Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine Part 4

No one, for instance, need go to La Lande-Patry, unless he is anxious to get a better understanding of a single sentence of the _Roman de Rou_.

Even at Tinchebray the strictly historic interest is all. Unless we except that single arcade on the tower of St. Remigius, there is really nothing memorable to show in the shape of either church or castle. With Argentan the case is different. Any one who has a turn for mediaeval antiquities in any shape would surely reckon that town as one of high interest. With no such single memory as the great fight of Tinchebray, it plays a certain part in history through many ages; the local history of the town itself is remarkable, and its existing monuments are of various kinds and instructive in several ways. And the means of getting there are as simple as any means well can be; for Argentan is a princ.i.p.al station on the line from Paris to Granville. It is also a station on the great cross line from Caen to Le Mans. This position makes it a good centre for seeing several places in various directions, to say nothing of others for which none of the many railways of Normandy has as yet done anything. In the journey now recorded it served as a centre for Falaise and Seez, and for what will to most people be the less familiar names of Exmes and Almeneches, and it might easily have been made a centre for other places.

Argentan is a kind of town to which it would be hard to find an exact fellow in England. It is not the head of any district; it is not the seat of any great ecclesiastical foundation; such importance as it has in history seems to have come from the presence of a castle which not uncommonly received princely sojourners. Yet it is plainly something more than one of those towns which have simply sprung up at the gate of a castle. It has one main characteristic of a cla.s.s of towns much greater than its own: the fortress and the great church stand side by side in its most prominent quarter. That in the general view the church is far more conspicuous than the fortress is the result of later havoc; but we are surprised to find that a church of such dignity in itself and placed in such a position as the chief church of Argentan was never the seat of abbot or dean. Falaise is now a larger town than Argentan; but we feel that at Falaise the town has simply grown up at the foot of the castle hill. Saint Gervase at Falaise is no fellow to the mighty fortress on the _felsen_, as Saint German of Argentan must have been to the _donjon_ of Argentan, even when that _donjon_ was better seen than it is now. The name of Argentan does not at once lead us to some Gaulish tribe or to some Roman prince; but it does not, like that of Falaise, at once carry its own meaning with it in the speech of some or other of the Teutonic conquerors of Gaul. We feel that Falaise, looking up to the great keep and to the tower of Talbot, is merely a magnificent Dunster or Richmond--we cannot say Windsor; for the _sainte chapelle_ of Saint George has no fellow there. But Argentan is a miniature, a very small miniature certainly, but still a miniature, of Durham and Lincoln and Angers. That is, church and fortress stand together on the highest point in the town.

Is Argentan therefore to be set down among the hill-towns? Falaise, of all places in the world, a.s.suredly is not; the castle is set on a hill, but not the town. But can we give the name to Argentan? Some scruple may be felt by one who has come from Saint-Lo, from Coutances, or from Avranches. Yet the ascent from the Orne to the upper part of the town is very marked, and as the chief buildings, ecclesiastical and military, are gathered together on the higher ground, there is a true akropolis.

And there is no doubt that this akropolis had its own circuit of wall, distinct from that of the lower town. This last took in a large s.p.a.ce, and was of a strangely complicated shape, running out hither and thither in various directions. According to all our experience of other places, we would take for granted that the inner circuit was the older. Here, we should say, was the original settlement; the town, after the usual manner of towns, outstripped its boundaries; it spread itself in whatever directions suited its inhabitants; lastly, the suburbs which thus grew up were taken into the town, and were fenced in by a second wall. This, one need hardly say, is a thing which has happened over and over again, in this place and that, till we take it for granted as the explanation of such a state of things as we see at Argentan. But in a local book, in which a great deal of information about Argentan is brought together, _Le Vieil Argentan_, by M. Eugene Vimont, it is distinctly a.s.serted that the case is the other way. The wider circuit, he tells us, is the older. In the wars of the early days of William, King Henry of France burned Argentan. The burning is undoubted; it is recorded by William of Jumieges. But M. Vimont's inference seems strange--namely, that after this destruction the town was rebuilt, but on a smaller scale. The case would be something like one stage in the history of Perigueux, when only a part of old Vesona was fortified at the time of the barbarian invasion of 407, and the part outside the new walls was forsaken.[49] But an ordinary burning of a town in warfare like that which went on between France and Normandy did not commonly lead to such great changes as this, and it is very hard to believe that the town of Argentan can, in the first half of the eleventh century, have reached this great extent and this irregular shape. We are bound to suppose that a local writer who shows much local knowledge has some reason for what he says. But for a thing so hard to believe some direct authority should be quoted, and M. Vimont quotes none. Till some other convincing authority is produced, we shall believe that the growth of Argentan followed the same law as that of other towns.

