_BAYEUX._
The approach to the town of Bayeux from the west, either by the old road
from Caen or by the railway, is always striking. The reader may
perchance remember how in old coaching days in England on arriving near
some cathedral town, at a certain turn of the road, the first sight of
some well-known towers or spires came into view. Thus there are certain
spots from which we remember Durham, and from which we have seen
Salisbury; and thus, there is a view of all others which we identify
with Bayeux. We have chosen to present it to the reader as we first saw
it and sketched it (before the completion of the new central
semi-grecian cupola); when the graceful proportions of the two western
spires were seen to much greater advantage than at present.
The cathedral has been drawn and photographed from many points of view;
Pugin has given the elevation of the west front, and the town and
cathedral together have been made the subject of drawings by several
well-known artists; but returning to Bayeux after an absence of many
years, and examining it from every side, we find no position from which
we can obtain a distant view to such advantage as that near the railway
station, which we have shewn in the sketch at the head of this chapter.
The repose--the solemnity we might almost call it--that pervades Bayeux
even in this busy nineteenth century, is the first thing that strikes a
stranger; a repose the more solemn and mysterious when we think of its
rude history of wars, of pillage, and massacres, and of its destruction
more than once by fire and sword. From the days when the town consisted
of a few rude huts (in the time of the Celts), all through the
splendours of the time of the Norman dukes, and the more terrible days
of the Reformation, it is prominent in history; but Bayeux is now a
place of peaceful industry, with about 10,000 inhabitants, 'a quiet,
dull, ecclesiastical city,' as the guide books express it; with an
aspect almost as undisturbed as a cathedral close. There are a few paved
streets with cafés and shops, as usual, but the most industrious
inhabitants appear to be the lacemakers--women seated at the doorways of
the old houses, wearing the quaint horseshoe comb and white cap with
fan-like frill, which are peculiar to Bayeux.
[Illustration]
Every building of importance has a semi-ecclesiastical character; the
feeling seeming to have especially pervaded the designers of the
thirteenth-century houses, as we may see from this rough sketch made at
a street corner. Many houses have such figures carved in _wood_ upon
them, and we may sometimes see a little stone spire on a roof top; the
architects appearing to have aimed at expressing in this way their love
and admiration for the cathedral, and to have emulated the Gothic
character of its decorations; the conventual and neighbouring buildings
harmonizing with it in a manner impossible to describe in words. Even
the principal inn, called the 'Hôtel du Luxembourg,' partakes of the
quiet air of the place; the walls of the _salle à manger_ are covered
with pictures of saints and martyrs, and the houses we can see from its
windows are built and carved in stone.
The chief object of interest is, undoubtedly, the cathedral itself, for
although we may find many curious old houses, everything gives way in
importance and interest to this one central building. The noble west
front, with its pointed Gothic towers and spires, is familiar to us in
many an engraving and painting, but what these illustrations do not give
us on a small scale is the beauty of the carved doorways, the
clustering of the ornaments about them, and the statues of bishops,
priests, and kings. Later than the cathedral itself, and 'debased in
style' (as our severe architectural friends will tell us), the work on
these beautiful porches has exquisite grace; the fourteenth-century
sculptor gave free scope to his fancy, his hands have played about the
soft white stone till it took forms so delicate and strange, so
unsubstantial and yet so permanent, that it is a marvel of the
sculptor's skill.[19]
The interior is 315 feet long and 81 feet high, open from one end to the
other, and forms a very striking and imposing effect. 'The west end,' to
quote a few words from the best technical authority, 'consists of florid
Norman arches and piers, whose natural heaviness is relieved by the
beautifully diapered patterns wrought upon the walls, probably built by
Henry I., who destroyed the previously existing church by fire. Above
this, runs a blank trefoiled arcade in the place of a triforium,
surrounded by a clerestory of early-pointed windows, very lofty and
narrow. The arches of the nave, nearest the cross and the choir, ending
in a semi-circle, exhibit a more advanced state of the pointed style,
and are distinguished by the remarkable elegance of their graceful
clustered pillars. The circular ornaments in the spandrils of the arches
are very pleasing and of fanciful variety.'
