Magny, and Pontoise; the lower, by the banks of the Seine. Having
travelled by both of them before, we could appreciate their respective
advantages; and we knew that the only recommendation of the former was,
that it saved some few miles in distance; while the latter is one of
the most beautiful rides in France, and the towns, through which it
passes, are far from being among the least interesting in Normandy. In
such an alternative, there was no difficulty in fixing our choice, and
we proceeded straight for Pont-de-l'Arche. The chalk cliffs, which
bounded the road on our left, for some distance from Rouen, break near
the small village of Port St. Ouen, into wild forms, and in one spot
project boldly, assuming the shape of distinct towers. These projections
are known by the name of the rock of St. Adrien; thus called from the
patron saint of a romantic chapel, a place of great sanctity, and of
frequent resort with pilgrims, situated nearly mid-way up the
cliff.--The chapel is indeed little more than an excavation, and is
altogether so rude, that its workmanship affords no clue to discover the
date of the building. Its south side and roof are merely formed of the
bare rock. To the north it is screened by an erection, which, were it
not for the windows and short square steeple, might easily be mistaken
for a pent-house. The western end appears to display some traces of
Norman architecture. The hill, which leads to this chapel, commands a
view of Rouen, the most picturesque, I think, of all that we have seen
of this city, so picturesque from various points. You can scarcely
conceive the eagerness with which we endeavored to catch the last
glimpse, as the prospect gradually vanished from our sight, or the
pleasure with which we still dwell, and shall long continue so to do,
upon the recollection. All round the chapel, the bare chalk is at this
time tinged with a beautiful glow, from the blue flowers of the _Viola
Rothomagensis_: the _Isatis Tinctoria_, the _true Woad_, is also common
on the steep sides of the cliff. This plant, which is here indigenous,
became, during the reign of Napoléon, an object of attention with the
government, as a succedaneum for indigo, at the same time that beet-root
was destined to supply the continent with sugar, and salsafy, or parched
wheat, to hold the place of coffee. The restoration of peace has caused
the Isatis to be again neglected; but the _Reseda luteola_, or, _Dyer's
woad_, is much cultivated in the neighborhood, as is the _Teasel_ for
the use of the cloth manufactory.
Pont-de-l'Arche, though now a small mean town, may boast of high
antiquity, if it be rightly believed to be the ancient _Pistae_, the
seat of the palace erected by Charles the Bald, in which that sovereign
convened councils in the years 861 and 869, and held assemblies of his
nobles in 862 and 864; and from which, his edicts promulgated in those
years, are dated. The same monarch also built here a magnificent bridge,
defended at one extremity by a citadel upon a small island.--From this
there seems every reason to believe that the town has derived its name;
for, in a diploma issued by our Henry IInd, he calls the place _Pontem
Arcis_; and its present appellation is nothing but its Latin name
translated into French. The fortress at the head of the bridge was
demolished about thirty years ago, at the time when Millin published
his[96] account of the town. The plate attached to that account,
represents one of the towers as still standing.--Though deprived of its
citadel, Pont-de-l'Arche retains to the present day its walls, flanked
by circular towers; and its bridge, which is the lowest stone bridge
down the Seine, is a noble one of twenty-two arches, through which the
river at a considerable depth below, rolls with extraordinary rapidity.
In the length of this bridge are some mills, which are turned by the
stream; and the current is moderated under one of the arches, by a lock
placed on the down-stream side, into which barges pass, and so proceed
with security; The bridge, with its mills, forms a very picturesque
object.
At a short distance from the bridge, to the left, looking towards Paris,
is the _Colline des deux amans_, formerly surmounted by the priory of
the same name. Of the history of the monastery nothing is known with
certainty, nor is even the date of its foundation ascertained, though it
is stated by Millin to be one of the most ancient in Normandy[97]. But
the traditionary tale connected with this convent, forms the subject of
one of the lays of _Mary of France_; and it has been elegantly
translated by the late Mr. Ellis, in the introduction to his _History of
our Ancient Metrical Romances_;--Du Plessis[98] is, however, of opinion,
that the name of the priory is nothing more than a corruption from the
words, _deux monts_, in allusion to the twin hills, on one of which it
stands; or, if _lovers_ must have any thing to do with the appellation,
he piously suggests that divine love may have been intended, and that
the parties were no other than our Savior and the Virgin, whose images
were placed over the door of the conventual church.
