Chapter III: The Seine From Rouen to Pont De L’arche

Rouen is truly celebrated for its art; but above all it interests the tourist by reason of the multiplicity and accessibility of its sights.

One can well call it to mind by these lines of Victor Hugo’s:

“Rouen, la ville aux vieilles rues,
Aux vieilles tours, débris des races disparues,
La ville aux cent clochers carillonnant dans l’air,
Le Rouen des châteaux, des hôtels, des bastiles
Dont le front hérissé de flèches et d’aiguilles
Déchire incessamment les brûmes de la mer.”

All the city’s monumental glories cannot be described here. The most that is attempted is the record of various rambles here and there in nooks and corners often not covered by the general traveller; practically leaving Rouen’s magnificent cathedral, its great churches and their appointments, its architectural monuments such as the Palais de Justice, to the guide-books of convention.

Time was, though difficult of belief now, when Rouen was called by an eighteenth-century traveller “an ugly, stinking, close, and ill-built town.” To-day no provincial city of France is more visited by tourists of every degree of wealth than the ancient Norman capital, and certainly none is more liked.

Its general aspect is that of a city of modern appointments and ancient architectural treasures, and its municipal governors are keenly alive to all that makes for the betterment of life within the city limits.

In spite of all this, some of its back streets and alleys are badly cared for, even to-day; and the condition of nodding, leaning, old timbered houses which artists love, does not by any means tend to purify the atmosphere.

There are some things in regard to which the French are still behind the times. Their streets are not in the immaculate condition of cleanliness in which they ought to be. There is always some sort of municipal scavengering, but often this does not reach to the far corners, and often individual effort itself, in the poorer quarters, does not go beyond sweeping refuse into the gutter or some byway. This is perhaps no more true of Rouen than of Amiens, of Lyons, or of Marseilles; but, nevertheless, there is a great opportunity for a new effort with respect to some of the older quarters, such as the streets running immediately back of the Church of St. Maclou.

That “Rouen is dearer than Paris” is a saying which has come to us from a century-old traveller; and there is certainly some truth in it.

The history of Rouen’s bridges is most interesting. To-day there are but three, and only two of them are of the conventional order. The celebrated _Pont Transbordeur_, while being essentially practical, is a weird exotic, not entitled to be classed with those masterpieces in stone built throughout France in the middle ages, many of which exist even to-day.

The first bridge at Rouen was probably not built before the year 1000, and the first document which makes mention of any bridge here is an _acte de donation_ of Richard II. in favour of the Abbey of Jumièges, dated at Fécamp in 1024. Therein was conceded to the monks at Jumièges, the right to fish _from Pont de l’Arche up to the Pont de Rouen_. At this time the _Pont de Rouen_ was a stone structure. A bridge of boats replaced this early stone bridge, and was considered one of the marvels of its time.

The monks, it seems, were always endowed with certain talents for bridge-building; and like the brothers of the bridge of St. Bénézet’s day at Avignon, took a certain guardianship over travellers by road who were obliged to make use of these conveniences. The monks established shelters near the bridges, or even on them in some instances, as in the case of the establishment kept up by “_Les Frères du Pont_” at Avignon.

It was an Augustinian monk, Père Nicolas, who had furnished the plans for this bridge of boats at Rouen. In 1630 it was begun, but five years later it was, in part, carried away by a flood, which misfortune induced the authorities to rebuild it with improvements, permitting certain sections to be opened to allow the passage of floating ice. However, it met with disaster again and again,--in 1669, in 1741, 1777, and 1799. To-day, besides the _Pont Transbordeur_, Rouen’s bridges are the _Pont Corneille_, named for the great dramatist, and the _Pont Boïeldieu_, named for his brother in arts--this time for a great music master.

Above the Ile Brouilly, the Western Railroad crosses the Seine on an iron structure held aloft on stone piers. The newest of Rouen’s bridges is the unique and essentially practical _Pont Transbordeur_, opposite the Boulevard Cauchoise, not a wholly beautiful structure, though certainly a marvel of interest to the stranger.

