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Transcriber's Notes:
Inconsistent use of diacriticals in French words has
been corrected except in Old French quotations.
Some illustrations have been moved so as not to break
up the flow of the text.
Characters with macrons are represented with an equal
sign between square brackets, e.g., [=a].
THE STORY OF ROUEN
by
THEODORE ANDREA COOK
Illustrated by Helen M. James and Jane E. Cook
[Illustration]
London: J.M. Dent & Co.
Aldine House, 29 and 30 Bedford Street
Covent Garden, W.C. 1899
All rights reserved
[Illustration: ST. MACLOU]
[Greek: TÊI MÊTRI DIDAKTRA]
PREFACE
"Est enim benignum et plenum ingenui pudoris fateri per quos
profeceris."
The story of a town must differ from the history of a nation in that
it is concerned not with large issues but with familiar and domestic
details. A nation has no individuality. No single phrase can fairly
sum up the characteristics of a people. But a town is like one face
picked out of a crowd, a face that shows not merely the experience of
our human span, but the traces of centuries that go backward into
unrecorded time. In all this slow development a character that is
individual and inseparable is gradually formed. That character never
fades. It is to be found first in the geographical laws of permanent
or slowly changed surroundings, and secondly in the outward aspect of
the dwellings built by man, for his personal comfort or for the good
of the material community, or for his spiritual needs.
To these three kinds of architecture I have attached this story of
Rouen, because even in its remotest syllables there are some traces
left that are still visible; and these traces increase as the story
approaches modern times. While moats and ramparts still sever a city
from its surrounding territory, the space within the walls preserves
many of those sharply defined characteristics which grow fainter when
town and country merge one into the other; the modern suburb gradually
destroys the personality both of what it sprang from and of what it
meets. Up to the beginning of the sixteenth century I have been more
careful to explain the scattered relics of an earlier time than during
the years when Rouen was filled with exquisite examples of the
builder's art. After that century there is so little of distinction,
and so much of average merit, that my story languishes beneath a load
of bricks and mortar.
Each chapter in this book which describes an advance in time or a
different phase of life and feeling will be found to be connected with
the buildings that are either contemporaneous with that phase or most
suggestive of it. I have thus been able to mention all the important
architectural features of the town without disturbing a fairly even
chronological development of the tale, in the hope that this method
will appeal not only to the traveller who needs guidance and
explanation in the place he visits, but also to the reader who prefers
to hear my story by his own fireside. Working, then, with this double
audience in my mind, I have used to a very large extent, in my
description of the people's life, the documents they have left behind
themselves, so that the best expression may be given of the vital fact
that a town is built and fashioned and inspired not by a few great
men, but by the many persistent citizens who dwell in it, working
their will from age to age without shadow of changing.
One such manuscript, the work of many hands and many centuries, I must
particularly mention. It is the record kept by the Cathedral
Chapterhouse, from 1210 to 1790, of the prisoners pardoned by the
Privilege of St. Romain's Shrine. Forbidden, for reasons of health, to
investigate these ancient parchments for myself, I have been fortunate
enough to find them all printed by the care of M. A. Floquet, to whom
the judicial history of Rouen owes so much. To his industry and to
that of M. Charles de Beaurepaire I owe all the more astonishing and
unknown details which are derived from original authorities scarcely
yet appreciated at their full value. Both were scholars in the École
des Chartes, the only school of accurate historical instruction in the
world; and for any possibility of using fruitfully the mass of details
they have brought to light I am indebted to my initiation by M. and
Madame James Darmesteter into the same principles of organised
research. The list of Authorities in the Appendix will show rather
more fully a debt to M. de Beaurepaire which can never be adequately
acknowledged.