On the opposite side of the bridge of Pont-de-l'Arche, stand the
remains of a far richer abbey, that of Bonport, of the Cistertian order,
founded by Richard Coeur-de-Lion, in 1190, as an _ex voto_. The monarch,
then just in possession of his crown, was indulging with his courtiers
in the pleasures of the chace, and, carried away by the natural
impetuosity of his temper, had plunged in pursuit of the deer into the
Seine, whose rapid current brought his life into imminent danger; and he
accordingly vowed, if he escaped with safety, to erect a monastery upon
the spot where he should reach the shore. Hence, according to Le
Brasseur[99], the foundation, and hence the name. I ought, however, to
add, that no record of the kind is preserved in the _Neustrta Pia_, nor
even by Millin, who has described and figured such of the monastic
buildings and monuments as had been spared at the early part of the
revolution[100]. Another view of the ruins has since been published by
Langlois, in the first number of a work which was intended to have
comprised a long series of Norman antiquities, but was discontinued for
want of encouragement. The author, whose portrait I have sent you in the
course of this correspondence, is himself a native of Pont-de-l'Arche,
and has subjoined to his fas-ciculus a couple of plates, illustrative of
the costume and customs of the neighborhood.--In one of these plates, an
itinerant male fortune-teller is satisfying a young peasant as to the
probability of her speedy marriage, by means of a pack of cards, from
which he has turned up the king and queen and ace of hearts. In the
other, _a cunning woman_ is solving a question by a book and key. The
poor girl's sweetheart is an absent soldier, and fears and doubts are
naturally entertained for his safety. To unlock the mysteries of fate,
the key is attached to the mass-book, and suspended from the tip of the
finger of the sybil, who reads the first chapter of the gospel of St.
John; and the invocation is answered by the key turning of _its own
accord_, when she arrives at the verse beginning, "and the word was made
flesh[101]."--A fine rose-window in the church of the abbey of Bonport,
and two specimens of painted glass from its windows, the one
representing angels holding musical instruments, supposed to be of the
thirteenth century, the other containing a set of male and female heads
of extraordinarily rich color, probably executed about a century later,
are given by _Willemin_ in his very beautiful _Monumens Français
inédits_. In the same work, you will likewise find two still more
interesting painted windows from Pont-de-l'Arche; some boatmen and their
wives in the Norman costume of the end of the sixteenth century, and a
citizen of the town with his lady, praying before a fald-stool, bearing
the date, 1621.
The church of Pont-de-l'Arche, though greatly dilapidated, is a building
worth notice, in a fine style of the decorated gothic. The nave is very
lofty; the high altar richly carved and gilt; the oak pulpit embossed
with saints; and the font covered with curious, though not ancient,
sculpture. Rich tracery abounds in the windows, which are also filled
with painted glass, some of it of very good quality. Scripture history
and personages occupy, as usual, the principal part; but in one of the
windows we noticed a representation of the Seine full of islands, and
the town of Pont-de-l'Arche, with a number of persons quitting it with
their horses, baggage, &c. in apparent confusion. So shattered, however,
is the window, that the story is no longer intelligible in its details;
and fragments, quite illegible, are all that remain of the inscriptions
formerly beneath it. It is probable, that the intention of the artist
was to give a picture of the miseries experienced by the inhabitants at
the burning of the town by our troops under Edward IIIrd.--On the south
side of the church the buttresses are enriched with canopies and other
sculpture; and there was originally a highly-wrought balustrade,
ornamented with figures of children, a part of which
remains.--Pont-de-l'Arche claims the merit of having been the first town
in France, which acknowledged Henry IVth as its lawful sovereign, after
the assassination of his predecessor, in 1589.
On leaving this place, we passed through the forest of the same name, an
extensive tract covered with young trees, principally beech, oak, and
birch. The soil, a mixture of chalk and gravel, is poor, and offers but
little encouragement to the labors of the plough. All around us, the
distant prospect was pleasantly varied with gentle hills, upon one of
which, nearly in front, we soon saw Louviers, a busy manufacturing town,
of about seven thousand inhabitants, who are chiefly employed in making
the fine cloth of the district, which is considered superior in quality
to any other in France. Spanish wool is almost exclusively used for
the purpose.
