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SKETCHES OF TRAVEL
IN
NORMANDY AND MAINE
[Illustration: Decoration]
[Illustration: St. Stephens, Caen, E.
_Frontispiece_]
SKETCHES OF TRAVEL
IN
NORMANDY AND MAINE
BY
EDWARD A. FREEMAN
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM DRAWINGS BY THE AUTHOR
AND A PREFACE BY
W.H. HUTTON, B.D.
FELLOW AND TUTOR OF S. JOHN'S COLLEGE, OXFORD
London
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1897
_All rights reserved_
RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED,
LONDON AND BUNGAY.
EDITOR'S NOTE
The first eight and the last four of these sketches appeared in the
_Saturday Review_, the others in the _Guardian_. They are here reprinted
with a few omissions, but with no other alteration. The permission
courteously given to reproduce them is gratefully acknowledged.
FLORENCE FREEMAN.
PREFACE
"Beyond doubt the finished historian must be a traveller: he must see
with his own eyes the true look of a wide land; he must see, too, with
his eyes the very spots where great events happened; he must mark the
lie of a city, and take in, as far as a non-technical eye can, all that
is special about a battle-field."
So wrote Mr. Freeman in his _Methods of Historical Study_,[1] and he
possessed to the full the instincts of the traveller as well as of the
historian. His studies and sketches of travels, already published, have
shown him a wanderer in many lands and a keen observer of many peoples
and their cities. He travelled always as a student of history and of
architecture, and probably no man has ever so happily combined the
knowledge of both. Though his thoughts were always set upon principles
and upon the study of great subjects, he delighted in the details of
local history and local building. "I cannot conceive," he wrote, "how
either the study of the general sequence of architectural styles or the
study of the history of particular buildings can be unworthy of the
attention of any man. Besides their deep interest in themselves, such
studies are really no small part of history. The way in which any people
built, the form taken by their houses, their temples, their fortresses,
their public buildings, is a part of their national life fully on a
level with their language and their political institutions. And the
buildings speak to us of the times to which they belong in a more living
and, as it were, personal way than monuments or documents of almost any
other kind."[2]
And no less clearly and decisively did he write of the value of local
history: "There is no district, no town, no parish, whose history is not
worth working out in detail, if only it be borne in mind that the local
work is a contribution to a greater work."[3]
Thus the keenness of his interest in the architecture and the history
that could be studied and learnt in every little town made him to the
last the most untiring and enthusiastic of historical pilgrims. It is
impossible to read his letters, so fresh and natural yet so full of a
rare knowledge and insight, without seeing how thoroughly he had
succeeded in achieving in himself that union of the traveller and the
historian which adds so immeasurably to the powers of each. And that is
what makes his letters from foreign lands so delightful to read, and his
sketches (published and republished from time to time during the last
thirty years) so illuminative. No one, I think, who has seen the places
he writes of in his _Historical and Architectural Sketches_ or in his
_Sketches from French Travel_, with the books in his hand, will deny
that they have added tenfold to his pleasure. Mr. Freeman tells you what
to see and how to see it,--just what you want to know and what you ought
to know. It would be an impertinence in me to point out the breadth or
the accuracy of his knowledge as it appears in these sketches, which can
be read again and again with new pleasure. But I think it may be said
without exaggeration that in all the great work that Mr. Freeman did he
did nothing better than this. He never "writes down" to his readers: he
expects to find in them something of his own interest in the buildings
and their makers; and he supplies the knowledge which only the traveller
who is also a historian has at hand.
The volume that is now published contains sketches written at different
times from 1861 to 1891. It will be seen that they all bear more or less
directly on the great central work of the historian's life, the history
of the Norman Conquest. In his travels he went always to learn, and when
he had learned he could not help teaching. The course of each of these
journeys can be traced in his own letters as published in the _Life_. In
1856 he made his first foreign excursion--to Aquitaine--and after 1860 a
foreign tour was "almost an annual event."[4] In 1861 he paid his first
visit to Normandy, with the best of all companions. In 1867 he went
again, specially for the sake of the "Norman Conquest," with Mr. J.R.
Green and Mr. Sidney Owen; and in the next year he was in Maine with Mr.
Green. In 1875 he was again in Normandy, for a short time, on his way to
Dalmatia. In 1876 he went to Maine also to "look up the places belonging
to"[5] William Rufus, and again in 1879 with Mr. J.T. Fowler and Mr.
James Parker. In 1891 he paid his last visit to the lands which he had
come to know so well. He was then thinking of writing on Henry I., a
work of which he lived to write but little. In this last Norman journey
the articles, published in _The Guardian_ after his death, were written.
His method on each of these expeditions seems to have been the same.
Before he started he read something of the special history of the places
he was to visit. He always, if possible, procured a local historian's
book. He wrote his articles while he was still away. "To many of these
Norman places," says his daughter who has prepared this volume for the
press, "he went several times, and he never wearied of seeing them again
himself or of showing them to others.... In the last Norman journey of
1891 how one feels he was at home there, re-treading the ground so
carefully worked out for the Norman Conquest and William Rufus--the same
enthusiasm with which, often under difficulties of weather or of health,
he 'stepped out' all he could of Sicily."