It belongs to the workaday world of docks and shipping, and is nothing but a mass of wire rope and suspended car, or cradle, like that of a travelling crane; but it was economical to build, and is equally so to run, and it serves the purposes of those whose business takes them among the shipping of the really great port of Rouen.

At any rate this marvel is no less beautiful than the Tower Bridge on London’s river, which serves the same purpose.

After all, the standard of beauty by which one judges the things of this world is a variable one, and the same person may decry the ugliness of the _Pont Transbordeur_ at Rouen, and yet think a full-rigged ship beautiful. As a matter of fact they are each a collection of struts and ties, and each is best adapted to the end in view; so the standard of judgment becomes a more or less artificial one, based simply on what we have been accustomed to see.

Not every visitor to Rouen searches out the delightful Hôtel Bourgtheroulde, one of the most brilliant Renaissance domestic establishments yet enduring in Normandy. It was built at great expense in the earliest years of the sixteenth century by Messire Guillaume Leroux, the seigneur of Bourgtheroulde. The exterior to-day shows little of luxury, but its interior court has the finely preserved decoration of other days, still left for us to marvel at. A series of bas-reliefs representing the triumphs of Petrarch and the famous interview of the “Field of the Cloth of Gold” are the chief of these admirable works of art.

In the desire to absorb all of the momentous historical attractions of Rouen one is apt to overlook a certain literary shrine, hidden away behind the old market.

In the Rue Pierre Corneille is the house where the father of the two poets by the name of Corneille lived. One reads upon a tablet placed upon the house:

“Ici étaient la maison
où sont nés les deux Corneilles
Pierre le 6 juin 1606, Thomas le 24 Août 1625.”

One of Rouen’s great attractions for many is Notre Dame de Bon Secours. As a place of pious pilgrimage its virtues may be all that are claimed for it, but as an artistic religious expression of an artistic and devout people it is about as low and vulgar a one as it is possible to see. No pagan ever erected a temple so hideous; and the church itself is set about by a burial-ground wherein are as offensive, ill-assorted a lot of tombstones as ever spoiled one of nature’s masterpieces. It is a masterpiece of landscape,--the winding Seine, the busy city of Rouen with its church towers and its bridges, and the forests of Rouvray, La Londe, and Roumare.

In addition there are curio shops for the sale of “_objets du vertu et du piété_,” the quality of which would be a disgrace to a fifth-rate watering-place.

A huge bell, too great to be hung in the tower of the modern Gothic Church of Our Lady, protrudes into the foreground surrounded by a clumsy iron cage. A placard requests the public not to throw pieces of stone at the bell, though why this should be necessary it is hard to say.

Another sort of a pagan temple, in triplicate, is supposed to commemorate the memory of Jeanne d’Arc; but it fails utterly to attract, and is merely to be counted as another of the side-shows of this splendid natural landscape, now utterly spoiled.

The simple marble square in Rouen’s old market-place, which presents only the plain statement that “on this spot, tied to the stake, was burned alive Jeanne d’Arc,” etc., is much more satisfactory.

An old-time traveller has said: “The first view of Rouen is sudden and striking.” He had come by road from Gisors. “The road again doubled in order to turn more gently down the hill, and presents the finest view of a town I have ever seen. The city, with all its churches and convents, and its cathedral proudly rising in the midst, fills the whole vale.”

The scene from the height of Bon Secours, where the great national highway from Paris drops down on Rouen, is in no way different to-day, and indeed it is doubtful if there be a finer view of a town in all the world than that same prospect.

What is the finest view in the world will, doubtless, always be a question for dispute; but those who have seen wide-spread Rouen, from the road which winds around to the back of Bon Secours,--not from the plateau or terrace of the church, or the Jeanne d’Arc monument,--have often reversed their previous judgments.

