ROUEN

1876

It is quite in the nature of things that a Parisian correspondence

should have flagged during the last few weeks; for even the most

brilliant of capitals, when the summer has fairly begun to be summer,

affords few topics to the chronicler. To a chronicle of small beer such

a correspondence almost literally finds itself reduced. The

correspondent consumes a goodly number of those magnified thimblefuls of

this fluid, known in Paris as "bocks," and from the shadiest corner of

the coolest café he can discover watches the softened bitumen grow more

largely interspaced. There is little to do or to see, and therefore

little to write about. There is in fact only one thing to do, namely, to

get out of Paris. The lively imagination of the correspondent

anticipates his departure and takes flight to one of the innumerable

watering-places whose charms at this season are set forth in large

yellow and pink placards on all the empty walls. They order this matter,

like so many others, much better in France. Here you have not, as in

America, to hunt up the "summer retreat" about which you desire

information in a dense alphabetical list in the columns of a newspaper;

you are familiar with its merits for weeks before you start--you have

seen them half a dozen times a day emblazoned on the line of your

customary walk, over the hand and seal of the company that runs, as we

should say in America, the Casino. If you are detained in Paris,

however, after luckier mortals have departed--your reflections upon the

fate of the luckless mortals who do not depart at all are quite another

question, demanding another chapter--it does not perhaps make you much

happier to peruse these lyrical advertisements, which seem to flutter

with the breezes of Houlgate and Etretat. You must take your consolation

where you can find it, and it must be added that of all great cities

Paris is the most tolerable in hot weather. It is true that the asphalt

liquifies, and it is true that the brilliant limestone of which the city

is built reflects the sun with uncomfortable fierceness. It is also true

that of a summer evening you pay a penalty for living in the

best-lighted capital in the world. The inordinate amount of gas in the

streets makes the atmosphere hot and thick, so that even under the dim

constellations you feel of a July night as if you were in a big

music-hall If you look down at such a time upon the central portions of

Paris from a high window in a remoter quarter, you see them wrapped in a

lurid haze, of the devil's own brewing. But, on the other hand, there

are a hundred facilities for remaining out of doors. You are not obliged

to sit on a "stoop" or on a curbstone, as in New-York. The Boulevards

are a long chain of cafés, each one with its little promontory of

chairs and tables projecting into the sea of asphalt. These promontories

are doubtless not exactly islands of the blessed, peopled though some of

them may be with sirens addicted to beer, but they may help you to pass

a hot evening. Then you may dine in the Champs Elysées, at a table

spread under the trees, beside an ivied wall, and almost believe you are

in the country. This illusion, imperfect as it is, is a luxury, and must

be paid for accordingly; the dinner is not so good as at a restaurant on

the Boulevard, and is considerably dearer, and there is after all not

much difference in sitting with one's feet in dusty gravel or on a

sanded floor. But the whole situation is more idyllic. I indulged in a

cheap idyl the other day by taking the penny steamer down the Seine to

Auteuil (a very short sail), and dining at what is called in Parisian

parlance a _guingette_ on the bank of the stream. It was a very humble

style of entertainment, but the most ambitious pursuit of pleasure can

do no more than succeed, and this was a success. The Seine at Auteuil is

wide, and is spanned by a stately viaduct of two tiers of arches, which

stands up against the sky in a picturesque and monumental manner. Your

table is spread under a trellis which scratches your head--spread

chiefly with fried fish--and an old man who looks like a political exile

comes and stands before it and sings a doleful ditty on the respect due

to white hairs. You testify by the bestowal of copper coin the esteem

with which his own inspire you, and he is speedily replaced by a lad

with one arm, who treats you to something livelier:

"A la bonne heure; parlez-moi de ça!"

You eventually return to Paris on the top of a tramcar. It is a very

different affair to go out and dine at the Bois de Boulogne, at the

charming restaurant which is near the cascade and the Longchamp

racecourse. Here are no ballad-singers, but stately trees majestically

grouped and making long evening shadows on a lawn, and irreproachable

tables, and carriages rolling up behind high-stepping horses and

depositing all sorts of ladies. The drive back through the wood at night

is most charming, and the coolness of the air extreme, however hot you

may still be certain to find the city.

