Certain travellers and most tourists think they can, from studying maps
and reading books, obtain a very fair impression of a town before they
visit it, and that the chief result of their visit will be to fill in
sundry local details. If people of that ilk desire to remain high in
their own estimation, they had best omit Chalons from their travels. Let
us assume that one of these aforesaid folk plans a visit to Chalons. He
will probably begin by studying the map, which shows a city seemingly
drawn out along both sides of a long, straight street. His practised
mind will conclude this the proper method to enter the town and that he
can easily find his way about. Step number two will be the consultation
of histories. Here he will fall upon the account of the great Battle of
Chalons, in which Attila, the "Scourge of God," met in 451 his final
check, the combined army of Romans, Franks and Visigoths there putting a
bloody end to his dream of an anti-Christian empire erected upon the
crumbling remains of "the power that once was Rome's." Anyone who has
noticed how surprisingly few decisive victories have been followed by
widespread or lasting results must have remarked that the Battle of
Chalons stands out prominently as an exception to this rule. So much for
what the maps and the histories have disclosed to our experienced
tourist. He is doomed to a bitter disappointment. To-day in this quiet
little city of yellowish-grey houses he will find nothing reminiscent of
that old-time victory. Not only will his dip into history thus prove to
have been in vain, but what is more, the street plan has given him a
very wrong idea of a really very pretty place. The writer himself well
remembers how the map misled him. He remarked thereon the long straight
street; therefore, on emerging from the railway station, he proceeded up
this tiresome thoroughfare, which he found equipped with the usual
provincial tram-line, both trying to tie the older part of the town to
the distant railway station that bears its name. As a disappointment
this first impression of Chalons was a pronounced success! Don't fall
into the same error. This was the wrong way to enter the town, but there
is also a right way, especially for one who believes in first
impressions.
If you want to be in a mood to enjoy the glass, branch off to the right
when you reach the canal (which is not far from the station), and you
will come into a park called the Jard, one of the prettiest combinations
of green trees and water to be found in any provincial French city. On
a later visit the writer stumbled upon this park, with the result that
instead of a mental picture of an ugly town built on both sides of an
ugly street, he carried away pleasantly revised memories not only of the
charming Jard, but also of several little water-courses meandering
through the town, affording lovely vistas every now and again in most
unexpected ways. It seems certain that these streams feel equally
bitterly about the ugly street, because as soon as they come near it,
they promptly hide their heads and pass under it, carefully keeping out
of sight in small tunnels. Wait until you see the street, and you won't
blame the streams. Now that you have by means of the woody refreshment
of the green Jard purified your perceptions from the taint of railway
dirt, let us enter the cathedral. We shall find the glass more
interesting and instructive than impressive, but to this general
observation we must make an exception on behalf of the thirteenth
century windows in the clerestory behind and above the altar; they
undeniably leave little to be desired. The blue of their backgrounds
combines excellently with the tones of the figures. In one of the panels
which shows the Crucifixion, we can readily discern that the bars
supporting it at the back (called saddle bars) have been moved to one
side so as not to interfere with the two figures on either side of the
cross. This displacement of the saddle bars to leave undisturbed the
drawing of an important personage was quite usual at that time. Later
on the glazier seemed to have no objection to the intrusion of the iron
bars, just as he grew to disregard the running of his leads across
faces, arms, etc. This church also boasts of a fine rose window in the
north transept, which is rendered even more effective by the gallery of
lancets beneath it. The especial interest of the cathedral to a student
of glass is undoubtedly its grisaille windows, some plain and some
banded across by highly-coloured panels of the medallion type. This
latter arrangement we find along the north wall of the nave, while those
containing grisaille alone are in the triforium and clerestory. In the
case of the banded ones we shall notice that it is only the middle third
of each which has the highly-coloured panels, all the rest being
grisaille, doubtless for the purpose of giving plenty of light to the
nave. Although a most interesting arrangement, the effect is not that of
great beauty. Some of the narrow triforium panels have a border of plain
grisaille surrounding the central panel of colour work in which there
are no figures; this is quite unusual. A study of the use of colour with
grisaille in that century is not complete without a visit to Chalons,
but this having been said we must admit that notwithstanding the
splendid panels in the choir clerestory and the fine rose window in the
north transept, there are several more inspiring places for one wishing
to learn how greatly thirteenth century glass can beautify a religious
interior. Some of the finest and most valuable twelfth and thirteenth
century panels have been removed from the cathedral, and are now the
property of the Musee des Arts Decoratifs, in Paris. Unfortunately they
are not always on exhibition. On the south side of the nave is a fine
series of Renaissance windows, but these, together with the grey and
gold figure panels of St. Alpin, and the excellent coloured ones of the
fine church of Notre Dame, will be discussed in our sixteenth century
pilgrimages (see page 233).