It is indescribable, unpaintable, impossible to photograph in all its glories; so one must see it for himself to really know it. The spectacle is so magnificent that it seems unreal and fairylike,--the great city and its faubourgs, with its apparently innumerable church spires, chimney-stacks, and roof-tops, and the broad, brilliant Seine, busy with its puffing tugs, great six-thousand-ton steamers, and an occasional four-masted ship, flowing through its midst.

Rouen is so admirably supplied with tramways and steamboats, that a week might well be spent in exploring its suburbs by any one who has the time and inclination.

Ossel, practically a suburb of Rouen, as one goes Paris-ward, has the look of an important manufacturing town; and so it really is, although it has one architectural treasure in the manor-house of Chapelle, dating from the sixteenth century. In its enclosure is a curious Renaissance work in the form of a pyramid held aloft by four columns, beneath which is sheltered an ancient well.

There are numberless small towns and villages throughout the length of the Seine which are nameless to the majority of summer travellers to Normandy. Caudebec they know, but Elbeuf, Pont de l’Arche, Les Andelys, St. Pierre de Vouvray, Bonniers, Giverny, and La Roche-Guy on are unknown ground to most of them.

Just above Rouen are innumerable riverside villages, many of which have their chief source of income from catering to those who like to dine _al fresco_ in the country, in a garden overlooking the Seine.

These resorts are more or less of the country-fair or rural holiday order, to be sure; but hidden away here and there in snug little nooks are innumerable delightful gardens and many hundreds of arbours and groves where one may eat a meal in the open air, or while away a sleepy afternoon. And this is precisely just what does take place, not only throughout the length of the winding Seine, but on every other waterway in France.

There is no limit to the self-respecting capacity for enjoyment of those who fill these riverside resorts on Sundays and holidays. There is no drunkenness, no maudlin riot, no blasphemy, and apparently no satiety.

The games which amuse the French middle class on such occasions may, to Anglo-Saxons, seem absurdly childish; but no one will deny that the very simplicity of them is wholesome, and far less detrimental to self-respect than the faro and three-card monte games which are usually set forth under like conditions elsewhere. Grown men, sane fathers, and portly matrons join with the younger folk at such juvenile sports as swings, tilting-boards, “Aunt Sally,” and ninepins, not forgetting the ever-present ring and cane games.

In contrast to this are the more luxurious, if less moral, resorts of the wealthy class; or, at least, of that class which keeps more money in circulation.

The dwellers in the Seine valley, like those along the countless other streams of France, are great fishermen; not so much for the sport or the quarry it may provide, nor for sociability, since the fisherman’s art is the least sociable of sports, as, it would seem, for the purpose of meditation. There is good fishing in the Seine, as all who partake thereof well know. From the Paris bridges and quays down the river to Rouen are many famous fishing-grounds.

Here it is that you see the true fisherman in all his glory. He sits beneath his big hat, or under an umbrella if the sun shines strongly, in a low-backed chair in a punt, and patiently holds his rod or line from early morn to late at night.

When he lays down his line for a time the French fisherman begins to think of eating and drinking. None of your ordinary picnic lunches either, of cold ham and hard boiled eggs; but most likely a cold fowl, washed down with good wine; and he prefers cold coffee to weak tea as an afterthought. This if he is not within hail of a waterside inn, in which case he will find provided a variety and a quantity of well-prepared food to suit both his taste and his appetite.

One has heard of chapels in rocks before now. Indeed, if memory serves truly, there are several in various parts of Europe that are remarkable not only for the manner of building, but often for local tradition and legend as well. There is nothing remarkable about the rock-hewn, cliff-cut Chapel of St. Adrien, near Rouen, to give it any great distinction, except its manner of building; and in this respect it is far more interesting than many already more famous. There is no pretence at architectural splendour, and the size of the edifice precludes the possibility of any vast utility. Still there is something more than a mere curio-value to this little chapel cut in the limestone cliff above the Seine, and as an ecclesiastical monument of note it is far more worthy than the pilgrim shrine at Bon Secours.