The best thing, therefore, is not to go back. I write these lines at an

inn at Havre, before a window which frames the picture of the seaward

path of the transatlantic steamers. One of the great black ships is at

this moment painted on the canvas, very near, and beginning its outward

journey. I watch it to the right-hand ledge of the window, which is as

far as so poor a sailor need be expected to follow it. The hotel at

Havre is called, for mysterious reasons, "Frascati"--reasons which I

give up the attempt to fathom, so undiscoverable are its points of

analogy with the lovely village of the same name which nestles among the

olives of the Roman hills. The locality has its charms, however. It is

very agreeable, for instance, at the end of a hot journey, to sit down

to dinner in a great open cage, hung over the Atlantic, and, while the

sea-breeze cools your wine, watch the swiftly-moving ships pass before

you like the figures on the field of a magic lantern. It is pleasant

also to open your eyes in the early dawn, before the light is intense,

and without moving your head on the pillow, enjoy the same clear vision

of the ocean highway. In the vague dusk, with their rapid gliding, the

passing vessels look like the ghosts of wrecked ships. Most seaports are

picturesque, and Havre is not the least so; but my enjoyment has been

not of my goal, but of my journey.

My head is full of the twenty-four hours I have just passed at Rouen,

and of the charming sail down the Seine to Honfleur. Rouen is a city of

very ancient renown, and yet I confess I was not prepared to find a

little town of so much expression. The traveller who treads the Rouen

streets at the present day sees but the shadow of their former

characteristics; for the besom of M. Haussmann has swept through the

city, and a train of "embellishments" has followed in its track. The

streets have been widened and straightened, and the old houses--gems of

mediæval domestic architecture--which formed the peculiar treasure of

the place, have been more than decimated. A great deal remains, however,

and American eyes are quick to make discoveries. The cathedral, the

churches, the Palais de Justice, are alone a splendid group of

monuments, and a stroll through the streets reveals a collection of

brown and sculptured façades, of quaintly-timbered gables, of curious

turrets and casements, of doorways which still may be called rich. Every

now and then a considerable stretch of duskiness and crookedness

delights the sentimental tourist who is to pass but a couple of nights

at Rouen, and who does not care if his favourite adjective happen to

imply another element which also is spelled with a _p_. It is nothing to

him that the picturesque is pestiferous. It is everything to him that

the great front of the cathedral is magnificently battered, heavy,

impressive. It has been defaced immensely, and is now hardly more than a

collection of empty niches. I do not mean, of course, that the wanton

tourist rejoices in the absence of the statues which once filled them,

but up to the present moment, at least, he is not sorry that the façade

has not been restored. It consists of a sort of screen, pierced in the

centre with a huge wheel-window, crowned with a pyramid of chiselled

needles and spires, flanked with two turrets capped with tall empty

canopies, and covered, generally, with sculptures--friezes, statues,

excrescences. On each side of it rises a great tower; one a rugged mass

of early Norman work, with little ornament save its hatcheted closed

arches, and its great naked base, as huge and white as the bottom of a

chalk-cliff; the other a specimen of sixteenth century gothic, extremely

flamboyant and confounding to the eye. The sides of the cathedral are as

yet more or less imbedded in certain black and dwarfish old houses, but

if you pass around them by a long détour, you arrive at two superb

lateral porches. The so-called Portail des Libraires, in especial, on

the northern side, is a magnificent affair, sculptured from summit to

base (it is now restored), and preceded by a long forecourt, in which

the guild of booksellers used to hold its musty traffic. From here you

see the immense central tower, perched above the junction of the

transepts and the nave, and crowned with a gigantic iron spire, lately

erected to replace one which was destroyed by lightning in the early

part of the century. This gaunt pyramid has the drawback, to American

eyes, of resembling too much the tall fire-towers which are seen in

transatlantic cities, and its dimensions are such that, viewed from a

distance, it fairly makes little Rouen look top-heavy. Behind the choir,

within, is a beautiful lady-chapel, and in this chapel are two