Not only did he walk, and read, and write, while he was abroad, he drew:
and from the hundreds of characteristic sketches which he has left it
had been easy to select many more than those which now illustrate this
volume. Still, from those that have been reproduced, with the
descriptive studies just as they were written, the reader is in a
position to see the Norman and Cenomannian sites as they were seen by
the great historian himself. More remains from his hand, sketches of
Southern Gaul, of Sicily, Africa, and Spain, which I hope may be
republished; but the present volume has a unity of its own.
I have said thus much because it was the request of those who loved him
best that I should say something here by way of preface, though I have
no claim, historical or personal, that my name should in any way be
linked with his. But the last of his many acts of kindness to me was the
gift of his _Sketches from French Travel_, which had been recently
published in the Tauchnitz edition. And as one of those who have used
his travel-sketches with continued delight, who welcomed him to Oxford
in 1884, and whose privilege it was to attend many of the lectures which
he delivered as Professor, I speak, if without any claim, yet very
gratefully and sincerely. And since his lectures illustrate so well the
work which made his sketches so admirable, I may be suffered to say a
word from my memory of them and of himself.
In his lectures on the text of mediaeval historians he did a service to
young students of history which was, in its way, unique. He showed them
a great historian at work. In his comparison of authorities, in his
references to and fro, in his appeal to every source of illustration,
from fable to architecture, from poetry to charters, he made us familiar
not only with his results, but with his methods of working. It was a
priceless experience. Year after year he continued these lectures,
informal, chatty, but always vigorous and direct, eager to give help,
and keen to receive assistance even from the humblest of his hearers,
choosing his subjects sometimes in connection with the historical work
on which he happened to be engaged, sometimes in more definite relation
to the subjects of the Modern History school. In this way he went
through Gregory of Tours, Paul the Deacon--I speak only of those courses
at which I was myself able to be present--and, in the last year of his
life, the historians of the Saxon Emperors, 936-1002--Widukind,
Thietmar, Richer, Liudprand, and the rest. In these and many other
books, such as the Sicilian historians and the authorities for the
Norman Conquest, he made the men and the times live again, and he
seemed to live in them. Whatever the praise which students outside give
to his published lectures, we who have listened to him and worked with
him shall look back with fondness and gratitude most of all to those
hours in his college rooms in Trinity, in the long, high dining-room in
S. Giles's--the Judges' lodgings--and in the quaint low chamber in
Holywell-street, where he fled for refuge when the Judges came to hold
assize.
Much has been heard about Mr. Freeman's want of sympathy with modern
Oxford, much that is mistaken and untrue. It is true that he loved most
the Oxford of his young days, the Oxford of the Movement by which he was
so profoundly influenced, the Oxford of the friends and fellow-scholars
of his youth. But with no one were young students more thoroughly at
home, from no one did they receive more keen sympathy, more generous
recognition, or more friendly help. He did not like a mere smattering of
literary chatter; he did not like to be called a pedant; but he knew, if
any man did, what literature was and what was knowledge. He was eager to
welcome good work in every field, however far it might be from his own.
It is true that Mr. Freeman was distinctly a conservative in academic
matters, but it is quite a mistake to think that he was out of sympathy
with modern Oxford. No man was more keenly alive to the good work of the
younger generation. Certainly no man was more popular among the younger
dons. A few, in Oxford and outside, snarled at him, as they snarl still,
but they were very few who did not recognise the greatness of his
character as well as of his powers. It is not too much to say of those
who had been brought into at all near relations with him that they
learnt not only to respect but to love him. He was--all came to
recognise it--not only a distinguished historian, but, in the fullest
sense of the words, a good man. He leaves behind him a memory of
unswerving devotion to the ideal of learning--which no man placed higher
than he. His remembrance should be an inspiration to every man who
studies history in Oxford.
The kindness which allows me to say these words here is like his own,
which was felt by the humblest of his scholars.
W.H. HUTTON.
