great interest, beyond a simple Romanesque doorway and window in the
west front, and some very plain arches to match in the transepts. The
choir is rather poor late Gothic, spoiled by a great blank space between
arcade and clerestory. Of the nave we hardly know what to say. As it
stands, it is plainly modern; the great round pillars are hollow; but
the design is one which we can hardly fancy coming into anybody's head,
unless it reproduced something older. It is something like Boxgrove,
something like some German churches, but not exactly. A pair of
pier-arches are grouped under a single arch containing a single
clerestory window, and there is a barrel-vault above all. A church in
the hands of Huguenots, called "La Salle des Conferences," seems to have
a Romanesque shell and keeps three windows in a flat east end. Not far
from the donjon is the Decorated church of Saint Lawrence, where the
usual late Gothic dies off into _Renaissance_ at the west end. But the
other great piece of ecclesiastical work in Verneuil, besides the
Magdalen tower, is the choir of the church of Our Lady, lower down in
the town. There is an east end, such as one hardly sees on so small a
scale out of Auvergne. Here is the apse, the surrounding aisle, the
apses again projecting from the aisle; and the varied outline is made
yet more varied by a round turret of the same date and style thrown in
among the apses. The general air is early, the work plain, the masonry
simple; but the clerestory windows have pointed arches. We gaze with
delight on an outline more thoroughly picturesque than we have seen for
a long while, and which carries back our thoughts to a land of which all
the memories are pleasing. We purpose to look at it once more before we
finally turn away from Verneuil; but good intentions are not always
carried out. Let us dream of another Arvernian journey, so planned as to
take Verneuil on the road.
BEAUMONT-LE-ROGER
1892
The name of Roger of Beaumont must be well known to any who have studied
the details of the Norman Conquest of England, though Roger's own
position with regard to that event is a negative one. His sons play a
part in the Conquest itself, and yet more in the events that followed
the Conquest. In the reign of Henry I. Robert of Meulan, son of Roger of
Beaumont, but called from the French fief of his mother, is the most
prominent person after the King himself and Anselm. But Roger himself,
the old Roger, stayed in Normandy as the counsellor of Duchess Matilda,
while his eldest son followed Duke William to the war. There is interest
enough about the man himself and his belongings to give attraction to
the place which specially bears his name, and which, in truth, was his
own creation. The man and the place are called after one another. Roger
is the Roger of Beaumont; Beaumont is the Beaumont of Roger. He was not
always Roger of Beaumont; he first appears as Roger, son of Humfrey _de
Vetulis_. One learns one's map of Normandy by degrees. The description
of _De Vetulis_ is a little puzzling; it has been turned into French and
English in more ways than are right. But get out at the Beaumont station
of the Paris and Cherbourg Railway--it comes between Evreux and
Bernay--and walk to the little town of Beaumont, and a fresh light is
gained. Perhaps it strikes us for the first time, perhaps it comes up
again as a scrap of knowledge lighted up afresh, when, between the
station and the town, we pass through the _faubourg_ of _Les Vieilles_.
How it came by the name we need not ask; the name was there and is
there, and we see that Humfrey _de Vetulis_ is simply Humfrey of _Les
Vieilles_. We see that here down below was the earliest seat of the
house, till Roger climbed the _Bellus Mons_, to found his castle, to
give it his name, and to take his name from it. It is a pleasant process
when these small facts come out on the spot with a life that they can
never get out of books. A scoffer might ask whether it were worth while
to go to Beaumont-le-Roger simply to get a clearer notion of the meaning
of the words "Humfredus de Vetulis." But it is clearly worth while to go
to Beaumont-le-Roger, both for the association of the place and to see
what Roger made and what others have made since his day. At Hauteville
we could simply guess at the spot which may have witnessed the earliest
wiles of Robert the _Wiscard_: there is no doubt at all as to the scene
of the earliest wiles of one who might have been called Robert the
Wiscard just as truly. Here were spent the early days of Robert, son of
Roger, great in three lands--Lord of Beaumont, Count of Meulan, and Earl
of Leicester, forefather in the female line of the most glorious holder
of his earldom.[59]
We walk from the station with the _Bellus Mons_ plainly before us in a
general way, in the shape of a well-wooded range of high ground. But we
see no castle standing up. An abiding castle of Roger's day we hardly
look for; but we do not even see any special mount rising above the pass
of the hill, or standing out as a promontory in front of it. The most
prominent object is the parish church nestling at the foot of the hill.