We see in the interior of this cathedral a confusion of styles--a
conflict of grace and beauty with rude and grotesque work. The
delicately-traced patterns carved on the walls, the medallions and
pendant ornaments, in stone, of the thirteenth century, are scarcely
surpassed at Chartres; side by side with these, there are headless and
armless statues of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, which have been
painted, and tablets (such as we have sketched) to commemorate the
ancient founders of the church; and underneath the choir, the crypt of
Bishop Odo, the Conqueror's half-brother, with its twelve massive
pillars, which formed the foundation of the original church, built in
1077.
[Illustration]
In the nave we may admire the beautiful radiating chapels, with their
curious frescoes (some destroyed by damp and others evidently effaced by
rude hands); and we may examine the bronze pulpit, with a figure of the
Virgin trampling on the serpent; the dark, carved woodwork in the
chancel; the old books with clasps (that Haag, or Werner, would delight
in), and two quite modern stone pulpits or lecterns, with vine leaves
twining up them in the form of a cross, the carving of which is equal
to any of the old work--the rugged vine stem and the soft leaves being
wonderfully rendered.
The interior is disfigured by some gaudy colouring under the new cupola,
and the effect of the west end is, as usual, ruined by the organ loft.
There are very fine stained-glass windows, some quite modern, but so
good both in colour and design, that we cannot look at them without
rebelling in our minds, against the conventionality of much of the
modern work in english churches.[20] It seems not unreasonable to look
forward to the time when it shall be accounted a sin to present
caricatures of scriptural subjects in memorial church-windows. Let us
rather have the kaleidescope a thousand times repeated, or the simplest
diaper pattern on ground glass, than 'Jonahs' or 'Daniels,' as they are
represented in these days; we are tired of the twelve apostles, so
smooth and clean, in their robes of red and blue (the particular red and
blue that will come best out of the melting-pot), of yellow glories and
impossible temples.
The long-neglected art of staining glass being once more revived, let us
hope that, with it, a taste will grow up for something better than a
repetition of the grotesque.
But it is the exterior of Bayeux Cathedral that will be remembered best,
the beauty and simplicity of its design; its 'sky line,' that we pointed
out at a distance, at the beginning of this chapter, which (like the
curve of the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral in London, and many an english
nineteenth-century church we could name), leaves an impression of beauty
on the mind that the more ornate work of the Renaissance fails to give
us. It is an illustration in architecture, of what we have ventured to
call the 'simple right' and the 'elaborate wrong;' like the composition
of Raphael's Holy Family (drawn on the head of a tub), it was _right_,
whilst its thousand imitations have been wrong.
And if any argument or evidence were wanting, of the beauty and fitness
of Gothic architecture as the central feature of interest, and as a
connecting link between the artistic taste of a past and present age, we
could point to no more striking instance than this cathedral. It has
above all things the appearance of a natural and spontaneous growth,
harmonizing with the aspect of the place and with the feelings of the
people.
A silence falls upon the town of Bayeux sometimes, as if the world were
deserted by its inhabitants; a silence which we notice, to the same
extent, in no other cathedral city. We look round and wonder where all
the people are; whether there is really anybody to buy and sell, and
carry on business, in the regular worldly way; or whether it is peopled
only with strange memories and histories of the past.
On every side there are landmarks of cruel wars and the sites of
battles--nearly every old house has a legend or a history attached to
it; and all about the cathedral precincts, with its old lime trees--in
snug, quiet courtyards, under gate-ways, and in stiff, formal gardens
behind high walls--we may see where the old bishops and canons of Bayeux
lived and died; the house where 'Master Wace' toiled for many unwearied
years, and where he had audience with the travelling _raconteurs_ of the
time who came to listen to him, and to repeat far and wide the words of
the historian.[21]
The silence of Bayeux is peopled with so many memories, of wars so
terrible, and of legends so wild and weird, that a book might be
written about Bayeux and called 'The Past.' We must not trench upon the
work of the antiquary, or we might point out where Henry I. of England
attacked and destroyed the city, and the exact spot in the market-place
where they first lighted the flames of Revolution; but we may dwell for
a moment upon one or two curious customs and legends connected with
Bayeux.
The 'Fête of the three Kings' (a remnant of a custom in the time of the
Druids) is still religiously observed by its inhabitants, and
incantations and ceremonies are kept up by the country people around
Bayeux, especially on the eve of this fête. The time is winter, and
around the town of Bayeux (as many visitors may have noticed) a curious
fog or mist hangs over the fields and the neighbouring gardens, through
which the towers of the cathedral are seen like phantoms; it is then
that the peasants light their torches, and both priests and people
wander in procession through the fields, singing in a loud, but mournful
tone, a strange and quaint ditty. Thus their fields and the crops (which
they are about to sow) will be productive, and a good harvest bless the
land!