My stay in Rouen was rendered more profitable and more pleasant by the
kindness of yet others of its citizens. To M. Georges Dubosc; to M. le
Marquis de Melandri; to M. Lafont who, as is but right in Armand
Carrel's birthplace, presides over the oldest and best French
provincial newspaper; to M. Edmond Lebel, Director of the Museum; to
M. Noël, the librarian, I would here express my heartiest gratitude.
To M. Beaurain I am under an especial obligation. Not only did he
carefully trace for me the madrigal, set in its modern dress by the
kindly skill of Mr Fuller Maitland, which English readers may now hear
for the first time since 1550; but he chose out of the vast store at
his command the portrait of Corneille by Lasne, and the View of Rouen
in 1620 by Mérian. These were photographed by M. Lambin of 47 Rue de
la République, with whom I left a list of those typical carvings in
wood and stone of which visitors to Rouen would be likely to desire
some accurate and permanent record.
Among those things in this little volume to which I desire special
attention, as being unknown in England, and in some cases never
reproduced before, I would mention, in addition to the music in
Chapter XIII., the plan in Chapter IX. by Jacques Lelieur, who also
drew the view of the whole town reproduced in Chapter XIII. This plan
is the only instance of which I am aware which enables us to see a
French town of 1525 exactly as it was, for by a queer but easily
intelligible mixture of plan and elevation, the architect has drawn
not merely the course of various streets but the façades of the houses
on each side of them. And this leads me to my last, and perhaps my
most striking debt, that to my illustrators; not only to my mother,
who drew the arms of Rouen, from a design of 1550, for the first
chapter, and Coustou's charming bas-relief of Commerce for the last,
but more especially to Miss James; of her work I need say nothing; it
is quite able to make its own appeal; but for her indefatigable desire
to draw exactly what I wanted and to assist the whole scheme of the
book I cannot sufficiently express my gratitude. Her drawings of the
Crypte St. Gervais, of the Chapelle St. Julien, and of the Église St.
Paul, will be as new as they are valuable to architectural readers;
her picture of the Cour des Comptes, and of the old house in the Rue
St. Romain were made under exceptional circumstances which may never
recur again; and the view of the Chartreuse de la Rose is the first
representation of the headquarters of our Henry V. in France which has
ever, to my knowledge, been produced in England.
In conclusion I must express the earnest wish that the pages I have
written about the carvings of the Maison Bourgtheroulde, and the
illustrations accompanying them, will not have been published in vain.
That the only authentic contemporaneous record of the Field of the
Cloth of Gold, except the one picture at Hampton Court, should now be
mouldering into decay in a French town is hardly creditable to those
who can act with authority in valuable questions of historical art. If
it be impossible to procure any good reproduction of these carvings
for the pleasure and instruction of the public in our own National
Galleries, a suggestion might at least be made that would secure their
better preservation in the French house which they will soon cease to
adorn.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
_Introductory_ 1
CHAPTER II
_The First City_ 12
CHAPTER III
_Merovingian Rouen_ 24
CHAPTER IV
_Rouen under her own Dukes_ 44
CHAPTER V
_The Conquest of England and the Fall of Normandy_ 72
CHAPTER VI
_A French Town_ 103
CHAPTER VII
_La Rue de la Grosse Horloge_ 134
CHAPTER VIII
_The Siege of Rouen by Henry V._ 169
CHAPTER IX
_Jeanne d'Arc and the English Occupation_ 200