We see that it has a rich tower; we presently see that it has also one
of those wonderfully lofty choirs, which seldom get westward as far as
the tower, but which, if they did, would cut down the tower to
insignificance. We are used to these things; we know that the work that
we see must be late; but that does not cut off the hope that the church
may contain something of the age of Roger or his sons. A building of
Roger's youth would be something precious. It would rank with Duchess
Judith's Abbey at Bernay, with the long and massive nave of the church
at Breteuil, in which, notwithstanding modern tamperings, we are tempted
to see a work of William Fitz-Osborn, while he was still only lord of
Breteuil, and not yet Earl of Hereford. But of Roger and his house the
church of Beaumont has no signs; all is late, save the pillars with
Transitional capitals, which peep out. The choir is very late, and in
its details very bad; here, as in a hundred other places, we wonder how
men who had such grand general conceptions could be so unlucky in the
way of carrying them out. The aisles have some good Flamboyant windows,
and the tower, if it had been carried up to its full height, would have
been a fine example of the style. And against it now lean two memorial
stones commemorating founders and foundations, but not of the house of
_De Vetulis_. They are brought from the neighbouring abbey, of which we
shall presently have to speak.
Close above the church we take a road up the hill-side. It is well to
turn presently, to take in the strange grouping of the tower and the
tall choir, as seen from a point a little above them. But our object now
is that which is historically the central, physically the loftiest,
point at Beaumont, the castle on the _Bellus Mons_ itself. We soon begin
to see fragments of masonry rising above us on the left hand. Here,
then, is the castle; and so in a sense it is. That is, it is part of
its works, within its precincts; but it is not the head work of all. We
go on a little further, and we see signs of mound and ditch plainly
enough. But we do not take in their full grandeur, till we are kindly
admitted within the gate of one of the small holdings into which the
site of the fortress of Roger's rearing is now cut up. Then we see,
indeed, why it was that "Rogerius de Vetulis" was changed into "Rogerius
de Bello Monte."
It is, indeed, a "_bellus mons_" in the sense of commanding a wide and
pleasant outlook. The town and church of Beaumont, from some points the
abbey close below, the wide vale of the Rille and the hills beyond, make
up a cheerful landscape. But if by the "_bellus mons_" we were to
understand a fair natural hill, we should be led astray. The actual site
of Roger's keep is neither a natural hill nor an artificial mound. It is
a piece of the natural hill artificially cut off from the general mass.
The founder chose a point of the hill-side which suited his objects. Its
southern face, towards the open country, was steep enough for purposes
of defence; for the rest, he cut off the piece of ground that was to be
fortified by a gigantic ditch in the form of a horse-shoe. It is a ditch
indeed, one that gladdens the eye that is looking out for such things.
There is not so much of it, but what there is seems as grand as anything
at Arques or Old Sarum. Lilybaeum stands apart; Roger must have had
plenty of labour at his command; but he had not, like the engineers of
Carthage, to dig through the solid rock. It is a ditch to look down on
from above, and also to walk along in its depth, and to look up on each
side. The ground is not absolutely open all round; some obstructions of
farm-buildings, and the like, hinder one from stepping out the
horse-shoe quite as far as it goes; but the top of the mound--if mound
is the right word--is perfectly free. There are fragments of masonry
left everywhere, _but_ there is no continuous wall anywhere, nor any
scrap of detail by which we could fix a date. Still, enough is left for
all purposes of historical association, enough to show in what kind of a
place Roger of _Les Vieilles_ fixed his home. It is not exactly an
eagle's nest; for that kind of dwelling Normandy supplies fewer
opportunities than some other lands. But it comes much more nearly to an
eagle's nest than the home of any lord of Laigle who dwelled at Laigle.
The exact ground-plan Mr. Clark, and few besides Mr. Clark, could make
out. But without making out the exact ground-plan, we learn enough to
teach us not a little about both Roger's Beaumont and Beaumont's Roger.
