To me Rouen is like no other city. The effect it makes on one is
immediate, indescribable, bewildering. It speaks to one out of its
vast antiquity. It has a thousand mediæval voices sounding solemnly in
the ears of those who can recognise them; it has stories of adventure
and daring; of bloodshed and tragedy; of calm stoicism and undeterred
resolve; of plagues and burnings; that would fill many and many a thick
volume. And it has its modern side, which flares blatantly and noisily
across the other. The effect, for instance, of the modern electric tram
in the midst of a city like Rouen is nothing less than extraordinary.
Illustration: LA GROSSE HORLOGE, 1902
[_Page 117._
We took "our ease at" an "inn," which faced one of the chief streets
appropriated by this blustering modern mode of progression, and I
shall never forget the effect it had on me. The persistent, reiterated
strumming, as it were, with one finger on its one high note, as it came
tearing along up the street every three minutes, hurriedly, fussily,
with loose disjointed jolt, humming always with a deep whirr in its
voice, (often the octave of its much-used high note), or anon singing
up the scale, with a burr on every note, was the most absolute contrast
to the Other Side of Rouen; the "other side" of the deep, quiet,
wonderful past. The tram was like some enormous bee flying restlessly,
tiresomely, out of one's reach with incessant buzz: a buzz which
seemed, after a time, to have got literally inside one's head.
I defy anyone to find a more complete contrast in noise anywhere
than could be found between the great, deep, ponderous boom of the
many-a-decade-year-old bell of the Cathedral de Notre Dame and the
fussy, flurried, treble ping-ping of the electric tram. It was a
perfect representation of "Dignity and Impudence," as illustrated in
sound.
The next evening I was reminded of this again while standing in the
square facing the cathedral of Our Lady. A group of students strode
cheerfully and briskly up the street under its shadow, which lay like
a great, dark mass lined off by the moonlight, shining white on the
cobbles. As they walked along, one of them struck into a song, which
had, at the end of each stanza, a peculiarly inspiriting refrain, which
was taken up in turns by students across the street, crossing it, and
far ahead. When all this had died away, a passing _fiacre_, rolling
over the stones, broke the silence again, and then the clocks began to
strike the hour.
Illustration: [_From Collection of Mr Gustavus A. Sieveking._
CATHEDRAL NOTRE DAME.
ROUEN, 1842.
[_Page 118._
As the sweet, mellow, solemn bell of the cathedral sounded, and before
it had struck three notes, a blatant tin kettle of a clock, from a
hotel near by, raspingly announced its own rendering of the time. Then
here, then there, from all quarters, came shrill, discordant editions
of the same fact, and the great thrilling, arresting reminder of
the dignified past was silenced. So have I sometimes seen a modern,
fashionable woman, decked out in all the tinsel fripperies of Paris,
outshine some quiet, delicate, other-world beauty in a crowded room, so
that the latter was, to all intents and purposes, completely shelved,
so to speak. She needed her own environment, her own quiet background
before her personal note could be heard; before she could shine in
people's eyes, as she should have shone.
What is it that makes foreign churches a living centre of daily
concern? That they are so, can hardly be disputed. Why they should be
so is another matter, and reasons are bandied about. But whether they
have a reasonable basis, is questionable. The reason chiefly given,
of course, is the influence of the priest, and the background he can
produce at will to the home life picture, if his suggestion in daily
life are not carried out. But it remains to be proved if this reason
can carry the weight that is laid upon its back by its supporters.
One afternoon about two o'clock I waited in the square opposite
the cathedral for forty minutes, in order to see what manner of
men and women were constrained to go through the little swinging
door underneath one of those splendid archways. Every other moment,
for the whole of that forty minutes, some one passed in and out:
well-dressed women; countrywomen in white frilled cap, apron and
sabots; hatless peasants; beggars; "sisters;" infirm people, healthy
people; old people, young people, children. Some would come out slowly,
stiffly; some with mackintosh flying behind; some accompanied, some
unaccompanied.
There was no service; (for I went inside myself, to see, and found a
quiet church--no one about but those who had come for a quiet "think,"
or a quiet prayer); it was evidently done simply to satisfy a need--a
need that affected equally all sorts and conditions of men and women.
Just as someone, during a sudden pause in the middle of the day's
business, takes a quiet quarter of an hour aside for a chat with some
chosen comrade; just as a mother, perhaps, during the "noisy years" of
her children's lives, steals a quiet ten minutes of solitude to restore
the balance of her thoughts, which have been unsettled by the quarrels
and disputes of baby tongues. It is the time when the soul puts off the
official robe of pressing business for a few short minutes and takes
a deep drink at "the things that endure;" the time when the soul can
stretch its tired, cramped spiritual limbs, and take a long breath; the
hour when the burden that each of us carries is slipped for a time,
and shrinks in stature. To bring the spiritual and the material to
speaking terms has always been a crucial point of difficulty. England,
to-day, belongs pre-eminently to a materialistic age, and it is full of
people who are trying--some of them fairly successfully--to persuade
themselves--knowing how difficult a matter it is to combine the
spiritual element and the material,--that it is safest and happiest to
divorce them as completely as possible. Where in this country does one
see the compelling necessity at work with all classes on a week day, to
go aside into some quiet, empty church, and draw from spiritual stores?
