_LISIEUX._
'Oh! the pleasant days, when men built houses after their own
minds, and wrote their own devices on the walls, and none laughed
at them; when little wooden knights and saints peeped out from the
angles of gable-ended houses, and every street displayed a store of
imaginative wealth.'--_La Belle France_.
We must now pass on to the neighbouring town of LISIEUX, which
will be found even more interesting than Pont Audemer in examples of
domestic architecture of the middle ages; resisting with difficulty a
passing visit to Pont l'Evêque, another old town a few miles distant.
"Who does not know Pont l'Evêque," asks an enthusiastic Frenchman,
"that clean little smiling town, seated in the midst of adorable
scenery, with its little black, white, rose-colour and blue houses? One
sighs and says 'It would be good to live here,' and then one passes on
and goes to amuse oneself"--at Trouville-sur-mer!
If we approach Lisieux by the road from Pont Audemer (a distance of
about twenty-six miles) we shall get a better impression of the town
than if riding upon the whirlwind of an express train; and we shall pass
through a prettily-wooded country, studded with villas and
comfortable-looking houses, surrounded by pleasant fruit and flower
gardens--the modern abodes of wealthy manufacturers from the
neighbouring towns, and also of a few English families.
We ought to come quietly through the suburbs of Lisieux, if only to see
how its 13,000 inhabitants are busied in their woollen and cloth
factories; how they have turned the old timber-framed houses of feudal
times into warehouses; how the banners and signs of chivalry are
desecrated into trade-marks, and how its inhabitants are devoting
themselves heart and soul to the arts of peace. We should then approach
the town by picturesque wooden bridges over the rivers which have
brought the town its prosperity, and see some isolated examples of
carved woodwork in the suburbs; in houses surrounded by gardens, which
we should have missed by any other road.[11]
The churches at Lisieux are scarcely as interesting to us as its
domestic architecture; but we must not neglect to examine the pointed
Gothic of the 13th century in the cathedral of St. Pierre. The door of
the south transept, and one of the doors under the western towers (the
one on the right hand) is very beautiful, and is quite mauresque in the
delicacy of its design. The interior is of fine proportions, but is
disfigured with a coat of yellow paint; whilst common wooden seats (of
churchwardens' pattern) and wainscotting have been built up against its
pillars, the stone work having been cut away to accommodate the painted
wood. There are some good memorial windows; one of Henry II. being
married to Eleanor (1152); and another of Thomas-à-Becket visiting
Lisieux when exiled in 1169.
The church of St. Jacques with its fine stained-glass, the interior of
which is much plainer than St. Pierre, will not detain us long; it is
rather to such streets as the celebrated '_Rue aux Fèvres_' that we are
attracted by the decoration of the houses, and their curious
construction. There is one house in this street, the entire front of
which is covered with grotesquely carved figures, intricate patterns,
and graceful pillars. The exterior woodwork is blackened with age, and
the whole building threatens to fall upon its present tenant--the keeper
of a café. The beams which support the roof inside are also richly
decorated.
To give the reader any idea of the variety of the wooden houses at
Lisieux would require a series of drawings or photographs: we can do
little more in these pages than point out these charming corners of the
world where something is still left to us of the work of the middle
ages.
The general character of the houses is better than at Pont Audemer, and
the style is altogether more varied. Stone as well as wood is used in
their construction, and the rooms are more commodious and more
elaborately decorated. But the exterior carving and the curious signs
engraved on the time-stained wood, are the most distinctive features,
and give the streets their picturesque character. Here we may notice, in
odd corners, names and legends carved in wood on the panels, harmonizing
curiously with the decoration; just as the names of the owners (in
German characters) are carved on Swiss châlets; and the words 'God is
great,' and the like, form appropriate ornaments (in Arabic) over the
door of a mosque.[12] And upon heraldic shields, on old oak panels, and
amidst groups of clustering leaves, we may sometimes trace the names of
the founders (often the architects) of the houses in which several
generations lived and died.
[Illustration]
The strange familiarity of some of these crests and devices (lions,
tigers, dragons, griffins, and other emblems of ferocity), the English
character of many of the names, and the Latin mottos, identical with
some in common use in England, may give us a confused and not very
dignified idea respecting their almost universal use by the middle
classes in England. M. Taine, a well-known french writer, remarks that
'c'est loin du monde que nous pouvons jugez sainement des illusions dont
nous environt,' and perhaps it is from Lisieux that we may best see
ourselves, wearing 'coats of arms.'
It is considered by many an unmeaning and unjust phrase to call the
nineteenth century 'an age of shams,' but it seems appropriate enough
when we read in newspapers daily, of 'arms found' and 'crests designed;'
and when we consider the extent of the practice of assuming them, or
rather we should say, of having them 'found,' we cannot feel very proud
of the fashion. Without entering into a genealogical discussion, we have
plenty of evidence that the Normans held their lands and titles from a
very early date, and that after the Conquest their family arms were
spread over England; but not in any measure to the extent to which they
are used amongst us. In these days nearly every one has a 'crest' or a
'coat of arms.'[13] Do the officials of Heralds' College (we may ask in
parenthesis) believe in their craft? and does the tax collector ever
receive 13_s_. 4_d_. for imaginary honours? Such things did not, and
could not, exist in mediæval times, in the days when every one had his
place from the noble to the vassal, when every man's name was known and
his title to property, if he had any, clearly defined. A 'title' in
those days meant a title to land, and an acceptance of its
responsibilities. How many "titled" people in these days possess the
one, or accept the other?