CHAPTER X
_A City of Churches_ 233
CHAPTER XI
_Justice_ 264
CHAPTER XII
_Death_ 292
CHAPTER XIII
_Life_ 321
CHAPTER XIV
_Literature and Commerce_ 369
_A Madrigal of 1550_ 362
_Appendix_ 394
_Index_ 403
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
_St. Maclou_ _Frontispiece_
_The Arms of Rouen_* 1
_The Original Fontaine Croix de Pierre_ 13
_Crypt of St. Gervais_ 19
_Statue of St. Louis_ 22
_Initial Letter from an old Manuscript_ 24
_The Arms of Rouen_* 35
_Chapelle de la Fierte de St. Romain_ 37
_The Arms of Normandy_* 44
_Figure from the Border of the Bayeux Tapestry_* 56
_Figure from the Border of the Bayeux Tapestry_* 64
_Figure from the Border of the Bayeux Tapestry_* 72
_Horses for the Army of William the Conqueror
crossing the Channel, Bayeux Tapestry_* 74
_Figure from the Border of the Bayeux Tapestry_* 88
_Interior of the Chapel of St. Julien_ 96
_Corbel from the old Church of St. Paul_ 99
_Apse of the old Church of St. Paul_ 101
_The Arms of France_* 103
_A Mason at Work_* 118
_Portail des Libraires_ 123
_Rouen Cathedral from the North-West_ 128
_The Good Shepherd of the Grosse Horloge_ 141
_The Salt Porter of St. Vincent_ 147
_La Grosse Horloge and the Town Belfry_ 151
_Hôtel des Bons Enfants_ 159
_A Cobbler at Work_* 161
_The Rue du Hallage_ 165
_The Chartreuse de la Rose_ 181
_The Apse of St. Ouen_ 193
_Maison des Célestins_ 196
_Rue St. Romain_ 206
_La Cour d'Albane_ 218
_Central Tower of St. Ouen from the South-East_ 222
_Tour Jeanne d'Arc_ 230
_The Original West Front of St. Ouen_ 236
_Nave of St. Ouen_ 239
_Staircase of St. Maclou_ 245
_Door of St. Maclou_ 246
_Tour St. André_ 247
_Église St. Laurent_ 249
_Western Porch of St. Vincent_ 257
_Palais de Justice. Tourelle in the Rue St. Lô_ 267
_Courtyard of Palais de Justice_ 272
_Octagon Room of the Palais de Justice_ 278
_Bureau des Finances, from the Parvis_ 284
_Cour des Comptes, from the Rue des Carmes_ 288
_The Dead Body of De Brézé, from his Tomb
in Rouen Cathedral_* 292
_Entrance to the Aître St. Maclou_ 299
_The Cemetery of St. Maclou_ 304
_Tomb of the two Cardinals d'Amboise, from
Rouen Cathedral_ 311
_Tomb of Louis de Brézé in Rouen Cathedral_ 313
_A Monk praying, from the Tomb of the Cardinals
d'Amboise_ 315
_Sir Christopher Lytcot, from the Brass in
West Hanney Church_* 319
_Des Todes Wappenschild, after Holbein_* 320
_Rouen in 1525, by Jacques Lelieur_ _Facing_ 321
_The Gallery of the Maison Bourgtheroulde_ 323
_The Field of the Cloth of Gold_ 327
_A Window in the Maison Bourgtheroulde_ 335
_Inner Façade of the Maison Bourgtheroulde_ 339
_Maison Caradas_ 347
_Rue de l'Épicerie_ 353
_A Window in the Maison Bourgtheroulde_* 361
_Rouen in 1620, by Mérian_ _Facing_ 369
_Coustou's Bas-relief of Commerce_* 369
_Pierre Corneille, by Lasne_ _Facing_ 376
_Eau de Robec_ 381
_Courtyard in the Rue Petit Salut_ 388
The illustrations marked with * are drawn by Jane E. Cook.
MAPS
PAGE
A. _The Site of Rouen between the Seine and
the Hills_ 3
B. _Main Streets and Boulevards, showing the
Walls besieged by Henry V._ _Facing_ 5
C. _The Gallo-Roman Walls, and the oldest
Streets in Rouen_ _Facing_ 71
D. _Rouen in the Thirteenth Century_ _Facing_ 103
E. _The Extension of Rouen Eastwards at the
end of the Fourteenth Century_ _Facing_ 169
F. _Plan (and elevation of the Houses) of the
Vieux-Marché and the Marché-aux-Veaux
(now Place de la Pucelle) drawn
by Jacques Lelieur for his "Livre des
Fontaines" in 1525_ _Facing_ 209
[Illustration: THE ARMS OF ROUEN]
CHAPTER I
_Introductory_
Amis, c'est donc Rouen, la ville aux vieilles rues,
Aux vieilles tours, débris de races disparues,
La ville aux cent clochers carillonant dans l'air,
Le Rouen des châteaux, des hôtels, des bastilles,
Dont le front hérissé de flèches et d'aiguilles
Déchire incessamment les brumes de la mer.