One may safely affirm that this occurs somewhat rarely, out of London.
There was a good deal of garden drapery at our hotel, (a good deal of
drapery too, as to prices, but this we did not find out until the last
day of our stay!) Every night white tablecloths were spread over the
beds of heather and chrysanthemums in the front garden. Every morning
a very curious effect was caused by the snow, which had fallen during
the night, having made deep folds in their sides and middles, so that
at first sight it looked as if some enormous hats had been deposited
there in the night. One evening, between eight and nine o'clock, while
sitting quietly at the _table d'hôte_, which was presided over by a
youthful master of ceremonies, who walked up and down in goloshes,
(his invariable, though unexplainable, custom) there came the distant
but rousing sound of bugles. Instantly chairs were pushed back, diners
rose hastily, and presently the whole room emptied, and a shifting
population tumultuously made its way across the hall, and through
into the garden where the table-clothed flowers slept in their night
wrappers,--and away to the gates. As we reached them the dark street
was raggedly lit up by the flickering jerk of the red glare from moving
torches: there was a sudden stir of music in the air: the bugles came
nearer, accompanied by the quick tramp past of many feet: the rattle
of the drums worked up the tune to its climax: then the call of the
bugle again, exciting, questioning, hurrying: a moment later, the
music dancing and edging off by rapid paces, till all the awakened
emotion and excitement, stirred to vivid life of the passing, trenchant
movement, sank--as it seemed, finally--quite suddenly, to a flicker in
the socket, and ceased. The street in front of us grew emptier; and,
the requirement of the inner man and inner woman again beginning to
re-assert themselves, the garden witnessed the return to the deserted
_table d'hôte_, of most of the crowd, who had, some minutes earlier,
started up to follow the drum.
But I still waited on at the gate. The whole scene, but just enacted,
had put me back many, many years, to a night long ago in very early
childhood; when the torches and tar-barrels of a certain fifth of
November celebration at St. Leonards, had flashed as startlingly, as
brilliantly, an arrestingly on the panes of our sitting-room; and I, a
little child playing quietly by myself on the floor, had been roused
suddenly to instant attention by the glare and fantastic dancing
reflections on the wall as the procession of shouting torch bearers
came striding up the street to the stirring sound of the bugle. The
whole incident had made an ineffaceable impression on my mind, and I
had often recalled to myself the dark window, the sudden flickering
glare, the roar of the flaming tar-barrels, the whole scene swaying
ruddily up the street outside, the excited sense of something strange
and new happening; but never till this evening, had I been taken right
back, and my feet, as it were, planted once again on the same spot of
the old sensation, from which the push of so many passing years had
displaced the "me" of those days when the spring of life's year was but
just beginning.
In the Rue des Ours there is a little humble restaurant to which I went
again and again. It stands in a narrow, cobbled street, with old black
timbered houses opposite it and beside it. It is itself of no mean age.
Most of the more well-to-do restaurants in Rouen have indeed _cartes_
fixed up in prominent places outside, but they are _cartes_ without the
horse of "_Prix fixe_" harnessed to them.
But if you once know your restaurant, then the thing to do is, in this
case not to "find out men's wants and meet them there," but to "find
out" what particular dish it is really good at cooking and "meet it
there" by coming regularly for that very dish, not venturing out into
the unknown, and often greasy, waters of a stew, a _hors d'œuvre_, or
_entremet_. This is knowledge acquired by experience, for I have, in
the craving that sometimes beseiges one for variety, gone much farther
and--fared much worse, so now I am content to stay where I fare fairly
well, if plainly, at moderate expenditure. One can pass a very happy
hour at the little restaurant in the Rue des Ours; they can fry kippers
to a turn, and one or two other simple things. Some people I know
wouldn't care to come in and have kippers for _second déjeuner_: all I
can say is, then they can stay out--go somewhere else and make greater
demands on their trouser pockets.
But for those who can appreciate plain fare, the little restaurant in
the Rue des Ours will answer well their midday needs. There are few
things more difficult to get than plain things done to perfection at a
restaurant which thinks great guns--I mean great _entrées_--of itself.
The most appetising breakfast dish I have ever had in my life--even
now my lips long to make a certain appreciative sound in memory of
it!--consisted of certain slices of bacon cooked at a little fire on an
island, during a camping-out excursion on the river near Marlow some
years ago. I may as well add that I had no share in the cooking of it,
only in the eating of it.