The cafés and open-air restaurants at its feet somewhat savour of the frivolous. But what would you? They are there simply because it is a beautiful spot accessible to the busy city of Rouen; and are withal orderly and well-conducted, well-patronized places. Between Pont de l’Arche and Rouen is Elbeuf, perhaps as famous to-day for its cloth-manufactories as for its storied past. This, however, will not interest the seeker of historic shrines, nor will the miles of execrable pavement and the tram-tracks which line its five kilometres of main street please automobilists. These detractions account for the absence of the tourist from the busy but picturesque town of Elbeuf. Nor is there much to admire here except its curious, conglomerate old church and the general picturesqueness of its surroundings, heightened even by the commonplaceness of the busy little industrial city itself. The tall chimneys of its cloth-factories, and the streamers of black smoke continually belching therefrom, soften and tone down the tints of sky and landscape in the real symphonic fashion set by Whistler.

The streams which ripple through the town are all shades of the rainbow, on account of the refuse of the dye-works; and the very atmosphere is charged with an odour which bespeaks the industry of a manufacturing town, such as one comes across only in France or Germany, picturesquely situated on a river’s bank, and literally humming with the whir of many wheels.

All manner of cloths are made here, especially those finer qualities used in the make-up of officers’ uniforms, carriage cloths, and the coverings of billiard-tables. There are at least twenty-five thousand men and women employed here, and all the shops of the town are supported by them. The combined industries turn out a product to the value of ninety millions of francs per year.

It was at an inn here that Arthur Young, that astute observer of matters agricultural, learned at _table d’hôte_--a matter of common knowledge among the guests there assembled--that the wine provinces of France were actually the poorest in all France. With some exceptions this is true to-day, and is plausibly explained elsewhere. Times have truly changed since Young wrote that he had not found one decent inn in all France.

It must be recalled that the fashionable, or rather the modern up-to-date hotel, with its elaborate _table d’hôte_, is much the same wherever found; and that an inland spa or a watering-place on the Mediterranean coast of France, or at Ostend, Dieppe, or Trouville, does not differ greatly from an establishment of the same class in Paris, London, or New York.

The genuine traveller will have none of this, however, with its ever recurring mutton served under the name of _agneau de Pauillac_, and the eternal rag-time music of an alleged Hungarian band whose only claim to the title is the more or less incorrect copy of a Magyar uniform in which the players are dressed. The hotels _de luxe_ have their place in the scheme of things as ordained to-day, no doubt, but they offer absolutely nothing to the lover of travel for its own sake, and are accordingly dreaded by most.

The inns of France which one meets in touring the country are so much better than similar establishments in England that the comparison is odious.

This may be disputed. Yet where in England, in a village of 1,500 inhabitants, will you get a five-course dinner or luncheon splendidly cooked, bountifully served, and with a seasoning and garnishing which it is impossible to duplicate elsewhere, for a modest two francs and a half, and at practically a moment’s notice? To be sure, it is always omelet, chicken, and salad; but that is surely better than the eternal bacon and eggs and cold boiled mutton of the English country inn.

The roadside inns are not becoming spoiled, either. On the beaten track where tourists throng they still possess the sentiment of good cheer in a more substantial manner than is implied by a few churchwardens and Brummagem pewter plates stuck up over the mantel; and if they lack “visitors’ books,” with sorry verses and weak platitudes about being “home from home,” they make up for it in good food and clean beds; and for what else does one go to a hotel?

Once and again, in the larger towns where there is an English quarter, and tea-and-bun-shops exist, there also may be found a “_Hôtel des Iles Brittaniques_” which caters, apparently, solely to _milords_ and millionaires; and, is quite different from the _Hôtel du Pays_, around the corner on the market-place, where you may drink your bock, or dine, or play dominoes with a smock-frocked peasant from the country-side.

The following incident happened in one of these great hotels situated in the principal city of a Norman department. At least, a righteously indignant Frenchman assured us that it did happen; and there was no reason to doubt his word:

He was touring in an automobile of modest size, not loaded down with luggage, four people in the tonneau, a mechanic, and the driver. The hotel _clientèle_, for the time at any rate, was composed of what the French call “_Milliardairs Americains_.” This is the universal name given those who make a vulgar show of money, others are merely “_Les Anglais_.”