It is only in a few small pieces here and there that either the wider or the narrower circuit of wall has left any sign of itself. But we can believe both on M. Vimont's witness, and indeed they hardly need any witness. Each circuit has left its stamp behind it in the way that town walls do leave it, even when, as walls, they have altogether vanished.

We hold, then, that the narrower circuit, taking in only the higher ground with the church of Saint German, and the two castles, is the oldest. The church and the _donjon_ doubtless had predecessors before King Henry came against Argentan. His burning need not have wrought any more of lasting destruction than a hundred other such burnings. The town sprang up again; in course of time, when Argentan flourished under princely favour, it grew beyond its old bounds. The growth of the inhabited town called for a wider circuit of walls. The new suburbs, with the church of Saint Martin, were taken within the fortified area.

Argentan no longer merely looked down on the Orne, but was washed by it.

The upper town, then, besides the church of Saint German, contains not only one, but two castles. On the highest ground of all, in the north-west corner of the enclosure, are the remains of a large polygonal keep, which keeps its name of the _donjon_. It makes very little show, being sadly crowded in by houses. Somewhat lower down is the _chateau_, a graceful building of the late French Gothic, now used as the Palace of Justice. The building itself has hardly any defensive character about it, but it stands as part of the general line of defence, and it was also connected with the _donjon_ by an inner wall, parting the two castles from the town. Some parts of the wall in this neighbourhood, both inner and outer, are still standing; and near the _chateau_ is the desecrated chapel of Saint Nicolas, keeping some good windows.

The _chateau_ would attract anywhere; the fragment of the _donjon_ simply peeps over houses. The chief thing in Argentan after all is the great church of Saint German. Both this and the smaller church of Saint Martin down below give us most instructive lessons in the course by which the late Gothic of France gradually changed into _Renaissance_. As we have often said, this transition has in England to be studied almost wholly in houses, while in France we trace it in churches, and grand churches also. The church of Saint German at Argentan is undoubtedly a n.o.ble pile. At a distance it suggests the memory of Saint Peter at Coutances on a larger scale. We seem to look on the same grouping of central and western towers, though the central tower of Saint German's is not octagonal, but square. But the western tower at Argentan is not western in the same sense as the western tower at Coutances. That is, it does not stand in the same line with the central tower. It is not a western, but a north-western tower. This allows a greater variety of outline than can be had at Saint Peter's. But the general effect of the towers, all of which evidently received their last finish after the days of pure Gothic had pa.s.sed away, is essentially the same in the two cases. In the central tower of Saint German this finish is nothing more than a cupola of wood and lead on a handsome but not lofty lantern of late Gothic, wonderfully good, outside at least, for the date of 1555.

But the general effect is not bad. The north-western tower, known as _la grosse tour_, has a more curious history. The lowest stage is good and rich Flamboyant, with a highly adorned porch. On this is a much plainer stage, from which the Gothic feeling has pa.s.sed, but which has no distinctly _Renaissance_ detail. It has long narrow windows with flat-arched heads. This must have been building in 1617, when the governor of the town forbade the tower to be carried higher, lest it should overlook the _donjon_. We think of William Rufus bidding Hildebert of Le Mans to pull down his pair of newly built towers.[50]