enchanting works of art. The larger and more striking of these is the

tomb of the two Cardinals d'Amboise, uncle and nephew--the elder, if I

mistake not, minister of Louis XII. It consists of a shallow, oblong

recess in the wall, lined with gilded and fretted marble, and corniced

with delicate little statues. Within the recess the figures of the two

cardinals are kneeling, with folded hands and ruggedly earnest faces,

their long robes spread out behind them with magnificent amplitude. They

are full of life, dignity, and piety; they look like portraits of

Holbein transferred into marble. The base of the monument is composed of

a series of admirable little images representing the cardinal and other

virtues, and the effect of the whole work is wonderfully grave and rich.

The discreet traveller will never miss an opportunity to come into a

great church at eventide--the hour when his fellow-travellers, less

discreet, are lingering over the table d'hôte, when the painted windows

glow with a deeper splendour, when the long wand of the beadle, slowly

tapping the pavement, or the shuffle of the old sacristan, has a ghostly

resonance along the empty nave, and three or four work-weary women,

before a dusky chapel, are mumbling for the remission of unimaginable

sins. At this hour, at Rouen, the tomb of the Duke of Brézé, husband

of Diana of Poitiers, placed opposite to the monument I have just

described, seemed to me the most beautiful thing in the world. It is

presumably the work of the delightful Jean Goujon, and it bears the

stamp of his graceful and inventive talent. The deceased is lying on his

back, almost naked, with a part of his shroud bound in a knot about his

head--a realistic but not a repulsive image of death. At his head kneels

the amiable Diana, in sober garments, all decency and devotion; at his

feet stands the Virgin, a charming young woman with a charming child.

Above, on another tier, the subject of the monument is represented in

the fulness of life, dressed as for a tournament, bestriding a

high-stepping war-horse, riding forth like a Roland or a Galahad. The

architecture of the tomb is exceedingly graceful and the subordinate

figures admirable, but the image of the dead Duke is altogether a

masterpiece. The other evening, in the solemn stillness and the fading

light of the great cathedral, it seemed irresistibly human and touching.

The spectator felt a sort of impulse to smooth out the shroud and

straighten the helpless hands.

The second church of Rouen, Saint-Ouen, the beautiful and harmonious,

has no monuments of this value, but it offers within a higher interest

than the Cathedral. Without, it looks like an English abbey, scraped and

restored, disencumbered of huddling neighbours and surrounded on three

sides by a beautiful garden. Seen to this excellent advantage it is one

of the noblest of churches; but within, it is one of the most

fascinating. My taste in architecture greatly resembles my opinions in

fruit; the particular melon or pear or peach that I am eating appears to

me to place either peaches, pears, or melons, beyond all other succulent

things. In the same way, in a fine building the present impression is

the one that convinces me most. This is deplorable levity; yet I risk

the affirmation _à propos_ of Saint-Ouen. I can imagine no happier

combination of lightness and majesty. Its proportions bring tears to the

eyes. I have left myself space only to recommend the sail down the Seine

from Rouen to the mouth of the stream; but I recommend it in the highest

terms. The heat was extreme and the little steamer most primitive, but

the river is as entertaining as one could wish. It makes an infinite

number of bends and corners and angles, rounded off by a charming

vegetation. Abrupt and rocky hills go with it all the way--hills with

cornfields lying in their hollows and deep woods crowning their tops.

Out of the woodland peep old manors, and beneath, between the hills and

the stream, are high-thatched farmsteads, lying deep in their meadows

and orchards, cottages pallisaded with hollyhocks, gray old Norman

churches and villas flanked with big horse-chestnuts. It is a land of

peace and plenty, and remarkable to Anglo-Saxon eyes for the

English-looking details of its scenery. I noticed a hundred places where

one might have been in Kent as well as in Normandy. In fact it is almost

better than Kent, for Kent has no Seine. At the last the river becomes

unmistakably an arm of the sea, and as a river, therefore, less

interesting. But crooked little Honfleur, with its miniature port,

clinging to the side of a cliff as luxuriant as one of the headlands of

the Mediterranean, gratifies in a high degree the tourist with a

propensity for sketching.