CONTENTS
PAGE
NORMANDY [S.R. 1861] 1
FALAISE [S.R. 1867] 10
THE CATHEDRAL CHURCHES OF BAYEUX, COUTANCES, AND
DOL [S.R. 1867] 21
OLD NORMAN BATTLE-GROUNDS [S.R. 1867] 33
FECAMP [S.R. 1868] 42
FOOTSTEPS OF THE CONQUEROR [S.R. 1868] 51
THE COTENTIN [S.R. 1876] 62
THE AVRANCHIN [S.R. 1876] 74
COUTANCES AND SAINT-LO [G. 1891] 80
HAUTEVILLE-LA-GUICHARD [G. 1891] 89
MORTAIN AND ITS SURROUNDINGS [G. 1892] 100
MORTAIN TO ARGENTAN [G. 1892] 112
ARGENTAN [G. 1892] 125
EXMES AND ALMENECHES [G. 1892] 139
LAIGLE AND SAINT-EVROUL [G. 1892] 154
TILLIERES AND VERNEUIL [G. 1892] 168
BEAUMONT-LE-ROGER [G. 1892] 179
JUBLAINS [S.R. 1876] 189
THE CHURCHES OF CHARTRES AND LE MANS [S.R. 1868] 200
LE MANS [S.R. 1876] 211
MAINE [S.R. 1876] 224
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
1. ST. STEPHEN, CAEN, E. _Frontispiece_
2. FALAISE CASTLE 12
3. ST. GERVASE, FALAISE, S.W. 16
4. COUTANCES CATHEDRAL, CENTRAL TOWER 24
5. INTERIOR OF COUTANCES CATHEDRAL 28
6. CAPITALS IN BAYEUX CATHEDRAL 29
7. ABBEY OF FECAMP, N.E. 43
8. LIMAY CHURCH, TOWER, S.E. 53
9. DOMFRONT CASTLE 56
10. EU CHURCH, S.E. 57
11. VALOGNES CHURCH, N.E. 69
12. ABBEY OF LESSAY, S.W. 72
13. NOTRE-DAME, SAINT-LO, S.E. 83
14. ST. NICOLAS, COUTANCES, INTERIOR 88
15. LE MANS CATHEDRAL, N.W. 205
16. INTERIOR OF LE MANS CATHEDRAL 208
17. ST. MARTIN-IN-THE-VALE, CHARTRES 210
18. APSE OF LA COUTURE, LE MANS 210
19. NOTRE-DAME-DU-PRE, LE MANS, N.E. 221
20. SAINTE-SUSANNE, KEEP 235
SKETCHES OF TRAVEL IN NORMANDY AND MAINE
NORMANDY
1861
Before foreign travelling had become either quite so easy or quite so
fashionable as it is now, the part of France most commonly explored by
English tourists was Normandy. Antiquarian inquirers, in particular,
hardly went anywhere else, and we suspect that with many of them a tour
in France, as Mr. Petit says, still means merely a tour in Normandy.[6]
The mere holiday tourist, on the other hand, now more commonly goes
somewhere else--either to the Pyrenees or to those parts of France which
form the road to Switzerland and Italy. The capital of the province, of
course, is familiar to everybody; two of the chief roads to Paris lie
through it. But Rouen, noble city as it is, does not fairly represent
Normandy. Its buildings are, with small exceptions, later than the
French conquest, and, as having so long been a capital, and now being a
great manufacturing town, its population has always been very mixed.
There are few cities more delightful to examine than Rouen, but for the
true Normandy you must go elsewhere. The true Normandy is to be found
further West. Its capital, we suppose we must say, is Caen; but its
really typical and central city is Bayeux. The difference is more than
nine hundred years old. In the second generation after the province
became Normandy at all, Rouen had again become a French city. William
Longsword, Rollo's son, sent his son to Bayeux to learn Danish. There
the old Northern tongue, and, we fancy, the old Northern religion too,
still flourished, while at Rouen nobody spoke anything but French.
A tour in Normandy has an interest of its own, but the nature of that
interest is of a kind which does not make Normandy a desirable choice
for a first visit to France. We will suppose that a traveller, as a
traveller should, has learned the art of travel in his own land. Let him
go next to some country which will be utterly strange to him--as we are
talking of France, say Aquitaine or Provence. He will there find
everything different from what he is used to--buildings, food, habits,
dress, as unlike England as may be. If he tries to talk to the natives
he will perhaps make them understand his _Langue d'oil_; but he will
find that his Parisian grammar and dictionary will go but a very little
way towards making him understand their _Lingua d'oc_. Now, Normandy and
England, of course, have many points of difference, and doubtless a man
who goes at once into Normandy from England will be mainly struck by the
points of difference. But let a man go through Southern Gaul first, and
visit Normandy afterwards, and he will be struck, not with the points of
difference, but with the points of likeness. Buildings, men, beasts,
everything will at once remind him of his own country. We hold that this
is a very sufficient reason for visiting the more distant province
first. Otherwise the very important phenomenon of the strong likeness
between Normandy and England will not be taken in as it ought to be.
Go from France proper into Normandy and you at once feel that everything
is palpably better. Men, women, horses, cows, all are on a grander and
better scale. If we say that the food, too, is better, we speak it with
fear and trembling, as food is, above all things, a matter of taste.
From the point of view of a fashionable cook, no doubt the Norman diet
is the worse, for whence should the fashionable cook come except from
the land with which Normandy has to be compared? But certain it is that
a man with an old-fashioned Teutonic stomach--a man who would have
liked to dine off roast meat with Charles the Great or to breakfast off
beef-steaks with Queen Elizabeth--will find Norman diet, if not exactly
answering to his ideal, yet coming far nearer to it than the politer
repasts of Paris. Rouen, of course, has been corrupted for nine
centuries, but at Evreux, and in Thor's own city of Bayeux, John Bull
may find good meat and good vegetables, and plenty of them to boot. Then
look at those strong, well-fed horses--what a contrast to the poor,
half-starved, flogged, over-worked beasts which usurp the name further
south! Look at those goodly cows, fed in good pastures, and yielding
milk thrice a day; they claim no sort of sisterhood with the
poverty-stricken animals which, south of the Loire, have to do the
horse's work as well as their own. Look at the land itself. An
Englishman feels quite at home as he looks upon green fields, and, in
the Bessin district, sees those fields actually divided by hedges. If
the visitor chance not only to be an Englishman but a West-Saxon, he
will feel yet more at home at seeing a land where the apple-tree takes
the place of the vine, and where his host asks special payment for wine,
but supplies "zider" for nothing. But above all things, look at the men.