We are still in the middle ages at Bayeux, we believe implicitly in
witches, in good omens, and in fairy rings; we are told gravely by an
old inhabitant that a knight of Argouges, near Bayeux, was protected by
a good fairy in his encounter with some great enemy, and we are shewn,
in proof of the assertion, the family arms of the house of Argouges,
with a female figure in the costume of Lady Godiva of Coventry, and the
motto, _à la fée_; and we hear so many other romantic stories of the
dark ages, that history at last becomes enveloped in a cloud of haze,
like the town of Bayeux itself on a winter's night.
We must now pass from the region of romance and fable to its very
antipodes in realism; to the examination of a strip of fine linen cloth
of the colour of brown holland, which is exhibited in the Public Library
at Bayeux.
[Illustration]
This world-renowned relic of antiquity, which Dibdin half-satirically
describes as 'an exceedingly curious document of the conjugal attachment
and enthusiastic veneration of Matilda,' is now kept with the greatest
care, and is displayed on a stand under a glass case, in its entire
length, 227 feet. It is about 20 inches wide, and is divided into 72
compartments. Every line is expressed by coarse stitches of coloured
thread or worsted, of which this arrow's head is a facsimile, and the
figures are worked in various colours, the groundwork and the flesh
tints being generally left white. The extraordinary preservation of the
tapestry, when we consider, not only the date of the work, but the
vicissitudes to which it has been subjected, is so remarkable, that the
spectator is disposed to ask to see the 'original,' feeling sure that
this fresh, bright-looking piece of work cannot have lasted thus for
eight hundred years. And when we remember that it was carried from town
to town by order of Napoleon I., and also exhibited on the stage on
certain occasions; that it has survived the Revolution, and that the
cathedral, which it was originally intended to adorn, has long been
levelled with the ground, we cannot help approaching it with more than
ordinary interest; an interest in which the inhabitants, and even the
ecclesiastics of Bayeux, scarcely seem to share. It was but a few years
ago that the priests of the cathedral, when asked by a traveller to be
permitted to see the tapestry, were unable to point it out; they knew
that the '_toile St. Jean_,' as it is called, was annually displayed in
the Cathedral on St. John's Day, but of its historical and antiquarian
interest they seemed to take little heed.
The scenes, which (as is well known) represent the principal events in
the Norman Conquest, are arranged in fifty-eight groups. The legend of
the first runs thus:--
Le roi Edouard ordonne à Harold d'aller apprendre au duc Guillaume
qu'il sera un jour roi d'Angleterre, &c.
After the interview between the 'sainted' King Edward and Harold, the
latter starts on his mission to 'Duke William,' and in the next group we
see Harold, '_en marché_,' with a hawk on his wrist--then entering a
church (the ancient abbey of Bosham, in Sussex), and the clergy praying
for his safety before embarking, and--next, '_en mer_.' We see him
captured on landing, by Guy de Ponthieu, and afterwards surrounded by
the ambassadors whom William sends for his release; the little figure
holding the horses being one Tyrold, a dependant of Odo, Bishop of
Bayeux, and the artist (it is generally supposed) who designed the
tapestry. Then we see Harold received in state at Rouen by Duke William,
and afterwards, their setting out together for Mont St. Michael, and
Dinan; and other episodes of the war in Brittany. We next see Harold in
England, at the funeral of Edward the Confessor, and have a curious view
of Westminster Abbey, in red and green worsted. After the death of King
Edward, we have another group, where 'Edouard (in extremis) parle aux
hommes de sa cour;' evidently an after-thought, or a mistake in taking
up the designs to work in their proper order. Harold is crowned, but
with an ill omen (from the Norman point of view), as represented in the
tapestry by an evil star--a comet of extravagant size, upon which the
people gaze with most comical expressions of wonder and alarm.
Harold began his reign well, says an old chronicler, he 'stablysshed
good lawes, specyally for the defence of holy churche;' but soon he
'waxed so proud and covetouse,' that he became unpopular with his
subjects.