Throughout the vicinity of Louviers, are the most undoubted symptoms of
commercial prosperity; new houses every where erecting, and old ones
undergoing improvement. But the streets of the town itself are, as
usual, dirty and narrow, and the people of the lower orders more than
commonly ragged and beggarly. It was impossible to mistake the nature of
their occupations; so many of them had their faces and hands, and every
part of their limbs and bodies that was visible, died of a bright
blue.--The church at Louviers is very much injured, but very handsome;
and though reduced to a nave with its four aisles it is still a spacious
edifice. The south porch, which projects boldly in the form of a
galilee, is scarcely to be excelled as a specimen of pointed
architecture at its highest pitch of luxuriant beauty. Yet, even in
this, the saints have been torn from their pedestals by the wanton
violence of the Calvinists or democrats. The central tower is square and
short: it is, however, handsome. Two windows, very similar to those of
the tower of St. Romain, in Rouen cathedral, light it on either side;
and saints, placed under canopies, ornament the angles behind the
buttresses.--The great western door is closed, and the front defaced:
the eastern end, likewise, is altogether modern.--Within, the same kind
of architecture prevails as in the exterior, but the whole is so
concealed, and degraded by ornaments in the worst of taste, and by
painted saints in the most tawdry dresses, that the effect is
disgusting. I never saw so great an array of wretched representations of
the heavenly host: the stone images collected round the holy sepulchre,
are even worse than those at Dieppe. Near the chapel of the sepulchre,
however, are four bas-reliefs, attached to the wall, exhibiting
different events in our Savior's life of good execution, and not in had
taste: an open gallery of fillagree stone-work, under the central tower
on the south side, is an object really deserving of admiration.
M. Langlois has engraved the gable end of an old house at Louviers, said
to have belonged to the Knights Templars. We found it used as an
engine-maker's shop; and neither within nor without, could we discover
any thing to justify his opinion, that it is a building of the twelfth
or thirteenth century. On the contrary, the windows, which are double,
under a flatly-pointed arch, and are all of them trefoil-headed, would
rather cause it to be considered as erected two centuries later.
The town of Louviers, though never fortified, is noticed on several
occasions in history. It was the seat of the conferences between Richard
Coeur-de-Lion and Philip Augustus, which ended in the treaty of 1195,
defining new limits to Normandy.--It was, as I have already mentioned,
one of the items of the compensation made by the same Duke to the
Archbishop of Rouen, for the injury done to the church, by the erection
of Château Gaillard.--During the wars of Edward IIIrd, "Louviers," to
use the language of old Froissart, "after the battle of Caen, was soon
entered by the Englishmen, as it was not closed; and they over-ran, and
spoiled, and robbed it without mercy, and won great riches; for it was
the chief place in all Normandy for drapery, and was full of
merchandize."--And, in the subsequent warfare of the fifteenth century,
this town, like the others in the duchy, was taken by our countrymen,
under Henry Vth, and lost by them under his successor.--Hither the
Norman parliament retired when the Huguenots were in possession of
Rouen; and here they remained till the recapture of the capital.--It was
probably owing in a great measure to this circumstance, that Louviers
was induced to distinguish itself by a devoted attachment to the party
of the league, for which it suffered severely in 1591, when it was
captured and pillaged by the royalists shortly after their victory at
Ivry. The town was then taken through the treachery of a priest of the
name of Jean de la Tour, who received, as a recompence, a stall in the
cathedral at Evreux, but was so much an object of abhorrence with his
brethren, that he scarcely ever ventured to appear in his place. During
the holy week, however, he attended; and it once happened, that while he
was so officiating, all the canons contrived to leave the church towards
the close of the psalm, which immediately precedes the _Benedictus_ at
_Laudes_, so that the anthem, _Traditor autem_, which is sung with that
hymn, necessarily fell to the part of de la Tour, who found himself
compelled to chaunt it, to his own extreme confusion, and the infinite
amusement of the congregation. Irritated and mortified, the poor priest
preferred his complaints to the king; but it was one thing to love the
treason, and another to love the traitor; and his appeal obtained no
redress.