The hindrance was afterwards withdrawn, and in 1638 the tower was finished with its fantastic, but certainly taking, cupola. The nave was begun in 1421, when Normandy was ruled for a season by the descendants of its ancient dukes. It was carried on gradually for 220 years, and was finished in 1641. The changes in style during this time are easily traced. The nave is late but pure Gothic, a really fine design, though a good deal spoiled by the loss of tracery in so many of the windows both in aisles and clerestory. In a large panelled triforium a very keen eye may possibly detect in the lowest range of ornament a tendency--it is nothing more--to _Renaissance_ ideas. Or it may only be fancy suggested by the stages further east. Certainly the nave, if not quite of first-rate merit, has a really striking effect, and is far better than most panel work of the time. The transepts are of the same style. They are finished north and south with apses, which are really graceful, though we miss the rose-windows which we should otherwise have looked for in a French church on such a scale as this. The choir too, as seen out of the nave, is well-proportioned and effective, though we see that the windows in the apse have flat arches and no tracery. The apse, if we can call it so, has the strange singularity of ending in a point, and some odd details have crept into the bosses of the vault. But, in the general view from the nave, the only thing that mars the general harmony and good effect is the treatment of the lantern. The four lantern arches have the flattened shape of the latest Gothic; but, oddly enough, the variety here chosen is the English four-centred arch, not the usual French shape, three-centred, elliptic, or actually flat-headed. But both the English and the French form are quite unsuited for pier-arches, and for lantern arches yet more. And, though the work of the lantern is quite good outside, yet within we see that the enemy has begun to take possession. There is perhaps no actual un-Gothic detail, but the feeling of the arcade of flat-headed arches which forms the gallery shows the way in which things are tending.

We go into the choir. There, setting aside the apse windows, the arcade, triforium, clerestory, are still pure, if very late Gothic; the new fas.h.i.+on comes in one detail only; the vaulting shafts have an odd kind of Ionic capital. It is in the latest part of all, the chapels round the choir, that the new taste comes in most strongly, and even there it is not altogether dominant. It is very strange outside, where heavy flying-b.u.t.tresses are tricked out with little columns. Within, pairs of such little columns are the chief ornament. But they support no arches, only sc.r.a.ps of entablature. The arches of the roof, the windows, and everything else, are still of the elliptic shape, and they still keep the late Gothic mouldings. No building better shows what a long fight was waged between the two styles. Saint German at Argentan is not like Saint Eustace, where we see a grand Gothic conception carried out without a single correct Gothic detail. Here not only the conception, but the great ma.s.s of the internal detail, is purely Gothic; the new fas.h.i.+on thrusts itself in only in particular parts.

This last remark is specially true of the smaller church of Argentan, that of Saint Martin. Here we have not the full cruciform shape. There is no central tower or lantern, but only lower transepts projecting from a continuous nave and choir, whose roof-line, within and without, runs uninterruptedly from east to west. The only tower is a small octagonal one with a spire at the north-west corner. The peculiarity within is that, while the arcade and clerestory are still late Gothic, the triforium between them has run off into _Renaissance_. The reason seems clear. The new fas.h.i.+on affected details long before it touched the great lines of the building. The triforium at this date is, as at Saint German, simply a matter of detail, an arrangement of panelling and the like. That stage, therefore, was naturally touched by the intruding foes, while the main features, like the pillars and pier-arches, are as yet not all affected. At Saint Martin the windows are some of them good Flamboyant, while some are a kind of very bad Perpendicular. From others, as at Saint German, the tracery has been cut away altogether.

This church, smaller than Saint German, of a less effective outline, and standing in the lower part of the town, has nothing like the same grand effect as the two towers of Saint German on the hill. But it has, with its tall clerestory, a stately look from some approaches, and it has its lesson to tell in the history of art.

One is surprised to hear that in the old days Argentan had but a single _cure_, whose sphere of usefulness took in both Saint German and Saint Martin. One fully expects to find that such a church as Saint German was collegiate. But this is one of the characteristic features of French architecture. We are used in England to great town churches, which never were more than parish churches, covering a good deal more ground than Saint German's. But we are not used, save at Sh.o.r.eham and Bristol, to see them built, like Saint German, so thoroughly on the type of churches of higher rank. Boston, Newark, Saint Michael's at Coventry, Trinity Church at Hull, are as grand in their way as Saint German at Argentan, only it is in quite another way.