Everybody sits at the little, narrow, long tables which are set at
intervals over the little room with its sanded floor, at my restaurant,
with the exception of those who sit at marble ones, which are there
also, only in less numbers. I remember one special day when a paper had
provided great food for excitement for two men who sat smoking in a
corner and discussing matters of state over two cups of black coffee,
which had been aided and abetted by two liqueurs. The woman, who was
the middle-woman between the cook--or manufacturer--and the consumer,
went to and fro rapidly, shouting from time to time, "_Plats!_" with
the names of those required, with an added and imperative "_Vite!
Vite!_"
From time to time a burning match from the pipes of the two
conspirators fell as softly on the sanded floor as, on a November
night, a shooting star sinks, and is extinguished on the dark sky.
Presently, a bustling little man in a wide-awake entered with a
huge pile of pink and yellow advertisement leaflets, it recommended
some _horloges_, which had but recently swum "into the ken" of the
inhabitants who live on the outskirts of Rue des Ours.
Immediately on entering, he saluted with confident and easy grace, and
handed round with characteristic aplomb and dignity, the leaflets with
which he identified himself for the time, though having no connection
with the business with which they were concerned, save that of a purely
temporary one. No Englishman could deliver leaflets like that. He would
never take the trouble to attempt unfamiliar "airs and graces" to push
someone else's concern. He would deliver simply and baldly, and would
consider that good measure for his pay.
But the Frenchman's is "good measure running over," and his manner in
doing it is half the battle, though the Englishman cannot understand
how this can be so. I remember in this connection, an Englishwoman, who
had lived much in France, saying to me the other day, _à propos_ of
Frenchwomen:
"They make charming speeches and compliments which one likes
exceedingly to hear, until you find suddenly in some practical matter,
some emergency, that they really mean nothing at all by them,--well
then, when I recognised that, I just felt as if I'd no ground to go on
at all, and I didn't care any longer for any of their professions.
"There is no real courtesy in the streets of Paris. Men jostle women
right and left, it being at the passenger's own risk that the crossing
of the street is performed.
"I never felt that I was a woman till I came to Paris: and there it is
forced on one daily. The Parisian's view of a woman is not an ideal
one."
To the diner, whose purse is light and whose needs are heavy and not
satisfied by the fare of the restaurant in Rue des Ours, I would
suggest the restaurant which is cheek by jowl with "Grosse Horloge."
There, simplicity is more fully mated to variety, for you can depend
upon three _plats_, and, unless one is a slave to luxury, these
_plats_, well cooked even if plain, are amply sufficient to satisfy the
cravings which begin below the belt, and end--in a good square meal. By
the way, many waiters in these restaurants go upon some co-operative
system, and all the "tips" that they receive at restaurants are
put into a common box, which is placed on the desk of the _chargé
d'affaires_. As each table empties, the waiter, in passing, drops his
_douceur_ through the narrow slit. My conviction is, that the workmen
who are given _pourboires_ do the same thing in the way of co-operation.
Over the little restaurant of which I have been speaking is the
old gateway and tower of La Grosse Horloge. The bell here, called
"Rouvel," dating back more than six centuries, has not been rung
now for eight months, owing to its having become cracked. It
weighs 1,500 kilogrammes. We went once into the belfry where the
poor old bell, in its dotage, still hangs. Here in the draughty
shuttered twilight, which is its constant environment, sounds
unceasingly through each day and night, its mechanical heart-beats of
"Teck-took"--"Teck-took"--"Teck--took," solemnly, slowly, unmelodiously.
Here in the half-lights, with stray gusts of wind blowing in through
the interstices of the shutters which shut in the belfry, it has rung
for ages on end, the warning _couvre feu_, the solemn message of the
passing hours. The only sounds which came filtering in to one's ears
from the world far below are the distant shriek of the engine, and the
rattle of the carriages. Below is a chamber where the weight of the
clock rising and falling is the only object between a wilderness of
dark timbers and the planks of the stairs.
Here, at the first news of fire in the city, is sounded the fire-alarm.
If the fire is at a great distance the alarm is prolonged.
Right at the top of the tower is a grand view of the hills standing
round about the city;--(when I was there)--brown, befogged, misty,--the
broad river lying clear cut and silvery in the middle distance; while
nearer in, one could see old decrepit, black-timbered houses which
abutted on to the flagged courts below them, on whose surface the hail
dripped whitely, and leapt merrily. Two hundred steps lead up to the
top of the tower through a winding, twisting stone stairway.
The gateway below, in the street, is the same age as the tower: but the
age of the outer gilt clock, which faces the street, is not more than
the sixteenth century.