Those broad shoulders and open countenances seem to have got on the
wrong side of the Channel. You are almost surprised at hearing anything
but your own tongue come out of their mouths. It seems strange to hear
such lips talking French; but it is something to think that it is at
least not the French of Louis the Great or of Louis Napoleon, but the
tongue of the men who first dictated the Great Charter, and who wrung
its final confirmation from the greatest of England's later kings.
The truth is, that between the Englishman and the Norman--at least, the
Norman of the Bessin--there can be, in point of blood, very little
difference. One sees that there must be something in ethnological
theories, after all. The good seed planted by the old Saxon and Danish
colonists, and watered in aftertimes by Henry the Fifth and John, Duke
of Bedford, is still there.[7] It has not been altogether choked by the
tares of Paris. The word "Saxon" is so vague that we cannot pretend to
say exactly who the Saxons of Bayeux were; but Saxons of some sort were
there, even before another Teutonic wave came in with Rolf Ganger and
his Northmen. Bayeux, as we have said, was the Scandinavian stronghold.
Men spoke Danish there when not a word of Danish was understood at
Rouen. Men there still ate their horse-steaks, and prayed to Thor and
Odin, while all Rouen bowed piously at the altar of Notre-Dame. The
ethnical elements of a Norman of the Bessin and an Englishman of Norfolk
or Lincolnshire must be as nearly as possible the same. The only
difference is, that one has quite forgotten his Teutonic speech, and the
other only partially. Not that all Teutonic traces have gone even from
the less Norman parts of Normandy. How many of the English travellers
who land at Dieppe stop to think that the name of that port, disguised
as it is by a French spelling, is nothing in the world but "The Deeps?"
If any one, now that there is a railway, prefers to go along the lovely
valley of the Seine, he will come to the little town of Caudebec. Here,
again, the French spelling makes the word meaningless; but only write it
"Cauld beck," and it at once tells its story to a Lowland Scot, and
ought to do so to every "Anglo-Saxon" of any kind. As for the local
dialect, it is French. It is not, like that of Aquitaine and Provence, a
language as distinct as Spanish or Italian. It is French, with merely a
dialectical difference from "French of Paris." But the Normans, in this
resembling the Gascons, have no special objection to a final consonant,
and most vulgarly and perversely still sound divers _s's_ and _t's_ which
the politer tongue of the capital dooms to an existence on paper only.
It is certainly curious that Normandy--which, save during the
comparatively short occupation in the fifteenth century, has always been
politically separate from England, since England became English once
more--should be so much more like England than Aquitaine, which was an
English dependency two hundred and fifty years after Normandy and
England were separated. The cause is clearly that between Englishmen and
Normans there is a real natural kindred which political separation has
not effaced, while between English and Gascons there was no sort of
kindred, but a mere political connexion which chanced to be convenient
for both sides. The Gascons, to this day, have not wholly forgotten the
advantages of English connexion, but neither then nor now is any
likeness to England the result. So, in our own time, we may hold Malta
for ever, but we shall never make Maltese so like Englishmen as our
Danish kinsmen still are without any political connexion more recent
than the days of Earl Waltheof.
For the antiquary, nothing can be more fascinating than a Norman tour.
Less curious, less instructive, because much more like English
buildings, than those of Aquitaine, the architectural remains of the
province are incomparably finer in themselves. Caen is a town well nigh
without a rival. It shares with Oxford the peculiarity of having no one
predominant object. At Amiens, at Peterborough--we may add at
Cambridge--one single gigantic building lords it over everything. Caen
and Oxford throw up a forest of towers and spires, without any one
building being conspicuously predominant. It is a town which never was a
Bishop's see, but which contains four or five churches each fit to have
been a cathedral. There is the stern and massive pile which owes its
being to the Conqueror of England, and where a life which never knew
defeat was followed by a posthumous history which is only a long series
of misfortunes. There is the smaller but richer minster, part of which
at least is the genuine work of the Conqueror's Queen.[8] Around the
town are a group of smaller churches such as not even Somerset or
Northamptonshire can surpass. Then there is Bayeux, with its cathedral,
its tapestry, its exquisite seminary chapel; Cerisy, with its mutilated
but almost unaltered Norman abbey; Bernay, with a minster so shattered
and desecrated that the traveller might pass it by without notice, but
withal retaining the massive piers and arches of the first half of the
eleventh century. There is Evreux, with its Norman naves, its tall
slender Gothic choir, its strange Italian western tower, and almost more
fantastic central spire. All these are noble churches, sharing with
those of our own land a certain sobriety and architectural good sense
which is often wanting in the churches of France proper. In Normandy as
in England, you do not see piles, like Beauvais, begun on too vast a
scale for man's labour ever to finish; you do not see piles like Amiens,
where all external proportion is sacrificed to grandeur of internal
effect.[9] A Norman minster, like an English one, is satisfied with a
comparatively moderate height, but with its three towers and full
cruciform shape, it seems a perfection of outline to which no purely
French building ever attains.