Was the lord of Beaumont-le-Roger entitled to a _sainte chapelle_ in his
castle? Perhaps he might seem to be so when he was also Count of Meulan
and Earl of Leicester. Perhaps it might seem so still more when
Beaumont had come into the hands of French kings, and had begun to be
granted out as a _comte-pairie_ for their sons. But, seemingly before
that time, which did not come till the fourteenth century, a building
arose which is not exactly a _sainte chapelle_ within the castle, but
which is very near to the castle, and which has very much the air of a
_sainte chapelle_. When we speak of a _sainte chapelle_ we, of course,
mean a _sainte chapelle_ anywhere, whether at Riom, Paris, or anywhere
else. This building is the abbey church of Beaumont, which stands just
below the castle on the hill-side, a building once evidently of
remarkable beauty. Perhaps the most notable feature about it is the
ascent from the road below to the abbey buildings, a covered passage
lighted by large early Geometrical windows. We make our way up and
presently reach the abbey itself. It is plain that on this narrow ledge
on the hill-side it was no more possible than it was on the steep of
Saint Michael's Mount to put the several buildings of the monastery in
their accustomed relation to the church and to one another. Too much has
perished for any one but a specialist in monastic arrangements to
attempt to spell out the buildings of the monastery in detail; but it
seems that a good deal lay to the westward of the church which in
ordinary cases would have been placed to the north or south. The church
is but a fragment; the north and east walls are there, and from them we
can reconstruct it. "East Wall" is here a phrase that may be used; for
we are a little amazed to find that the church had no apse, but an
English-looking flat end. The large east window has lost its tracery,
which should have been something of the pattern of the Angels' Choir at
Lincoln. The whole of the work that remains is of the best French Early
Gothic. Seen from below, from the bridge across the Rille at no great
distance, there is something wonderfully striking in this single side of
the church, an inside seen from outside, with its sheltered windows and
vaulting-shafts, standing against the side of the castle-hill. How was
it when both abbey and castle were perfect? As it is, the abbey is the
more prominent of the two. We can see at least a piece of it, while we
have to guess at the castle; none of its fragments stand out at any
distance. Yet, even looking thus, the abbey seems something subordinate,
something dependent; it seems crowded into an unnatural position in
order to be an appendage to something else. The parish church stands out
boldly enough. It has a right to do so; it came in the order of nature.
It proclaims the separate being of the town of Beaumont. The town of
Beaumont doubtless sprang up because of the presence of the castle; but
it sprang up by an independent growth; it was not the personal creation
of any of its lords. The abbey, on the other hand, placed on so strange
a site, was clearly the personal device of its own founder, who may have
felt a number of very different feelings gratified, as he saw an abbey
of his own making at his feet.
The result is an abbatial church unlike all other abbatial churches. The
abbey of Beaumont is very beautiful, while the abbey of Almeneches is
very ugly; yet Almeneches comes one degree nearer than Beaumont to one's
ordinary notion of an abbey church. The abbey of Beaumont must have been
a lovely chapel, but only a chapel. If it stood in its perfect state at
Caen, among that wonderful group of noble minsters and great parish
churches, it would strike us as a beautiful, but a small thing. This is
not the usual position of the church of an abbey. It was, in fact, a
pious and artistic fancy; while not, in strictness of description, a
_sainte chapelle_ or other chapel of a castle, it has all the effect of
being such. Or in its position against the hill-side, it may call up the
memory of Brantome far away in Perigord;[60] it has nothing in common
with a typical abbey church like Saint-Evroul, except the accident of
being much of the same date and style.
One building still remains to be noticed in the Beaumont of Roger. That
is the church of his earliest home at Les Vieilles. It had, or was meant
to have, a pretty thirteenth-century tower. But the church is a mere
fragment, mutilated, desecrated, shut up. A decently kept ruin is far
less offensive than a church in such a state as this. But the thought
again comes, as at Saint-Evroul, how short a time has passed since the
parish church of Les Vieilles and the abbey church of Beaumont were both
living things. No man now alive can remember them such; but not so many
years back many could. In 1861 we talked with one who remembered the
abbey church of Bernay in the full extent of its choir and Lady-chapel.
We go back after thirty years to find the church of the Conqueror's
grandmother in other things much as it was, still desecrated, but with
no more of actual destruction. But we find that the one genuine Roman
shaft that was there, one of the very few such north of Loire, has
either perished or has been so covered up with timber framework as to be
quite out of sight. And one later, but still early capital, had been
knocked away to make a convenient resting-place for a wooden beam. One
would think that such a building as this, even if it cannot be restored
to divine worship, might at least be made _monument historique_ and
taken care of. Only then the State would some day come and take away
every real shaft and every real capital, and put imitation shafts and
capitals in their stead. And that might be even worse than the wooden
beams.
JUBLAINS
1876
We know not how far the name of Silchester may be known among Frenchmen,
but we suspect that the name of Jublains is very little known among
Englishmen. The two places certainly very nearly answer to one another
in the two countries. Both alike are buried Roman towns whose sites had
been forsaken, or occupied only by small villages; both have supplied
modern inquirers with endless stores both of walls and foundations and
of movable relics; and the two spots further agree in this, that both at
Silchester and at Jublains the history of the place has to be made out
from the place itself; all that we can do is to make out the Roman
names; we have no record of the history of either.[61] The names which
the two places now bear respectively illustrate the rules of French and
English nomenclature. Silchester proclaims itself by its English name
to have been a Roman _castrum_, but it keeps no trace of its Roman name
of Calleva. But Naeodunum of the Diablintes follows the same rule as
Lutetia of the Parisii. The old name of the town itself is forgotten,
but the name of the tribe still lives. The case is not quite so clear as
that of Paris; some unlucky etymologists have seen in the name Jublains
traces of _Jules_ and of _bains_; but a moment's thought will show that
the name is a natural corruption of _Diablintes_. The name is spelled
several ways, of which _Jublains_ is now the one in vogue; but another
form, _Jublent_, better brings out its origin. As for the two places
themselves, Jublains and Silchester, each of them has its points in
which it surpasses the other. At Silchester there is the town-wall,
nearly perfect throughout the whole of its circuit. Jublains fails here;
but, on the other hand, Silchester has no one object to set against the
magnificent remains of the fortress or citadel, the traditional camp of
Caesar. Silchester again has the great advantage of being systematically
and skilfully dug out, while Jublains has been examined only piecemeal.