From Louviers our next stage was Gaillon, on our road to which we passed
some vineyards, the most northern, I believe, in Normandy. The vines
cultivated in them are all of the small black cluster grape; and the
wine they produce, I am told, is of very inferior quality,--No place
can appear at present more poverty-stricken than Gaillon; but the case
was far otherwise before the glories of royal and ecclesiastical France
were shorn by the revolution. Ducarel, who visited this town about the
year 1760, dwells with great pleasure upon the magnificence of its
palace and its Carthusian convent and church. Of the palace the remains
are still considerable; and, after having been suffered to lie in a
state of ruin and neglect from an early period in the revolution, they
are now fitting up as a prison. The long inscription formerly over the
gate might with great propriety be replaced by the hacknied phrase, "Sic
transit gloria mundi;" for the vicissitudes of the fortune of noble
buildings are strikingly illustrated by the changes experienced by this
sumptuous edifice, long proverbial throughput France for its splendor.
Philip Augustus conferred the lordship of Gaillon upon one of his
captains of the name of Cadoc, as a reward for his activity in the
conquest of Normandy. Louis IXth afterwards, early in the thirteenth
century, ceded the town in perpetuity to the Archbishop of Rouen. St.
Louis here received by way of exchange the Château of Pinterville, which
he bestowed upon William d'Aubergenville, whose uncle, the Bishop of
Evreux, had, while chancellor of France, done much service to him and to
Queen Blanche, his mother. From that time to the revolution the
archbishops had their country seat at Gaillon, and enjoyed the sole
right of trying civil and criminal causes within the town and its
liberties. Their palace, which was destroyed during the wars of Henry
Vth, in 1423, was rebuilt about a century afterwards by the munificence
of the first cardinal Georges d'Amboise, one of whose successors in the
prelacy, Colbert, expended, as it is said, more than one hundred
thousand livres towards the embellishment of it.--Another archbishop,
the Cardinal of Bourbon, founded the neighboring monastery, in the year
1571. The conventual church was destroyed by fire, through the
carelessness of some plumbers, shortly after Ducarel visited it; and
with it perished the celebrated monument of one of the counts of Bourbon
Soissons, said to have been a master-piece of sculpture.
The limits assigned to Normandy by the treaty of Louviers, made Gaillon
a frontier town of the duchy; and here therefore I should take my leave
of you, but that, in the prouder days of its history, Vernon was
likewise swayed by the ducal sceptre. Vernon also seems peculiarly
connected with England, from the noble family of the same name still
flourishing, agreeably to their well-known punning motto, on your side
of the water. This motto is in the highest degree inapplicable to the
present state of the town, whose old and ruinous appearance looks as if
it had known neither improvement nor repair for centuries. Better things
might have been expected from the situation of Vernon, on the banks of
the Seine, in a singularly beautiful valley, and from its climate, which
is reported to be so extraordinarily healthy, that instances of
individuals attaining in it the age of one hundred are not unfrequent.
The royal palace, formerly here, is now wholly swept away; and of the
ancient fortifications there remains little more than a tower,
remarkable for the height and thickness of its walls, a part of the
castle, which, in the reign of Henry IInd, was held by the service of
sixteen knights for its defence[102].--Prior to the revolution, Vernon
contained five religious houses, three of them founded by St. Louis, who
is said to have regarded this town with peculiar favor, and probably on
that account assigned it as a jointure to his queen, an honor which it
has received upon more than one other occasion.
The present parish church of Vernon was collegiate. It was founded about
the year 1052, by William of Vernon, and was endowed by him, at the time
of its dedication, with the property called, _La Couture du Pré de
Giverny_, and with a fourth part of the forest of Vernon, all which the
dean and canons continued to enjoy till the revolution. This William
appears to have been the first of the family who adopted the surname of
Vernon. His son, Richard, by whom the foundation was formally confirmed,
attended the Conqueror to England, and obtained there considerable
grants. One of their descendants ceded the town in 1190 to the King of
France, accepting in return other lands, according to a treaty still
preserved in the royal library at Paris. The tombs of the founder, and
of his namesake, Sir William de Vernon, constable of England, who died
in 1467, and of many others of the family, among the rest the stately
mausoleum of the Maréchal de Belle Isle, were destroyed during the reign
of jacobinism and terror. The portraits, however, of the Marshal and of
the Duc de Penthièvre, both of them very indifferent performances, were
saved, and are now kept in the sacristy. The only monument left to the
church is that of Marie Maignard, whose husband, Charles Maignard, was
Lord of Bernières and president of the parliament of Normandy. She died
in 1610. Her effigy in white marble, praying before a fald-stool, has
also been spared.