FALAISE
1867
The beginnings of the Norman Conquest, in its more personal and
picturesque point of view, are to be found in the Castle of Falaise.
There, as Sir Francis Palgrave sums up the story, "Arletta's pretty feet
twinkling in the brook made her the mother of William the Bastard." And
certainly, if great events depend upon great men, and if great men are
in any way influenced by the places of their birth, there is no place
which seems more distinctly designed by nature to be the cradle of great
events. The spot is one which history would have dealt with unfairly if
it had not contrived to find its way into her most striking pages. And
certainly in this respect Falaise has nothing to complain of. Except one
or two of the great cities of the province, no place is brought more
constantly under our notice during five centuries of Norman history. And
Norman history, we must not forget, includes in this case some of the
most memorable scenes in the history of England, France, and Scotland.
The siege by Henry the Fourth was in a manner local; it was part of a
warfare within the kingdom of France. But that warfare was one in which
all the Powers of Europe felt themselves to be closely interested; it
was a warfare in which one at least of them directly partook; it was one
in which the two great religions of Western Europe felt that their own
fates were to be in a manner decided. In the earlier warfare of the
fifteenth century Falaise plays a prominent part. Town and castle were
taken and retaken, and the ancient fortress itself received a lasting
and remarkable addition from the hand of one of the greatest of English
captains. The tall round tower of Talbot, a model of the military
masonry of its time, goes far to share the attention of the visitor with
the massive keep of the ancient Dukes. Thence we leap back to the
earliest great historical event which we can connect, with any
certainty, with any part of the existing building. It was here, in a
land beyond the borders of the Isle of Britain, but in a comparatively
neighbouring portion of the wide dominions of the House of Anjou, that
the fullest homage was paid which ever was paid by a King of Scots to a
King of England. Here William the Lion, the captive of Alnwick, became
most effectually the "man" of Henry Fitz-Empress, and burdened his
kingdom with new and onerous engagements from which his next overlord
found it convenient to relieve him. Earlier in the twelfth century, and
in the eleventh, Falaise plays its part in the troubled politics of the
Norman Duchy, in the wars of Henry the First and in the wars of his
father. Still going back through a political and military history spread
over so many ages, the culminating interest of Falaise continues to
centre round its first historic mention. Henry of Navarre, our own
Talbot, William the Lion, Robert of Belleme, all fail to kindle the same
emotions as are aroused by the spot which was the favourite
dwelling-place of the pilgrim of Jerusalem, the birthplace of the
Conqueror of England.
[Illustration: Falaise Castle]
Local tradition of course affirms the existing building to be the scene
of William's birth. The window is shown from which Duke Robert first
beheld the tanner's daughter, and the room in which William first saw
what, if it really be the spot, must certainly have been light of an
artificial kind. A pompous inscription in the modern French style calls
on us to reverence the spot where the "legislator of ancient England"
"fut engendre et naquit." The odd notion of William being the legislator
of England calls forth a passing smile, and another somewhat longer
train of thought is suggested. William, early in his reign, tried to
learn English. He proved no very apt scholar, and he presently gave up
his studies; but we may fairly believe that he learned enough to
understand the simple formulae of his own English charters. This leads
one to ask the question: Would he not have been as likely to understand
his own praises in the tongue of the conquered English as in what is
supposed to represent his own native speech? Have we, after all,
departed any further from the tongue of the oldest Charter of London
than the Imperial dialect of abstractions and antitheses has departed
from the simple and vigorous speech of the Roman de Rou? And, if he
could spell it out in either tongue, he would find it somewhat faint
praise to be told that, judged by the standard of the nineteenth
century, he was a mere barbarian, but that M.F. Galeron would
condescend so far as to suggest to his contemporaries to judge the local
hero by a less rigid rule. If this is all the credit that the great
William can get from his own people in his own birthplace, we can only
say that, while demurring to his title of legislator of England, we
would give him much better measure than this, even if we were writing on
the site of the choir of Waltham.