It would seem reserved for the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to
create a state of society when the question 'Who is he?' has to be
perpetually asked and not always easily answered; in a word, to foster
and increase to its present almost overwhelming dimensions a great
middle-class of society without a name or a title, or even a home to
call its own.
It was assuredly a good time when men's lives and actions were handed
down, so to speak, from father to son, and the poor man had his '_locum
tenens_' as well as the rich; and how he loved his own dwelling, how he
decked it with ornament according to his taste or his means, how he
watched over it and preserved it from decay; how, in short, his pride
was in his own hearth and home--these old buildings tell us.
The conservative influence of all this on his character (which, although
we are in France, we must call 'home-feeling'), its tendency to
contentment and self-respect, are subjects suggestive enough, but on
which we must not dwell. It flourished during the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries, and it declined when men commenced crowding into
cities, and were no longer 'content to do without what they could not
produce.'[14]
Let us stay quietly at Lisieux, if we have time, and _see_ the place,
for we shall find nothing in all Normandy to exceed it in interest; and
the way to see it best, and to remember it, is, undoubtedly, to
_sketch_. Let us make out all these curious 'bits,' these signs, and
emblems in wood and stone--twigs and moss, and birds with delicate
wings, a spray of leaves, the serene head of a Madonna, the rampant
heraldic griffin,--let us copy, if we can, their colour and the marks of
age. We may sketch them, and we may dwell upon them, here, with the
enthusiasm of an artist who returns to his favourite picture again and
again; for we have seen the sun scorching these panels and burning upon
their gilded shields; and we have seen the snow-flakes fall upon these
sculptured eaves, silently, softly, thickly--like the dust upon the
bronze figures of Ghiberti's gates at Florence--so thickly fall, so soon
disperse, leaving the dark outlines sharp and clear against the sky; the
wood almost as unharmed as the bronze.
But more interesting, perhaps, to the traveller who sees these things
for the first time, more charming than the most exquisite Gothic lines,
more fascinating than their quaint aspect, more attractive even than
their colour or their age, are the associations connected with them; and
the knowledge that they bear upon them the direct impress of the hands
that built them centuries ago, and that every house is stamped, as it
were, with the hall mark of individuality. The historian is nowhere so
eloquent as when he can point to such examples as these. We may learn
from them (as we did at Pont Audemer) much of the method of working in
the 14th century, and, indeed, of the habits of the people, and the
secret of their great success.
It is evident enough that in those old times when men were very
ignorant, slavish, easily led, impulsive (childlike we might almost call
them), everything they undertook like the building of a house, was a
serious matter, a labour of love, and the work of many years; to be an
architect and a builder was the aspiration of their boyhood, the natural
growth of artistic instinct, guided by so much right as they could glean
from their elders. With few books or rules, they worked out their
designs for themselves, irrespective, it would seem, of time or cost.
And why should they consider either the one or the other, when time was
of no 'marketable value,' when the buildings were to last for ages; and
when there were no such things as estimates in those days? Like the
Moors in Spain, they did much as they pleased, and, like them also, they
had a great advantage over architects of our own day--they had little to
_unlearn_. They knew their materials, and had not to endeavour, after a
laborious and expensive education in one school, to modify and alter
their method of treatment to meet the exigencies of another. They were
not cramped for space, nor for money; they were not 'tied for time;' and
they had not to fight against, and make compromises with, the two great
enemies of modern architects--Economy and Iron.
At Lisieux, as at Pont Audemer, we cannot help being struck with the
extreme simplicity of the method of building, and with the
_possibilities_ of Gothic for domestic purposes. We see it here, in its
pure and natural development, as opposed to the rather unnatural
adoption of mediæval art in England, in the latter half of the 19th
century. This last is, to quote a well-known writer on art, 'the worship
of Gothic-run-mad' in architecture. It instals itself wherever it can,
in mediævally-devised houses, fitted up with mediæval chairs and tables,
presses and cupboards, wall papers, and window hangings, all 'brand-new,
and intensely old;' which feeds its fancy on old pictures and old
poetry, its faith on old legend and ceremonial, and would fain dress
itself in the garb of the 15th century--the natural reaction in a
certain class of minds against the mean and prosaic aspects of
contemporary work-a-day life.
The quiet contemplation of the old buildings in such towns as Pont
Audemer, Lisieux, and Bayeux, must, we should think, convince the most
enthusiastic admirers of the archaic school, that the mere isolated
reproduction of these houses in the midst of modern streets (such as we
are accustomed to in London or Paris) is of little use, and is, in fact,
beginning at the wrong end. It might occur to them, when examining the
details of these buildings, and picturing to themselves the lives of
their inhabitants, in the thirteenth or fourteenth century, that the
'forcing system' is a mistake--that art never flourished as an exotic,
and assuredly never will--that before we live again in mediæval houses,
and realise the true meaning of what is 'Gothic' and appropriate in
architecture, we must begin at the beginning, our lives must be simpler,
our costumes more graceful and appropriate, and the education of our
children more in harmony with a true feeling for art. In short, we must
be more manly, more capable, more self-reliant, and true to each other,
and have less in common with the present age of shams.
The very essence and life of Gothic art is its realism and truism, and
until we carry out its principles in our hearts and lives, it will be
little more to us than a toy and a tradition.