergoing
some restoration of not good character. At Bourgtheroulde I went into
the church and found all the roofs of wood, arched and boarded, with
tie-beams and ring-posts....
We reached Lisieux at 3 P.M. It was a fair day, and the _place_ in
front of the cathedral was crowded with people, shows and booths. The
church was very full, and in the choir, suspended on a beam, were three
great new bells just made, and I suppose in process of being blessed
before being hung in the tower.
The whole church is very fine and of nearly uniform date, the choir
rather more advanced first-pointed than the nave and with a late
Lady-chapel added. The triforium of the choir is very charming;
and here and in the side windows of the choir aisle--also very
beautiful--there is a great fondness displayed for cusped circles sunk
slightly in plain walling-spaces, as also in the spandrels of arches,
etc. This is the case notably in the west front and again in the fine
north-west steeple, where bands of circles are used as strings. This
was seen also in the steeple of Senlis. In the west front, which
has been elaborately restored, the side doorways are small but very
beautiful, finishing with trefoil heads and remarkable for the great
masses of regular foliage round their arches in place of mouldings.
These are used with the happiest effect.[11] The exterior of the south
transept is also a fine simple composition and the interior of this and
of the north transept are specially good. The church is apsidal with
two chapels besides the Lady-chapel.
The music used here was strictly Gregorian; so also at S. James’s,
where the congregation joined most heartily.... The two western towers
are very different, that on the south-west early and for a number of
stages of Romanesque work; the other very beautiful, and in its belfry
stage giving a type for others--as especially S. Pierre and others in
Caen--to copy. The north-west steeple has no spire and that of the
other has been much modernized. There is a low central tower which
forms a fine lofty lantern internally.
The only other mediaeval church in Lisieux is on a large scale but
entirely of poor flamboyant work. We were there whilst a collection
was being made; a Gregorian psalm was sung and the collection was made
by a priest first and then by a little girl dressed up very smartly in
white. There was a crowded congregation composed mostly of women.
A good many old wooden houses remain in the streets of Lisieux; few
however are of very rare character and all seemed of the latest date.
Our inn was dirty, disagreeable, but cheap,--two dinners, two beds and
servants coming to 8 francs only! But its merits were so questionable
that we were very glad to find ourselves on our way to Caen. We left at
6 A.M. and arrived there at 10. There were one or two fine views on the
road, but otherwise it had no interest until the many towers and spires
of Caen rose before us.... I had seen Caen before, but five years
had left me so far forgetful of the detail of its beauties as to be
heartily glad to discover them again.
The church of S. Pierre was close to our inn and its spire was first
of all looked at. It is certainly very glorious but not original. The
spire is copied from S. Étienne and the tower is a repetition of what
seems to have been the one idea of a tower in this part of France.
Lisieux has an early example, and so too have Bretteville, Norrey and
others; but giving up the point of his originality, the architect of
S. Pierre must nevertheless have great credit for his mode of working
up old ideas. S. Jean and Notre Dame in Caen have steeples copied
from S. Pierre, so that we have here an instance of the same design
being reproduced for three hundred years again and again, dressed only
in different detail. This is a most curious fact and one not often
paralleled, I think....
_The discussion in detail of the many churches in Caen seems hardly
to call for printing as mere record, for the ground has been
well covered by later travellers and not, this time, reached by
the German army._
_June 26._
To-day we changed our diligence travelling for a more agreeable mode,
by hiring a phaeton to take us to Bayeux in order that we might be able
to stop on our way at one or two churches.
At 8 A.M., we started; the view of Caen on leaving is fine, its towers
and spires standing up well against the sky. A village is passed very
soon with an early church whose bell-tower on the chancel end is of
good character. One or two steeples with saddleback roofs are seen near
the road, and at the end of about seven or eight miles the tall spire
of Bretteville l’Orgueilleuse rises on the road. The design is most
curiously like S. Pierre, Caen, but it is earlier and has been much
mutilated. All the piercings in the spire are filled in, and one only
of the spire-lights remains in its place, though there are evident
traces of others having existed. The tower rises above the chancel and
east of it is a sacrarium of the same date, square-ended and with two
lancets in the east wall, but groined in such a way as to make one
think that its architect could not forget his apsidal terminations.
The nave is modern, or perhaps I should rather say modernized. The
windows of the tower and sacrarium and the doorway in the north wall of
the former, are of very good detail--the transition from Romanesque.
There is a piscina in the south wall. East of this chancel has been
built within the last year or two a most frightful sacristy, intended I
suppose to be pagan but at present not very definite, as all the stones
which compose its wall are built up in block to be hewn out afterwards.
This of course blocks up the curious east end, but the priest to whom
I protested against this wanton piece of barbarism made very light of
the matter. I cannot see that the clergy anywhere take the interest
that one would expect in such matters, for I have seen nowhere any
restorations of at all proper character, except such as are being
carried out by government with public funds.
From Bretteville a drive of about a mile brought us to Norrey, whose
church is so remarkable that I measured its plan and sketched many of
its details.
It consists of a nave without aisles and a choir and transepts with
aisles and two apsidal chapels to the choir aisle. The nave is similar
in its detail of windows and doors to Bretteville, and in no way
worth particular notice, but the rest of the church is most singular.
Its decorations are extremely elaborate, the mouldings and ornamental
carvings being carved out with a depth of elaborate elegance seldom
rivalled. The mouldings are singularly deep and effective, and the
carving all very good. The style is thoroughly good pure first-pointed,
and looks more like English work than foreign. The dimensions are
exceedingly small, the width in the clear of the choir being only
about sixteen feet and of the aisle not seven feet, whilst some of the
intercolumniations are not more than three feet and a half and three
feet ten inches. The plan is nevertheless similar in all respects to
that of a large church of the first order, save in the absence of a
central chapel at the east end, and it is therefore much more properly
called a “model cathedral” than churches so dignified generally are.
The piscinae of the chapels are good and have one orifice and a large
space of shelf. One of the altars is original and has a mass of masonry
under it for, I suppose, relics. The whole church is in the most
wretchedly damp, dirty and neglected state, and a disgrace to all who
have any charge of it.