There are a few other things to see at Argentan. On the slope of the hill is a good late Gothic house, with two arches of street arcade in front. Add a little more, and we should have the arcade of Carentan; add a great deal more, and we should have the arcades of Bern. Those who seek for it will also find a mediaeval bridge of two pointed arches over one of the branches of the Orne. And it is grievous when, after moving from Argentan to new quarters at Laigle, we take another look at M.

Vimont's book, and find that we have failed to see a small desecrated Romanesque church called _Notre-Dame de la Place_. We relieve ourselves by finding fault with M. Vimont, who certainly does not always put things in those parts of his book where we should most naturally look for them.

But we have one point to settle with witnesses nearer home. In the war between William Rufus and Duke Robert, the Duke, with his ally King Philip of France, took a castle in which Roger the Poitevin, son of Earl Roger of Shrewsbury and brother of Robert of Belleme, commanded for William at the head of 700 knights. Strange to say, they all surrendered without shedding of blood on the first day of the siege. Our chronicle calls the place _Argentses_, which Florence of Worcester translates by _Argentinum castrum_.[51] The name looks like Argences, much nearer to Caen than Argentan. But one doubts whether Argences could ever have been a fortress of such importance, perhaps whether it was a fortress at all.

And Robert of Torigny, who must have known the country better than anybody at Peterborough or Worcester, has _Argentomum_, which certainly means Argentan, and which may perhaps have the force of a correction. If so, we have a second visit to Argentan by a French king of the eleventh century, but not one which made any new building needful.

There is a good deal more to say about Argentan in later times, from Henry the Second of Normandy and England to Henry the Fourth of Navarre and France. The traveller is most likely to sojourn at the _Hotel des Trois Maries_, a resting-place which, in its foundation rather than in its buildings, goes back to the fourteenth century. It has received many memorable guests, and its host is said to have purveyed for the last Henry that we have spoken of. It stands in the main street on the lower ground. The thought did suggest itself that it might be a trifle too near the Orne, whose waters at Argentan are not attractively clean, and that the _Hotel du Donjon_ on the top of the hill might have a better air. But we can say nothing as to the further merits or demerits of the Donjon, and the Three Maries sheltered us well enough by the s.p.a.ce of six days.

EXMES AND ALMENeCHES

1892

Exmes and Almeneches; one fancies that those names will sound strange to almost any one save those who have been lately reading the eleventh book of Orderic the Englishman. Exmes indeed is one of those unlucky places which, even in the year 1891, remain without the comfort of a railway.

But Almeneches has a station happily placed on two lines; it is visited by trains between Granville and Paris, and also by trains between Caen and Le Mans. It thus seems to stand in a closer relation to the world of modern times than Exmes, to which he who does not care to trust himself to a Norman omnibus must go on his own account. To Almeneches too one may go on one's own account; each place makes a pleasant drive from Argentan. There is nothing very striking on the road to either, but the road to Almeneches decidedly goes through the prettier country. Each has a church and a castle to show, or rather each has a church and the site of a castle. As in so many places, the ecclesiastical building has outlived the fortress. And this is more to be noticed at Almeneches, where the church was monastic, and therefore ran greater chances of destruction in the days of havoc. In general history we cannot venture to say that either spot has a place. In special Norman history Exmes, under some or other of the forms of its name, _Oximum_, _Hiesmes_, anything else, often shows itself; its early importance is noticed by its giving its name to the large district, _Pagus Oximensis_, _Oixmeiz_, _Hiesmsis_. And the _Oximenses_ are sometimes spoken of in a special way, as if they were a distinct people, capable of acting for themselves. Of Almeneches we hardly hear anything but at one particular moment, and then we hear of Exmes along with it.

