5. Whatever you wish to see, or are forced to leave unseen, at Amiens, if the overwhelming responsibilities of your existence, and the inevitable necessities of precipitate locomotion in their fulfilment, have left you so much as one quarter of an hour, not out of breath-for the contemplation of the capital of Picardy, give it wholly to the cathedral choir. Aisles and porches, lancet windows and roses, you can see elsewhere as well as here-but such carpenter's work, you cannot. It is late, fully developed flamboyant just past the fifteenth century-and has some Flemish stolidity mixed with the playing French fire of it; but wood-carving was the Picard's joy from his youth up, and, so far as I know, there is nothing else so beautiful cut out of the goodly trees of the world. -- Sweet and young-grained wood it is: oak, trained and chosen for such work, sound now as four hundred years since. Under the carver's hand it seems to cut like clay, to fold like silk, to grow like living branches, to leap like living flame. Canopy crowning canopy, pinnacle piercing pinnacle-it shoots and wreathes itself into an enchanted glade, inextricable, imperishable, fuller of leafage than any forest, and fuller of story than any book.* *Arnold Boulin, master-joiner (menuisier) at Amiens, solicited the enterprise, and obtained it in the first months of the year 1508. A contract was drawn and an agreement made with him for the construction of one hundred and twenty stalls with historical subjects, high backings, crownings, and pyramidal canopies. It was agreed that the principal executor should have seven sous of Tournay (a little less than the sou of France) a day, for himself and his apprentice (threepence a day the two-say a shilling a week the master, and sixpence a week the man), and for the superintendence of the whole work, twelve crowns a year, at the rate of twentyfour sous the crown; (i.e., twelve shillings a year). The salary of the simple workman was only to be three sous a day. For the sculptures and histories of the seats, the bargain was made separately with Antoine Avernier, image-cutter, residing at Amiens, at the rate of thirty-two sous (sixteen pence) the piece. Most of the wood came from Clermont en Beauvoisis, near Amiens; the finest, for the bas-reliefs, from Holland, by St. Valery and Abbeville. The Chapter appointed four of its own members to superintend the work: Jean Dumas, Jean Fabres, Pierre Vuaille, and Jean Lenglaché, to whom my authors (canons both) attribute the choice of subjects, the placing of them, and the initiation of the workmen "au sens 6. I have never been able to make up my mind which was really the best way of approaching the cathedral for the first time. If you have plenty of leisure, and the day is fine, and you are not afraid of an hour's walk, the really right thing to do is to walk down the main street of the old town, and across the river, and quite out to the véritable et plus élevé de la Bible ou des legendes, et portant quelquefois le simple savoir-faire de l'ouvrier jusqu'à la hauteur du génie du théologien." Without pretending to apportion the credit of savoir-faire and theology in the business, we have only to observe that the whole company, master, apprentices, workmen, image-cutter, and four canons, got well into traces, and set to work on the 3rd of July, 1508, in the great hall of the évêché, which was to be the workshop and studio during the whole time of the business. In the following year, another menuisier, Alexander Huet, was associated with the body, to carry on the stalls on the right hand of the choir, while Arnold Boulin went on with those on the left. Arnold, leaving his new associate in command for a time, went to Beauvais and St. Riquier, to see the woodwork there; and in July of 1511 both the masters went to Rouen together, "pour étudier les chaires de la cathédrale." The year before, also, two Franciscans, monks of Abbeville, "expert and renowned in working in wood," had been called by the Amiens chapter to give their opinion on things in progress, and had each twenty sous for his opinion, and travelling expenses. In 1516, another and an important name appears on the accounts,that of Jean Trupin, "a simple workman at the wages of three sous a day," but doubtless a good and spirited carver, whose true portrait it is without doubt, and by his own hand, that forms the elbow-rest of the 85th stall (right hand, nearest apse), beneath which is cut his name JHAN TRUPIN, and again under the 92nd stall, with the added wish, "Jan Trupin, God take care of thee" (Dieu te pourvoie). The entire work was ended on St. John's Day, 1522, without (so far as we hear) any manner of interruption by dissension, death, dishonesty, or incapacity, among its fellow-workmen, master or servant. And the accounts being audited by four members of the Chapter, it was found that the total expense was 9488 livres, 11 sous, and 3 obols (décimes), or 474 napoleons, 11 sous, 3 décimes of modern French money, or roughly four hundred sterling English pounds. For which sum, you perceive, a company of probably six or eight good workmen, old and young, had been kept merry and busy for fourteen