Upon applying at the desk for a room, our Frenchman was met with an astonished stare and a curt reply that they had none such; and that the house was full except for a “_chambre à mécanicien_” over the scullery. Our friend bowed his apologies and regrets, and departed, but with true Gallic ingenuity brought up within an hour at a small town twenty kilometres away, and telephoned the before mentioned hotel in this wise:

“_Allô! allô! je souis lord Whisky, oune cliente anglèse, auriez-vous cinq chambres confortébles pour môa et mon souite et garage pour mes deux automobiles?_”

The reply came back over the wire satisfactorily enough:

“_Mais comment donc, Excellence, tout ce que son Excellence voudra!_”

Then our friend had his turn.

“_Non, cher monsieur, je me contenterai de la chambre à mécanicien que vous avez offerte il y a quelques heures à un français!_”

In the main the inns of the Seine valley are no better or no worse than in other parts of France. They may not rival the Hôtel de Metz at St. Menehould, the fame of which was in part made by Victor Hugo’s charming description in “_Le Rhin_”; and in Normandy they have not the same splendid abundance of good things of the table as in Burgundy, where the wine and the blood is rich; but they are amply endowed with creature comforts, and since the Touring Club of France and the Automobile Club have taken it upon themselves to counsel more care in sanitation, the inns of all France are infinitely to be preferred to those of any other country.

Of all the near-by towns more or less intimately associated with Rouen, the most prominent and attractive of all is the little town of Pont de l’Arche. It is known to most travellers as a railway junction with little or nothing of attractiveness about it. There is the usual warehouse for freight, signal-house, and the “_Bifur à Gisors_,” a station hotel, and an unpretentious café or two; but that is all, if we except a long, tree-lined avenue which leads to a more ambitious group of houses, a mile or so away.

This is Pont de l’Arche. Its church and its few hundred houses lie mostly hidden from the railway by the screen of poplars on the long avenue leading from the station. Incidentally this adds additional attraction; and to-day there is nothing save the distant shriek of a locomotive to remind one its inhabitants are not living in another age. The river glides by as in olden times, and there is much boat and barge traffic. The town is not so especially decrepit, nor dirty, nor unwholesome; but it has a certain lackaday air of aversion to modernity which a town of its size seldom lacks in this part of France.

Those who know this charming little town admire it the more because of its somnolent air. It sits high on the escarpment of the river bank, one roughly paved street running indirectly to the water, which is crossed by the usual conventionally designed bridge. On the very brink is its stately, dignified Church of Notre Dame des Arts; and something more than scanty remains of the town’s ancient ramparts are still visible, notably in what is known as the Citadel.

It is from this citadel that the etymologists derive the name of Pont de l’Arche, from Pontarcy, which evolved itself from _Pont arcis meæ_ (_pont de ma citadelle_), given to it by Charles the Bald, who had sojourned there.

Pont de l’Arche was one of the first towns of Normandy to open its gates to Henri IV. during his strife to reconquer his kingdom. At this time the ramparts were an effective protection against outside interference. Doubly so, in that its machicolated walls and towers were ably supported by the natural escarpment of the river bank.

The Church of Notre Dame des Arts is doubtless the only one of its name in Christendom. The reason for this singularly appropriate nomenclature will be obvious; and already, though the fabric is an unfinished one, and in still other parts has suffered the decay of time, the edifice itself proudly proclaims its right to the name. As a species of architectural art itself, Notre Dame des Arts comes well within the third ogival period (fifteenth and sixteenth centuries), with some good carvings in wood of the seventeenth century, and some acceptable glass of the same century or possibly of that preceding.

The restoration of this fine church has been most lovingly undertaken; and a most difficult piece of work it has proved not to debase the florid ornament beyond its original conception, which among neighbouring churches ranks it with the collegiate church at Eu, and St. Vincent’s at Rouen, if not actually with St. Maclou itself, the richest and most florid of all the Gothic churches previous to the Renaissance.