The three great rivers that flow from the heart of France to her three
seas have each a character of their own. The grey and rapid current of
the Rhone, swollen with the melting of the glacier-snows, rolls past
the imperishable monuments of ancient Empire, and through the
oliveyards and vineyards of Provence, falls into the blue waves of the
southern sea. The sandy stream of Loire goes westward past the palaces
of kings and the walled pleasure-gardens of Touraine, whispering of
dead royalty. But the Seine pours out his black and toil-stained
waters northward between rugged banks, hurrying from the capital of
France to bear her cargoes through the Norman cliffs into the English
Channel.
If Paris, Rouen, and Le Havre were but one town, whose central highway
was this great river of the north, it would be at the vital spot, the
very market-cross, that Rouen has sprung up and flourished through the
centuries, at that dividing line where ships must stay that sail in
from the sea, and cargo boats set out that ply the upper stream with
commerce for the inland folk; and this geographical position has
affected every generation of the city's growth and strength.
Rouen that is now "_cheflieu du département de la Seine-Inférieure_,"
was once the Norman stronghold which commanded all the basin of the
river from the incoming of the stream of Eûre. The Seine and its
tributaries have cut vast plâteaux some four hundred feet in height,
through chalk and débris piled above the Jurassic bedrock that crops
out here and there, as it does at Bray. On the right bank of the
river, at the summit of a huge curve, the city lies between the valley
of Darnétal, that is watered by Robec and his mate Aubette, and the
valley of Bapaume. Upon this northern side the town is guarded from
east to west by the hills of St. Hilaire, Mont Fortin, Mont aux
Malades and Mont Riboudet, and from these the houses grow downwards to
the water's edge. Upon the plateau above perch the villages of
Mont-Saint-Aignan and of Bois-Guillaume. But between the valley of
Darnétal and the Seine, is yet another natural buttress, the
promontory on whose summit is Mont Ste. Catherine and the hamlet
Bonsecours. From this magnificent height you may take the best view of
the natural setting of the town. The western horizon is closed by the
plateau of Canteleu and the forest of Roumare. To the south, within
that strong bent elbow of the stream, the bridges bind to Rouen her
faubourg of St. Sever with its communes of Sotteville and of Petit
Quévilly; and the forest of Rouvray spreads its shadow to the meeting
of the sky.
[Illustration: MAP A]
The first Rothomagus, like the Rouen of to-day, was neither a hill
city, for then it would have stood upon the Mont Ste. Catherine, nor
an island city like ancient Paris, for the Ile St. Croix was too
small. It was essentially a river city; and you may see at once the
extraordinary natural strength of its position on the outside of the
river's curve (see Map A), instead of on the inside which may have
seemed more probable at first but would have left the town
defenceless. Even to-day you can only get into Rouen, as into a town
that has been battered and taken by assault, through the breach in her
fortified lines. If you enter by the railway from Paris, from Havre,
from Dieppe or from Fécamp, it is by subterranean tunnels only that
approach is possible, and up a flight of steps that you make your
first acquaintance with a "coin perdu" of the town, a corner without
character, without size, without the least promise of the beauty that
is hidden further off. Of all those great gates through which the
mediæval city welcomed her dukes or sallied out against her enemies,
but one is left, the Porte Guillaume Lion close by the quays, at the
end of the Rue des Arpents, which is as faded and decrepit as its
entrance.