Antiquaries have, till lately, generally acquiesced in the local belief
that the existing building is the actual castle of Robert the Devil. The
belief in no way commits us to the details of the local legend. Robert
must have had an astonishingly keen sight if he could, from any window
of the existing keep, judge of the whiteness of a pair of feet and
ankles at the bottom of the rock. Nor does it at all follow that, if
the present keep was standing at the time of William's birth, William
was therefore born in it. The Duke's mistress would be just as likely to
be lodged in some of the other buildings within the circuit of the
castle as in the great square tower of defence. And, if we accept the
belief, which is now becoming more prevalent, that the present keep is
of the twelfth century and not of the eleventh, we are not thereby at
all committed to the dogma that, because Robert the Devil lived before
1066, he could not possibly have had a castle of stone. In the wars of
the eleventh and twelfth centuries many castles in Normandy were
destroyed, not a few of them by William himself after the great revolt
which was put down at Val-es-dunes. The Norman castle, evidently of the
type used after the Conquest, was introduced into England before the
Conquest by the foreign favourites of Edward the Confessor. They could
have built only in imitation of what they had been used to build in
Normandy, and unless the new fashion, with its new name, had been a
distinct advance on anything in the way of fortification already known
in England, it would not have caused so much amazement as it did.
Englishmen were perfectly familiar with stone walls to a town, but the
Norman keep was something new, something for which there was no English
name, and which therefore retained its French name of "castel." On the
whole, the evidence is in favour of the belief that the present castle
of Falaise is of the twelfth century. But there is no reason to deny,
and there is every reason to believe, that Robert the Devil may have
inhabited a castle of essentially the same type in the eleventh century.
Adjoining the keep is the tall round tower of the great Talbot. The two
towers suggest exactly opposite remembrances. One sets before us the
Norman dominant in England, the other sets before us the Englishman
dominant in Normandy. Or the case may be put in another shape. Talbot,
like so many of his comrades, was probably of Norman descent. Such
returned to the land of their fathers in the character of Englishmen.
And yet after all, when the descendants of Rolf's Danes and of the older
Saxons of Bayeux assumed the character of Englishmen, they were but
casting away the French husk and standing forth once more in the genuine
character of their earlier forefathers. Such changes were doubtless
quite unconscious; long before the fifteenth century the Norman in
England had become thoroughly English, and the Norman in Normandy had
become thoroughly French. French indeed in speech and manners he had
been for ages, but by the time of Henry the Fifth he had become French
in national feeling also. The tower of Talbot was no doubt felt by the
people of Falaise to be a badge of bondage. It stands nobly and
proudly, overtopping the older keep; its genuine masonry as good as on
the day it was built, while the stuff with which its upper part was
mended twenty years back has already crumbled away. Within, a few
details of purely English character tell their tale in most intelligible
language.
[Illustration: St. Gervase, Falaise, S.W.]
The position of the castle is striking beyond measure. It is all the
more so because it comes on the traveller who reaches the place in the
way in which travellers are now most likely to reach it as a thorough
surprise. In the approach by the railway the castle hardly shows at all.
We pass through the streets of the town; the eye is caught by the
splendid church of St. Gervase, but of the castle we get only the
faintest glimpse, nothing at all to suggest the full glory of its
position. We pass on by the fine but very inferior church of the Holy
Trinity; we contemplate the statue of the local hero; we pass through
the castle gate; we pass by a beautiful desecrated chapel of the twelfth
century; we feel by the rise of the ground and by the sight of the walks
below that we are ascending, but it is not till we are close to the keep
itself, till we have reached the very edge of the precipice, that we
fully realise there is a precipice at all. At last we are on the brow;
we see plainly enough the _falaises_, the _felsen_--the honest Teutonic
word still surviving, and giving its name to the town itself, and to its
distinguishing feature. The castle stands on the very edge of the
steep and rugged rock; opposite to it frowns another mass of rocks, not
sharp and peaked, but chaotic, like a mass of huge boulders rolled close
together. From this point the English cannon played successfully on the
ancient keep, which, under the older conditions of warfare, must have
been well nigh impregnable. It is from this opposing height that the
castle is now best surveyed by the peaceful antiquary. Between the two
points tumbles along the same little beck in which the pretty feet are
said to have twinkled, and not far off the trade of the damsel's father
is still plied, perhaps on the very spot where that unsavoury craft, of
old the craft of the demagogue, was so strangely to connect itself with
the mightiest of Norman warriors and princes.
What, it may be asked, is the condition of this most interesting
monument of an age which has utterly passed away? If there is any
building in the world which belongs wholly to the past, towards which
the duty of the present is simply to preserve, to guard every stone, to
prop if need be, but to disturb nothing, to stay from falling as long as
human power can stay it, but to abstain from supplanting one jot or one
tittle of the ancient work by the most perfect of modern copies--it is
surely the donjon-keep of Falaise. But, like every other building in
France, the birthplace of the Conqueror is hopelessly handed over to the
demon of restoration. They who have turned all the ancient monuments of
France upside down have come to Falaise also. They who were revelling
ten years back in the destruction of Perigueux, they who are even now
fresh from effacing all traces of antiquity from the noble minster of
Matilda, they who have thrust their own handiworks even into the gloomy
crypt of Odo, have at last stretched forth their hands to smite the
cradle of the Conqueror himself. The Imperial architect, M. Ruprich
Robert, has surveyed the building, he has drawn up a most clear and
intelligent account of its character and history, and, on this showing,
the work of destruction has begun. Controversy will soon be at an end;
there will be no need to dispute whether any part be of the eleventh or
of the twelfth century; both alike are making room for a spruce
imitation of the nineteenth. We shall no longer see the dwelling-place
either of Robert the Devil or of Henry Fitz-Empress; in its stead we
shall trace the last masterpiece of the reign of Napoleon the Third.