years; and this that you see-left for substantial result and gift to you. I have not examined the carvings so as to assign, with any decision, the several masters' work; but in general the flower and leaf design in the traceries will be by the two head menuisiers, and their apprentices; the elaborate Scripture histories by Avernier, with variously completing incidental grotesque by Trupin; and the joining and fitting by the common workmen. No nails are used, all is morticed, and so beautifully that the joints have not moved to this day, and are still almost imperceptible. The chalk hill out of which the citadel is half quarried-half walled; and walk to the top of that, and look down into the citadel's dry "ditch," or, more truly, dry valley of death, which is about as deep as a glen in Derbyshire, (or, more precisely, the upper part of the "Happy Valley" at Oxford, above Lower Hincksey,1) and thence across to the cathedral and ascending slopes of the city; so, you will understand the real height and relation of tower and town: -then, returning, find your way to the Mount Zion of it by any narrow cross streets and chance bridges you canthe more winding and dirty the streets, the better; and whether you come first on west front or apse, you will think them worth all the trouble you have had to reach them. 7. But if the day be dismal, as it may sometimes be, even in France, of late years,—or if you cannot or will not walk, which may also chance, for all our athletics and lawn-tennis, or if you must really go to Paris this afternoon, and only mean to see all you can in an hour or two, -then, supposing that, notwithstanding these weaknesses, four terminal pyramids "you might take for giant pines forgotten for six centuries on the soil where the church was built; they might be looked on at first as a wild luxury of sculpture and hollow traceries-but examined in analysis they are marvels of order and system in construction, uniting all the lightness, strength, and grace of the most renowned spires in the last epoch of the Middle Ages." The above particulars are all extracted--or simply translated, out of the excellent description of the Stalles et les Clôtures du Chour of the Cathedral of Amiens, by MM. les Chanoines Jourdain et Duval (Amiens, Vv. Alfred Caron, 1867). The accompanying lithographic outlines are exceedingly good, and the reader will find the entire series of subjects indicated with precision and brevity, both for the woodwork and the external veil of the choir, of which I have no room to speak in this traveller's summary. * The strongest and finally to be defended part of the earliest city was on this height. [One of "the little valleys that debouch on the valley of the Thames behind the Hinckseys" (Dr. Arnold's letter to Clough, in Stanley's Life of Arnold, p. 467 (ed. 1901). Compare, below, p. 527.] 2 [The book is a reprint from the description of the stalls published in 1844 in the Mémoires de la Société des Antiquaires de Picardie.] you are still a nice sort of person, for whom it is of some consequence which way you come at a pretty thing, or begin to look at it-I think the best way is to walk from the Hôtel de France or the Place de Périgord, up the Street of Three Pebbles, towards the railway station-stopping a little as you go, so as to get into a cheerful temper, and buying some bonbons or tarts for the children in one of the charming patissiers' shops on the left. Just past them, ask for the theatre; and just past that, you will find, also on the left, three open arches, through which you can turn, passing the Palais de Justice, and go straight up to the south transept, which has really something about it to please everybody. It is simple and severe at the bottom, and daintily traceried and pinnacled at the top, and yet seems all of a piece-though it isn't-and everybody must like the taper and transparent fretwork of the flèche above, which seems to bend to the west wind,-though it doesn't —at least, the bending is a long habit, gradually yielded into, with gaining grace and submissiveness, during the last three hundred years. And, coming And, coming quite up to the porch, everybody must like the pretty French Madonna in the middle of it, with her head a little aside, and her nimbus switched a little aside too, like a becoming bonnet.1 A Madonna in decadence she is, though, for all, or rather by reason of all, her prettiness, and her gay soubrette's smile; and she has no business there, neither, for this is St. Honoré's porch, not hers; and grim and grey St. Honoré used to stand there to receive you, he is banished now to the north porch, where nobody ever goes in. This was done long ago, in the fourteenth-century days, when the people first began to find Christianity too serious, and devised a merrier faith for France, and would have bright-glancing, soubrette Madonnas everywhere-letting their own dark-eyed Joan of Arc be burnt for a witch. And thenceforward, 1 [Plate IX., and compare p. 166. For another reference to this carving, see The Two Paths, § 36 (Vol. XVI. p. 281). In the same book is a description of the other sculptures of the porch: see pp. 355-357 and Plate XVI.] |