[Illustration: Elevation of the West Front of _La Délivrande_]
The church itself is a spacious building, consisting of a nave and two
aisles, with chapels beyond, separated by lofty pointed arches,
supported on clustered pillars, to each of which is still attached a
tabernacle; but the statues have been destroyed. The choir is altogether
in a different style of architecture: that portion of it which
immediately surrounds the altar, is early Norman, and most probably
belonged to the original structure. Its arches vary remarkably in width.
The most narrow among them are more decidedly horseshoe-shaped, than any
others which I recollect to have seen.--The west front, though much
mutilated, is still handsome. It is flanked by two small, very short
turrets, richly ornamented.--The square central tower, capped by a
conical roof, does not even equal the height of the nave, which is
greatly superior to that of the choir.--Upon an eminence in the
immediate vicinity of Vernon, are the remains of a Roman encampment.
With Vernon we quitted ancient Normandy: our ride thence to Mantes has
been delightful; and this town, for the excellence of its buildings, for
neatness, and for a general air of comfort, far excels any other which
we have seen in the north of France. The name of Mantes also recals the
memory of the Duc de Sully, and recals that of the Conqueror, whose
life fell a sacrifice to the barbarous outrage of which he was here
guilty.--But, I now lay down my pen, and take my leave of Normandy,
happy, if by my correspondence during this short tour, I have been able
to impart to you a portion of the gratification which I have myself
experienced, while tracing the ancient history, and surveying the
monuments of that wonderful nation, who, issuing from the frozen regions
of the north, here fixed the seat of their permanent government, became
powerful rivals of the sovereigns of France, saw Sicily and the fairest
portion of Italy subject to their sway, and, at the same time that they
possessed themselves of our own island, by right of conquest, imported
amongst us their customs, their arts, and their institutions, and laid
the basis of that happy constitution, under which, by the blessing of
God, Britain is at this moment the pride and envy of the world!
* * * * *
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 96: _Antiquités Nationales_, IV. No. 48.]
[Footnote 97: _Antiquités Nationales_, II. No. 17.]
[Footnote 98: _Histoire de la Haute Normandie_, II. p. 332.]
[Footnote 99: _Histoire d'Evreux_, p. 161.]
[Footnote 100: _Antiquités Nationales_, IV. No. 40.]
[Footnote 101: This mode of divination by the Bible and key, is also to
be found among the superstitions of our own country.--See _Ellis'
edition of Brand's Popular Antiquities_, II. p. 641.]
[Footnote 102: _Ducarel's Anglo-Norman Antiquities_, p. 93.--Respecting
Vernon, see also _Millin, Antiquités Nationales_, III. No. 26, in which
four plates, and near fifty pages of letter-press, are devoted to this
town.]
APPENDIX I.
* * * * *
The printing of this work was just concluded, when the author was
favored with drawings, accompanied with short descriptions, of the
chapel of our _Lady of the Délivrande_, near Caen, and of an ancient
font at Magneville, near Valognes. For the former he is indebted to
Mr. Cohen, to whom he has so often in the course of the work, had
occasion to express his obligations; for the latter, to M. de
Gerville, an able antiquary at Valognes. Both these subjects are of
such a nature, that he is peculiarly happy to be able to add them to
his imperfect account of the Antiquities of Normandy: the whole duchy
does not contain a religious building more celebrated for its
sanctity than the chapel; and while ancient fonts of any description
are rare in the province, he doubts if another is to be found like
that of Magneville, ornamented with sculpture and an inscription.
* * * * *
Some historians suppose, that the country situated between Caen and the
sea, formed at least, a part of the Saxon shore of Neustria. Amongst the
other ancient buildings which are found in this district, the chapel of
Notre Dame de la Délivrande, to which the Normans have resorted in
pilgrimage during the last eight hundred years, is, perhaps, the most
remarkable.
When the philosophers of the revolution envied the religious enjoyments
of the common man, all pilgrimages were forbidden, and the road leading
to our Lady's Chapel, and which, indeed, is the only high road in this
part of the country, became almost impassable. Under the Emperor it was
thoroughly repaired, and, as they say, by his especial order; and since
the accession of the present French king, the fathers of the mission,
who lose no favorable opportunity of fostering the spirit of devotion,
have erected roods and tabernacles, at due distances, all along the way
side.