Sham Romanesque is grotesque everywhere, but it is more grotesque than
all when we see newly-cut capitals stuck into the windows of a roofless
castle, when the grey hue of age is wiped away from a building which has
stood at least seven hundred years, and when the venerable fortress is
made to look as spick and span as the last built range of shops at
Paris. Among the endless pranks, at once grotesque and lamentable,
played by the mania for restoration, surely the "restoration" of this
venerable ruin is the most grotesque and lamentable of all. The
municipality of Caen have lately made themselves a spectacle to mankind
by pulling down, seemingly out of sheer wantonness, one half of one of
the most curious churches of their city.[10] We commend them not; but we
do not place even them on a level with the subtler destroyers of
Falaise. The savages of Caen are satisfied with simple, open
destruction; what they cannot understand or appreciate they make away
with. But there is no hypocrisy, no pretence about them; they simply
destroy, they do not presume to replace. But the restorer not only takes
away the work of the men of old, he impudently puts his own work in its
stead. He takes away the truth and puts a lie in its place. Our readers
know very well with what reservations this doctrine must be
taken--reservations which in the case of churches or other buildings
actually applied to appropriate modern uses, are very considerable. But
in the case of a mere monument of antiquity, a building whose only value
is that it has stood so many years, that it exhibits the style of such
an age, that it has beheld such and such great events, there is no
reservation to be made at all. In the castle of Falaise we may adopt,
word for word, the most vehement of Mr. Ruskin's declamations on this
head. The man who turns the ancient reality of the twelfth century into
a sham of the nineteenth deserves no other fame than the fame which
Eratostratus won at Ephesus, and which James Wyatt won in the
chapter-house of Durham.
THE CATHEDRAL CHURCHES OF BAYEUX, COUTANCES, AND DOL
1867
One would rather like to see a map of France, or indeed of Europe,
marking in different degrees of colour the abundance or scarcity of
English visitors and residents. Of course the real traveller, whether he
goes to study politics or history or language or architecture or
anything else, is best pleased when he gets most completely out of the
reach of his own countrymen. The first stage out of the beaten track of
tourists is a moment of rapture. For it is the tourists who do the
mischief; the residents are a comparatively harmless folk. A colony of
English settled down in a town and its neighbourhood do very little to
spoil the natives among whom they live. For the very reason that they
are residents and not tourists, they do not in the same way corrupt
innkeepers, or turn buildings and prospects into vulgar lions. It is
hard to find peace at Rouen, as it is hard to find it at Aachen; but a
few English notices in the windows at Dinan do not seriously disturb
our meditations beneath the spreading apses of St. Sauveur and St. Malo
or the plaster statue of Bertrand du Guesclin. For any grievances
arising from the neighbourhood of our countrymen, we might as well be at
Dortmund or Rostock. But, between residents, tourists, and real
travellers, we may set it down that there is no place which Englishmen
do not visit sometimes, as there certainly are many places in which
Englishmen abound more than enough.
We have wandered into this not very profound or novel speculation
through a sort of wish to know how far three fine French churches of
which we wish to speak a few words are respectively known to Englishmen
in general. These are the Norman cathedrals of Bayeux and Coutances,
both of them still Bishops' sees, and the Breton Cathedral of Dol,
which, in the modern ecclesiastical arrangements, has sunk into a parish
church. Bayeux lies on a great track, and we suppose that all the world
goes there to see the tapestry. Coutances has won a fame among professed
architectural students almost higher than it deserves, but we fancy that
the city lies rather out of the beat of the ordinary tourist. Dol is
surely quite out of the world; we trust that, in joining it with the
other two, we may share somewhat of the honours of discovery. We will
not say that we trust that no one has gone thither from the Greater
Britain since the days of the Armorican migration; but we do trust that
a criticism on the cathedral church of Dol will be somewhat of a novelty
to most people.
We select these three because they have features in common, and because
they all belong to the same general type of church. As cathedrals, they
are all of moderate size; Coutances and Dol, we may distinctly say, are
of small size. They do not range with such miracles of height as France
shows at Amiens and Beauvais, or with such miracles of length as England
shows at Ely and St. Albans. They rank rather with our smaller episcopal
churches, such as Lichfield, Wells, and Hereford. Indeed most of the
great Norman churches come nearer to this type than to that of minsters
of a vaster scale. And the reason is manifest. The great churches of
Normandy, like those of England, are commonly finished with the central
tower. Perhaps they do not always make it a feature of quite the same
importance which it assumes in England, but it gives them a marked
character, as distinguished from the great churches of the rest of
France. Elsewhere, the central tower, not uncommon in churches of the
second and third rank, is altogether unknown among cathedrals and other
great minsters of days later than Romanesque. It is as much the rule for
a French cathedral to have no central tower as it is for an English or
Norman cathedral to have one. The result is that, just as in our
English churches, the enormous height of Amiens and Beauvais cannot be
reached. But, in its stead, the English and Norman churches attained a
certain justness of proportion and variety of outline which the other
type does not admit. No church in Normandy, except St. Ouen's, attains
any remarkable height, and even St. Ouen's is far surpassed by many
other French churches. But perhaps a vain desire to rival the vast
height of their neighbours sometimes set the Norman builders to attempt
something of comparative height by stinting their churches in the
article of breadth. This peculiarity may be seen to an almost painful
extent at Evreux.