To understand something of the origins of the town, it is far better
to come there for the first time by the river, by the highway that has
suffered least change since Rouen was a town at all. Yet the river
itself is cribbed within far narrower bounds than when the first huts
of savage fishermen were stuck upon the reed-beds of the marsh; for
the town was first set upon islets that have long ago been absorbed
into the mainland, and the waters of the Seine once washed the
boatmen's landing stages at a spot that now bounds the Parvis of the
Cathedral. Even now the Seine varies in breadth at this point from a
hundred and thirty-five to two hundred and fifteen metres, with a
depth of five metres on the quays at lowest tide. These tides are felt
as far as twenty miles above the town. They vary in height from one
metre to as much as three, and a tidal wave is formed that is one of
the greatest dangers of the downstream navigation. Coming up from the
sea is fairly easy in almost any kind of stout and steady craft, but
it is difficult for all but the best steamers to get down without
being delayed, and sometimes fairly stopped, by the great tidal wave
at Caudebec or Quilleboeuf. Only when the floods reduce their
strength are the tides unable to turn the current of the stream; and
flood water is not unusual in a country where the rain blows in so
often from the Channel.
There is an average of a hundred and fifty rainy days each year, the
late autumn being worst, for the clouds are attracted by the river, by
the forests, and by the hills that stand round about the city. But the
unhealthiness engendered by all this moisture is a thing of the past.
An enlightened municipal authority has widened streets, planted broad
boulevards, and cleansed the waterworks which Jacques Lelieur first
sketched in the early years of the sixteenth century. And much as we
may deplore the loss of picturesque surroundings, it was high time
that some of the "Fumier du Moyen Age" should be shovelled out of
sight. What existence meant in those Middle Ages we shall be better
able to realise later on, and it will be possible as we pass through
the streets of Rouen to see what little has been left of it; for the
vandalism of ignorance has too often accompanied the innocent and
hygienic efforts of the restorer, and undue Haussmanism has ruined
many an inoffensive beauty past recall.
[Illustration: MAP B
MAP OF ROUEN SHEWING THE LINES OF THE MODERN BOULEVARDS (WHICH ARE
THOSE OF THE WALLS BESIEGED BY KING HENRY V.) WITH THE CHIEF BUILDINGS
AND MAIN STREETS OF THE CITY.]
As you look upon the modern town from the river, it is difficult to
realise that the views of 1525, or of 1620, which I have reproduced in
this book, can represent the same place. The old walls and battlements
have disappeared, and all the ancient keeps save one. But though we
cannot tell the towers of ancient Rothomagus, we can mark well her
bulwarks, from the Church of St. Pierre du Chastel that stands in the
Rue des Cordeliers (see Maps B and C) where was the first Castle of
Rollo, to the Halles and the Chapelle de la Fierte St. Romain, where
the names of Haute and Basse Vieille Tour recall the citadel of later
dukes. Within her earliest walls was the site of the first Cathedral;
outside them was built St. Ouen to the north-east, and the monastery
of St. Gervais to the north-west where the Conqueror died. Above the
town still rises the Tour Jeanne d'Arc, the donjon of the Castle of
Bouvreuil, which showed that Normandy was no more an independent
Duchy, but a part of the domains of Philip Augustus. This memory of
bondage still remains; but of the home of her own dukes Rouen has not
preserved one stone; nor of the English palace of King Henry the Fifth
near "Mal s'y Frotte" is anything left in the Rue du Vieux Palais near
the western quay.
The small compass of the first battlements set on the swamp grew, by
the twelfth century, to the lines of the modern boulevards on the
north and west, but at the Tour Jeanne d'Arc they turned east and
southwards, round the apse of St. Ouen, down the Rue de l'Épée and the
Rue du Ruisseau by way of the Rue des Espagnols to the Porte Guillaume
Lion and the quay. The walls besieged by the English under Henry V.
had expanded almost exactly to the lines of the present boulevards in
all directions, for the town had spread up the stream of Robec in
broad lines that converged past the Place du Boulingrin above, and the
Place Martainville below, upon the Place St. Hilaire to the east (see
map B).