In short, the history of Almeneches, as far as we are concerned with it, might be summed up under a sensational heading, as "The Sorrows of Abbess Emma." Her sorrows did not last long, but they were heavy while they lasted. It was hard for the head of a devout Sisterhood to have three of the great ones of the earth set upon her at once, one of them being her own brother. She was daughter of Roger of Montgomery, afterwards Earl of two s.h.i.+res in England, and of his first wife, Mabel of Belleme, who bears so evil a reputation for bloodshed and treachery.

She was therefore sister to the heir of her mother's estates and crimes, to that Robert of Belleme who is charged with a crime from which the worst Merwing would have shrunk, that of pulling out the eyes of his little G.o.dson, seemingly only for the fun of the thing. But Emma and her sisters are described as being much better than any of their brothers, even those who were not so bad as Robert. She may therefore not have been wholly unfit for the post in which she was set when her father put her at the head of his newly founded abbey, though she could hardly have been qualified according to the rule which Gregory the Great laid down for the monasteries of Sicily, that no abbess should be under sixty years of age.

The troubles of Abbess Emma began in the year 1102, when her brother Robert was happily driven out of England, with his brothers and his whole followings and belongings. It might seem a little hard when King Henry, in getting rid of the whole stock, seized on the English lands which Earl Roger had given to his daughter's Norman Abbey. But we remember that, in so doing, he was forestalling, not the Eighth of his name, but the Fifth. We did not want alien priories in England. Robert came back to his native Normandy, began to work every kind of mischief there, and his brothers Arnulf and Roger helped him for awhile in so doing. Arnulf is famous at Pembroke.[52] Roger the _Poitevin_, so called from his marriage, had been lord of that land between Mersey and Ribble, which afterwards went to patch up the modern s.h.i.+re of Lancaster.

Presently the brothers quarrelled. Robert of Belleme refused to give Arnulf and Roger any share in their father's inheritance. Then they forsook him, and Arnulf took an active part against him on behalf of Duke Robert. We read how, in June, 1103, he seized his brother's _munitio_ of Almeneches, and how it was occupied for the Duke. This was dangerous to his sister's abbey, where his followers did not scruple to occupy the buildings and to stable their horses in the church. Then Robert of Belleme, looking on the abbey as a hostile fortress, comes down on Almeneches, burns the church and all the buildings of the monastery, and leaves his sister and her nuns to find shelter where they can. The Duke's followers, who fall into his hands, he deals with after his manner; they are killed, mutilated, or kept in hard bonds. Robert of Belleme, it must be remembered, is the man of whom it was said that he refused ransom for his prisoners, despising gain, compared with the keener pleasure of tormenting them. The Duke then and his following set forth to do something against the hateful tyrant--"_odibilis tyrannus_"

he is called, a phrase in which we must not forget the ancient sense of "_tyrannus_."[53] Counts and lords are with him, and the whole force of the land of Exmes. They hold their councils in the castle of Exmes; they did what they could against the tyrant; but he was too strong for them.

He defeated the Duke in battle, and got possession of the castle of Exmes.

Meanwhile Abbess Emma and her Sisterhood had to go whither they could.

"Tener virginum conventus misere dispersus est." Some sought shelter with kinsfolk and friends. The Abbess herself and three nuns went to Saint-Evroul, where Orderic, who tells the story, dwelled as the monk Vital. They found a shelter and a place of wors.h.i.+p in an ancient chapel where Saint Evroul himself had dwelled--"coelesti theoriae intentus solitarie degebat." There they abode six months, till in the next year they were able to go back to Almeneches and to begin to set up their ruined home again. For ten years Abbess Emma laboured at gathering the sisterhood together and rebuilding the church. Then she died, and, by as near an approach to hereditary succession as could be in the case of abbesses, her staff pa.s.sed to her niece Matilda, daughter of her brother Philip. She, too, had to rebuild church and monastery after another fire. We are not told how it was kindled: but by that time her uncle Robert was safe in prison in England, shorn of all power of burning anything or of gouging out anybody's eyes.[54]

Our present business is to see the sites of all these events. We hardly dared to hope that we may see any ecclesiastical work of Abbess Emma or Abbess Matilda. Still less do we hope to see the castles which Arnulf and Robert of Belleme seized on standing up as they were in their day.