[Illustration: Coutances Cathedral, Central Tower]
Our three churches, then--Coutances and Dol certainly--rank with our
smaller English cathedrals, allowing for a greater effect of height,
partly positive, partly produced by narrowness. They are, in fact,
English second-class churches with the height of English first-class
churches. Bayeux, in every way the largest of the three, perhaps just
trembles on the edge of the first-class. Coutances, the smallest, is
distinctly defective in length; the magnificent, though seemingly
unfinished, central tower, plainly wants a longer eastern limb to
support it. Even at Bayeux the eastern limb is short according to
English notions, though not so conspicuously so as Coutances. We suspect
that Dol is really the most justly proportioned of the three, though
in many points its outline is the one which would least commend itself
to popular taste. The central tower is still lower than that at Lisieux;
it is rather like that of St. Canice at Kilkenny, only just rising above
the level of the roof. But, as is always the case with this arrangement,
the effect is solemn and impressive. The low heavy central tower is a
common feature in Normandy, and one to which the eye soon gets
accustomed. The west front of Dol is imperfect and irregular; the
southern has been carried up and finished in a later style, while the
northern one, whose rebuilding had been begun, was left unfinished
altogether. The whole front is mutilated and poor, and the chief
attractions of Dol must be looked for elsewhere. The west front of
Coutances is as famous as the west front of Wells, and both, to our
taste, equally undeservedly. Both are shams; in neither does a good,
real, honest gable stand out between the two towers. The west front of
Coutances also is a mass of meaningless breaks and projections, and the
form of the towers is completely disguised by the huge excrescences in
the shape of turrets. Far finer, to our taste, is the front of Bayeux.
Though it is a composition of various dates, thrown together in a sort
of casual way, and though the details of the two towers do not exactly
agree, yet the different stages are worked together so as to produce a
very striking effect. The later work seems not so much to be stuck upon
the earlier as to grow out of it. One could hardly have thought that
spires, among the most elegant of the elegant spires of the district,
would have looked so thoroughly in place as they do when crowning
towers, the lower parts at least of which are the work of the famous
Odo. There is nothing of that inconsistency which is clearly marked
between the upper and lower parts of the front of St. Stephen's at Caen.
The general external effect of Bayeux can hardly be judged of till the
completion of the new central lantern. This last is a bold experiment,
seemingly a Gothic version of the cupola which it displaces. But as far
as the original work goes, there can be no doubt of Bayeux holding much
the first place among our three churches.
[Illustration: Interior of Coutances Cathedral]
Looked at within, the precedence of Bayeux is less certain. The first
glance at Coutances, within as without, is disappointing, mainly because
the visitor has been led to expect a building on a grander scale. But
the interior soon grows on the spectator, in a way in which the outside
certainly does not. The first impression felt is one of being cramped
for room. The difference between Coutances and Bayeux is plainly shown
by the fact that at Bayeux room is found for a spacious choir east of
the central tower, while at Coutances a smaller choir is driven to annex
the space under the lantern. This is an arrangement which is often
convenient in any case, but which, as a matter of effect, commonly suits
a Romanesque church better than a Gothic one. But when we come more
thoroughly to take in the internal beauties of Coutances, we begin to
feel that Bayeux, with all its superior grandeur, has found a very
formidable rival. Coutances is the more harmonious whole. The choir and
the nave vary considerably, and the choir must be somewhat the later of
the two. But the difference is hardly of a kind to interfere much with
the general effect. The general appearance of the church is thoroughly
consistent throughout, and the octagon lantern, with its arcades,
galleries, and pendentives, all open to the church, forms a magnificent
feature. It is evidently the feature of which Coutances was specially
proud; it is repeated, at a becoming distance, in the other two churches
of the city, as well as elsewhere in the diocese. The nave arcades of
Coutances are exquisite, the triforium is well proportioned and well
designed, except that perhaps the beautiful floriated devices in the
head may be thought to have usurped the place of some more strictly
architectural design. The clerestory is perhaps a little heavy. In the
choir the clerestory and triforium are thrown into one stage of singular
likeness, though in this style the lack of a distinct triforium is
always to be regretted. The mouldings in both parts have, as is so usual
in Normandy, an English look, which is quite unknown in France proper,
and in the choir we find a larger use of the characteristic English
round abacus. But, next to the lantern, the most striking thing in the
interior of Coutances is certainly the sweep of the eastern aisles and
chapels, where the interlacing aisles and pillars produce an effect of
spaciousness which is not to be found in the main portions of the
church.
[Illustration: Capitals in Bayeux Cathedral]