From the Place Cauchoise on the north-west of the city of to-day two
main streets pierce the town. The Rue Thiers passes the Museum, and
comes out at the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville, close to St. Ouen. The Rue
Cauchoise leads straight into the Place du Vieux Marché where Jeanne
d'Arc was burnt. From there begins the Rue de la Grosse Horloge, the
central artery of old Rouen, in which is the town's focal point, the
belfry with its fountain and its archway. The other end of this street
comes out on the open space or Parvis before the west door of the
Cathedral. If you will go still further eastward by way of the Rue St.
Romain, past the Portail des Libraires, the most characteristic
thoroughfare is from the Place des Ponts de Robec, not far south of
St. Ouen, along the street called Eau de Robec to the boulevards.
These are the main lines of lateral division.
From north to south the town is cut by the Rue Jeanne d'Arc; further
eastwards, by the Rue des Carmes, which becomes the Rue Grand Pont;
and by the Rue de la République, which passes clear from the Musée des
Antiquités at the northern angle of the town to the Pont de Pierre
Corneille on the river. The quays are crowded with a busy throng of
workmen; on the stream are ships from every quarter of the world;
great cranes are hoisting merchandise out of their holds and
distributing it into the markets of the town, or into the barges for
Paris and the Île-de-France. For this is the limit of the maritime
Seine, and here, where the tide of ocean throbs upon her quays, it was
but natural that the strength and commerce of Rouen should increase
and multiply. "_L'agneau de la ville a toujours la patte levée_" says
the old Norman proverb, and if you look at the lamb upon the arms of
Rouen you will see her foot is raised in readiness for the travel that
has been always the characteristic of her sons. From the days when
northern rovers sailed here, when Guiscard's colonists went out to
Sicily, when traders watched the wind for England, the citizens of
Rouen have had their interests far afield.
But it is with the story of their home-town that I have now to do. And
if it is to be told within the bounds of your patience and my
opportunity, that story must be limited, if not by the old walls of
the city, then by the shortest circuit of the suburbs round it. Nor
need we lose much by this circumscribing of our purpose. The life of
Normandy was concentrated in its capital. The slow march of events
from the independence as a Duchy to the incorporation as a part of
France has left footprints upon all the thoroughfares of the town. The
development of mediæval Rothomagus into modern Rouen has stamped its
traces on the stones of the city, as the falling tide leaves its own
mark upon the timbers of a seaworn pier. It will be my business to
point your steps to these traces of the past, and from the marks of
what you see to build up one after another the centuries that have
rolled over tide-worn Rouen. Let it be said at once that the "Old
Rouen" you will first see is almost completely a French Renaissance
city of the sixteenth century. Of older buildings you will find only
slight and imperfect remnants, and as you pass monstrosities more
modern you will involuntarily close your eyes. But the remnants are
there, slight as they are; and they are worth your search for them, as
we try together to reconstruct the ancient city of which they formed a
part.
Rouen has in its turn been the most southerly city of a Norman Duke's
possessions, then the central fortress of an Angevin Empire that
stretched from Forth to Pyrenees, then a northern bulwark for the
Kings of Paris against the opposing cliffs of England. It has sent out
fleets upon the sea, and armies upon land. It has been independent of
its neighbours, it has led them against a common foe, and it has
undergone with them a national disaster. But no matter who were its
rulers, or by what title it was officially described, or how it has
been formally divided, eternal bars and doors have been set for its
inhabitants by the mountains and the waters, eternal laws have been
made for them by the clouds and the stars that cannot be altered. In
the natural features that remain the same to-day, in the labourers of
the soil, and in the toilers of the city, there has been the least
change. For these are the "dim unconsidered populations" upon whom the
real brunt of war falls, the units who compose the battalions, the
pieces in the game who have little or no share in the stakes; who
abide in their land always, blossoming as the trees in summer,
enduring as the rocks in snow. Over this deep-rooted heart of humanity
sweeps the living hail and thunder of the armies of the earth. These
are the warp and first substance of the nations, divided not by
dynasties but by climates, strong by unalterable privilege or weak by
elemental fault, unchanged as Nature's self.