This again illustrates the difference between the state of ownership in
England and in France. Silchester is at the command of a single will,
which happily is in the present generation wisely guided. Jublains must
fare as may seem good to a multitude of separate wills, of which it is
too much to expect that all will at any time be wisely guided. But it
is worth while to remember on the other hand that a single foolish Duke
may easily do more mischief than several wise Dukes can do good, and
that out of the many owners of Jublains, if we cannot expect all at any
time to be wise, there is a fair chance that at no moment will every one
of them be foolish.
At the present moment most certainly several of the owners of Jublains
are the opposite of foolish, and the most important monument of all is
placed beyond the individual caprice of any man. The great fortress is
diligently taken care of under the authority of the local Archaeological
Society; the theatre is the property of M. Henri Barbe, a zealous
resident antiquary and the historian of the place; and the other chief
remains are easily accessible, and, as far as we can see, stand in no
danger. But it is of course impossible to dig up the whole place in the
same way as Silchester has been dug up. The modern Diablintes must live
somewhere; no power short of that of an Eastern despot can expel them
all from the sites of their predecessors, even to make the ways and
works of those predecessors more clearly known.
But we have as yet hardly said what and where Jublains is. It lies in
the old county and diocese of Maine, in the modern department of
Mayenne, on the road between the towns of Mayenne and Evron. The site
was, as the local historian well points out, one admirably chosen for
the site of a town, standing as it does at the point of junction of the
roads from various parts of Central and Northern Gaul and from the
Constantine and Armorican peninsulas. It stands on a gently sloping
height, with a wide view over the flatter land to the south, and over
the Cenomannian hills more to the east, the peak of Montaigu, namesake
of our own Montacute, forming a prominent object. The traveller coming
along the road from Mayenne, the most likely point of approach, will
hardly notice anything remarkable till he reaches the parish church, a
building of no special importance, but which has a bell-gable of a type
more familiar in Britain than in Gaul. Here, if he has any eyes at all,
he will see that the church is built on the foundations of some much
larger and earlier building. The masses of Roman masonry are clear
enough, with two round projections near the two western angles of the
church. These are the remains of the _thermae_ of Naeodunum, and the
traveller has in fact passed through the greater part of the ancient
city to reach them. There are plenty of other and far greater remains;
but this is the only one which lies immediately on the road by which the
traveller is likely to come. The enclosed space of the town was an
irregular four-sided figure, with no distinct four streets of a
_chester_, but rather with a greater number of ways meeting together,
like our Godmanchester. The whole eastern side of the town is full of
remains among the fields and gardens; not far from the northern
entrance, a field or two away from the road, are the very distinct
foundations of a temple locally known as that of Fortune. A walk over
two or three more fields, crossed by traces of foundations at almost
every step, brings the traveller to a more singular object, known
locally as _La Tonnelle_, which looks very much like the foundation of a
round temple, such as that of Hercules (late Vesta) at Rome. And
something like the effect of such a temple is accidentally preserved. A
line of trees follows the circular sweep of the foundations, and their
trunks really make no bad representatives of the columns of the temple.
In short, when the traveller is once put upon the scent, he finds scraps
of ancient Naeodunum at every step of his walk through Jublains and its
fields.
But the most important remains of all lie in the south-western part of
the old enclosure. To the extreme south of the city lies the theatre.
This is happily the property of M. Barbe, who lives and carries on his
researches within its precinct. Its general plan has been made out, and,
as diggings go on, the rows of seats are gradually becoming visible. It
differs from the shape of most other theatres, as its curved line
occupies more than a semicircle, like the shape of a Saracenic
horse-shoe arch. It seems that no signs of an amphitheatre had been
found at Jublains; so M. Barbe is driven to the conclusion that the
same building must have been used for both purposes. How far this is
archaeologically sound we must leave to those who are specially learned
in amphitheatres to determine. But we cannot forget the dissatisfied
audience in Horace who, between the acts, or even during the performance
itself, called for "aut ursum aut pugiles." The position, sloping away
to the south, is indeed a lovely one, and we may congratulate the man
who has found at once his home and his work on such a spot.