Though contracted, the interior likewise displays that profusion of ornament which characterizes the flamboyant style, notably in the keys of the vaulting, which show a remarkable strength. Its fenestration is good, as well as the glass, and such auxiliary features and furnishings as the _retable_ and the organ _buffet_, which are acceptable, if somewhat debased from Gothic forms. Indeed, these features are seldom seen in anything but the more or less heavy Renaissance treatment of large masses.

Pont de l’Arche is the birthplace of Hyacinthe Langlois, architect and antiquary. His monument, erected through the beneficence of a little group of Norman archæologists, is on the little public square before the house in which the accomplished and versatile man was born. The fact is mentioned here in order to emphasize the regard which all French towns hold for the memory of any deserving person and his work. Langlois, the Norman antiquary, was perhaps not so very great a personage, but in the eyes of his fellow townsmen his was at least a fame which deserved a memorial which should outlive man.

The name Notre Dame des Arts is singularly appropriate to a finely planned church. One defines art as “the realization of a conception,” which in most cases is God-given, so far as the individual effort is concerned. Art is truth, therefore art is elevating, and it is chosen as the instrument that shall echo the grand truths which ennoble and purify mankind.

An eloquent plea is made to the artists of France to contribute their aid in glorifying the fabric of Notre Dame des Arts by the Abbé Philippe, vicar-dean of Pont de l’Arche.

The dean makes a most convincing plea, which is printed in a little book and presented to visitors. It is all very dogmatic, but still its object is commendable enough, one must admit. It smacks, too, of personal pride in the possession of this beautiful church, which again is surely pardonable. Most of us will admit that it is altogether a charming idea that a church should be built and beautified and dedicated to art, leaving others to cavil at dogma.

The plea of the devoted dean of the church ends with the intimation that it is proposed to erect mural tablets which shall emblazon in letters of gold the names of all who may contribute to the preservation and enrichment of the fabric. Future generations will then see that in the early years of the twentieth century the friends of art were not oblivious to its higher expression, and were devoted enough to further it in this noble monument.

The dean’s garden, just before the westerly end of the church, is charming in its unworldliness. From it one enters the sanctuary in a roundabout way along gravelled walks, box-covered hedges, bright-flowered beds and small garden trees loaded with plums, apricots, and pears. Nothing here is suggestive of the onrush of time; there is no hum of the electric-car to be heard; no rush of the automobile, no smell of gasoline, and no grime of the workaday world. The church itself towers above to the eastward, and opposite is the modest house of the dean, all suggestive of peacefulness and content.

Next to the Church of Notre Dame des Arts, the _Pons Arcis_ of the days of Charles the Bald has its chief historical and artistic shrine in the old Abbey of Bon Port, now scarcely more than a riverside ruin.

It belonged originally to the monks of the order of Citeaux, and was founded by the Lion-hearted Richard in 1190 as the outcome of a vow made while pursuing a _cerf_ across the river, to the effect that if his horse ever reached the other bank--“_un bon port_”--he would erect a monastery on the spot.

To-day the ruins belong to a M. Lenoble, who has spent much care and expense in preserving what is left of this interesting relic. Of the abbatial church nothing remains but the foundations. The refectory is in a fine state of preservation, with an admirably designed series of windows.

The cloistral buildings still exist in something more than mere ruins. The capitulary hall has been reëstablished after its original lines, and its library, with its high wood ceiling of the time of Louis XVI., is admirable.

The remains of the old abbey are reflected in the Seine, which winds about its feet and forms cool, shadowy pools now frequented by fishermen from Rouen, as they doubtless were by monkish anglers in days gone past.

After this contemplative trip about Pont de l’Arche one is quite ready to resort to the charming hotel of Guennord’s--“La Normandie”--near the bridge and partake of the unusually good luncheon served in a room overlooking the river. This dining-room, like those of many another spot in France beloved of artists, is panelled with sketches donated by them.