In the city of to-day, and in such thoroughfares as the Rue de
l'Épicerie, you may look for a moment into that humbler and less
spacious form of habitation in which the people and the workers lived
their days, making up for the poverty of their own surroundings by the
magnificence of that great Cathedral which rose above the low horizon
of their roofs, and opened its doors to poor and rich alike. The
buildings that have so long outlived their inhabitants may be taken as
the background--like the permanent stone scenery in a Greek
theatre--to the shifting kaleidoscope of many-coloured life in the old
city.
In the place itself you will see scarcely a trace of the great
personages whose names have glittered in its list of sieges, battles,
massacres, pageants, and triumphal entries. The story of a town is not
a drum-and-trumpet chronicle of the Kings and Queens. It is the tale
of all those domestic and municipal details which from their very
unimportance have well-nigh disappeared. To hear it you must follow me
from the Crypte St. Gervais to the Cathedral, from the Hôtellerie des
Bons Enfants to the Maison Bourgtheroulde, and it is to the voices of
the people that I shall ask you to listen, and to the life of the
people that I shall point you among the streets they lived in. Thus,
and thus only, may you possibly realise the spirit of the place, that
calls out first to every stranger in the bells that sound through the
silence of his first night in a foreign town. These you shall know
better soon in Rouen, by name even, "Rouvel" and "Cache-Ribaut," if
you be worldly-minded, "Georges d'Amboise" and "Marie d'Estouteville"
for your hours of prayer. Before you pass beyond their sound again,
their ancient voices shall bring to you something of the centuries
that had died when they were young, something of the individuality of
the city above which they have been swinging for so long.
"Spirit of Place," writes the most charming of our living essayists:--
"It is for this we travel, to surprise its subtlety; and
where it is a strong and dominant angel, that place, seen
once, abides entire in the memory with all its own
accidents, its habits, its breath, its name. It is recalled
all a lifetime, having been perceived a week, and is not
scattered but abides, one living body of remembrance. The
untravelled spirit of place--not to be pursued, for it never
flies, but always to be discovered, never absent, without
variation--lurks in the byways and rules over the towers,
indestructible, an indescribable unity. It awaits us always
in its ancient and eager freshness. It is sweet and nimble
within its immemorial boundaries, but it never crosses them.
Long white roads outside have mere suggestions of it and
prophecies; they give promise, not of its coming, for it
abides, but of a new and singular and unforseen goal for our
present pilgrimage, and of an intimacy to be made."
How many a traveller moves from place to place, not realising anything
beyond the transportation of his body! Yet in every town there is this
fresh acquaintance, this lifelong friendship, that shall last while
his own memory lasts, that is as fresh for him as for a thousand
before him, and for tens of thousands after. When the bells of an
unknown city have given me their first greeting, my first
acknowledgment of that compelling invitation is to see those buildings
in the town that can become alive again beneath their echoes. Of such
churches, of such civic buildings, of private houses, of monuments by
unknown hands for unknown owners, Rouen is full in almost all her
streets.
"Là dans le passé tu peux vivre
Chaque monument est un livre
Chaque pierre un souvenir."
The history of the Middle Ages is written upon magnificent and
enduring volumes, and a great responsibility is laid on those who
would deface the writing on the wall. Their virtues and vices, their
jests and indecencies, their follies and their fears, are all writ
large upon the pages of a book that was ever open to every passer-by,
and that remains for us to read. It is no rhetorical exaggeration,
that "_Ceci tuera cela_" of Victor Hugo. Our smaller doings are
recorded in the perishable print of fading paper, and we have no care
to stamp what little we have left of character upon our buildings. No
one, at least it may be fervently hoped, will try in the future to
reconstruct the ideals or the life of the Victorian Era from its
architecture. Yet we are the heirs of all that is noblest in that
greatest of all arts; and if you would test that, you need only look
at any mediæval French Cathedral with a seeing eye. You will find no
meaningless mass of bricks and mortar, but the speaking record of the
age that built them. "The stone shall cry out of the wall, and the
beam out of the timber shall answer it."
[Illustration]