Then follows the great historical event, of 'THE INVASION OF
ENGLAND BY THE CONQUEROR,' and we have all the details portrayed of
the felling of trees, constructing ships, transporting of cavalry, and
the like; we see the preparations for the commissariat, and the curious
implements of warfare, shewing, amongst other things, the lack of iron
in those days; the spades, for use in earthworks and fortifications,
being only _tipped_ with iron. The bustle and excitement attendant upon
the embarcation are given with wonderful reality; and there is many a
quaint and natural touch in the attitudes and expressions of these red
and yellow men.
The landing in Pevensey bay is next given (the horses being swung out of
the ships with cranes and pulleys as in the present day), and soon
afterwards, the preparations for a feast; the artist at this point
becoming apparently imbued with the true British idea that nothing could
be done without a dinner. There must be a grand historical picture of a
banquet before the fight, and so, like Oliver Cromwell and Napoleon,
William the Conqueror has his 'night before the battle,' and, perhaps,
it is the most faithful representation of the three.
Of the battle of Hastings itself, of the consternation at one time
amongst the troops at the report of William's death, of the charge of
cavalry, with William on a tremendous black horse (riding as straight in
the saddle as in our own day), of the cutting to pieces of the enemy, of
the stripping the wounded on the ground, and of Harold's defeat and
death, there are several very spirited representations.
For our illustration we have chosen a scene where the battle is at its
height, and the melée is given with great vigour. These figures on the
tapestry are coloured green and yellow (for there was evidently not much
choice of colours), and the chain armour is left white. The woodcut is
about a third of the size, and is, as nearly as possible, a _facsimile_
of the original.
[Illustration: Facsimile of Bayeux Tapestry.]
The last group is thus described in the catalogue:--
'ET FVGA VETERVNT ANGLI.
'Et les Anglais furent mis en fuite. Des hommes à pied, armés de
haches et d'ípíes, combattent contre les cavaliers: mais _la
défaite des Anglais est complète_; ils sont poursuivis à toute
outrance par les Normands vainqueurs.
'La scéne suivante reprísentent des hérauts d'armes à pied, et des
cavaliers galoppant à toute bride pour annoncer probablement le
succés du Conquérant; mais l'interruption subite du monument ne
permet plus de continuer cette chronique figuríe, qui allait
vraisemblablement jusqu'au couronnement de Guillaume.
The _design_ of the tapestry is very unequal, some of the latter scenes
being weak in comparison, especially that of the _death of Harold_; the
eleventh-century artist, perhaps becoming tired of the work, or having,
more probably, a presentiment that this scene would be painted and
exhibited annually, by English artists, to the end of time. Perhaps the
most interesting and important scenes are:--first, when Harold takes the
oath of allegiance to William, with his hands leaning on two ark-like
shrines, full of the relics plundered from churches; next, the awful
catastrophe of the _malfosse_, where men and horses, Norman and Saxon,
are seen rolling together in the ditch; and, lastly, the ultra-grotesque
tableaux of stripping the wounded after the battle.
The borders on the latter part of the tapestry (part of which we have
shewn in the illustration) consist of incidents connected with the
battle, and add greatly to its interest. Some of the earlier scenes are
very amusing, having evidently been suggested by the fables of Æsop and
Phædrus; there are griffins, dragons, serpents, dogs, elephants, lions,
birds, and monsters that suggest a knowledge of pre-Adamite life (some
biting their own tails, or putting their heads into their neighbours'
mouths), interspersed with representations of ploughing, and hunting,
and of killing birds with a sling and a stone.[22]
The most striking thing about the tapestry is the charming freshness and
_naïveté_ with which the scenes and characters are depicted. The artist
who designed it did not draw figures particularly well, he was ignorant
of perspective, and all principles of colouring; but he gave, in his own
way, expression to his faces, and attitudes which tell their story even
without the help of the latin inscriptions which accompany them. Shade
is often represented by colour, and that not always strictly in
accordance with nature; thus, a red horse will be represented with one
leg worked in blue, and so on; the faces and naked limbs of the warriors
being worked in green or yellow, or left white, apparently as was found
most convenient by the ladies of the time.
Whether Queen Matilda, or the ladies of her court, ever really worked
the tapestry (there is good reason to doubt that she designed the
borders) is a question of so little importance, that it is wonderful so
much discussion has been raised upon it; it is surely enough for us to
know that it was worked soon after the Conquest. There is evidence of
this, and also that Odo, Bishop of Bayeux (the Conqueror's
half-brother), ordered and arranged the work to the exact length of the
walls of the church, round which it was intended that it should have
been placed.