Both Exmes and Almeneches, in the present state of their military works, are among the places which most fully bear out the doctrine with which we started in speaking of Hauteville, that a site is often better when there is nothing on it. The site of the castle of Exmes is not exactly in an ideal state. The best case of all would be if it still bore a castle of the right date; the second best would be if there were only a green hill and its ditch, with full power of walking freely over them as one thought good. The castle-hill of Exmes is not in so happy a case as either of these; but it is much better off than if it were surmounted by a barrack or a prison. The hill is there; the ditch, as we suppose we must call it, is there; there is no building on the hill save a small modern chapel; the only bad thing about it is that the top of the hill is cut up into small fields with high hedges, and that the ditch is cut up into gardens. There is therefore no means either of going freely about, or of taking any connected view of the top of the hill. Still, the general line of the place can be easily made out, and we soon see that a site well suited for its purpose has been made the most of. The actual hill of the castle makes no special show in the distance. No longer marked by the castle itself, it seems simply part of the general ma.s.s of high ground on which both town and castle stand, and from which the castle-hill itself stands forward in a peninsular fas.h.i.+on towards the north. The hill is round, or nearly so; and no small measure of human skill has been employed in adapting it to purposes of defence. We spoke of a ditch; but a ditch is hardly the right word. At a good height above the actual bottom, as one feels very strongly in going up the road from Argentan, the castle-hill strictly so called is surrounded by the artificial work which, for want of a better name, we have called a ditch. But it is safer to say that the hill-side has been cut, leaving the upper part of the hill with scarped sides rising above a flat piece of ground all round, which puts on the character of a ditch or not according as the hill-side at different points supplies a bank on the other side. It is on the side towards the town that it is most truly a ditch. The general effect is something like the clerestory of a round church, the Temple Church or any other, rising above a flat-roofed surrounding aisle. The ditch is wide, and doubtless has been deeper--that is, more of a ditch--than it is now; that is, its use for gardens must have raised its general level. One's thoughts somehow rather go away to Marsala than to Arques or Old Sarum--perhaps because in those last we can freely go about, while gardens, houses, what not, come in the way both at Marsala and at Exmes. If they were away, the whole thing would be more like some of the ditches on the Malvern hills than anything else.

Such is all that is to be seen of the castle of Exmes; but, in the absence of an actual donjon that can have seen the wars of the Conqueror and his sons, it is quite enough. The look-out is a wide one indeed; but it is now easier to get it from the road going back to Argentan than from the top of the hill itself. The eye ranges over a vast s.p.a.ce chiefly to the north-west, over the great forest of Gouffers, over plains and undulating ground, a wide and striking view, but in which no remarkable object rises up to catch the eye. We look forth with the special hope of getting a distant glimpse of Falaise and its donjon.

Perhaps not the donjon itself, but the high ground about it is said to be seen from the tower of Saint German at Argentan. But we at least could not see it from Exmes.

The other object in the little town of Exmes, now hardly more than a village, is the church. This stands on the general ma.s.s of high ground from which the castle hill juts out. It is a building of no small interest, both from what it has to show and from what it has not. At first sight it seems utterly shapeless. What first catches the eye is a very pretty apse of good Flamboyant work, with windows in two ranges, of which all in the upper and some in the lower are blocked. We see also at the same glance that something just to the west of the apse has been destroyed or left unfinished. Beyond this again is a much lower western body, a nave with its aisles thrown under one roof. This last is not attractive from without, but when we go in, we find that it is the jewel of Exmes. There is a nave of five bays, perhaps once of six, of the very simplest and purest Romanesque, one of the examples which show how that style, better than any other style, can altogether dispense with ornament. There are no columns, no capitals, not a moulding of any kind.

Arches of two orders rise from square piers with imposts, and support an equally plain clerestory. For a clerestory there is, genuine and untouched, though so strangely hidden outside by the great sloping roof.

This is all; but we ask for no more; the design, plain as it is, leaves nothing to ask for. One does not rush at a date; it may be twelfth century; it may be eleventh; but, if so, it is of the second half of the eleventh. Plain as are the imposts, they show that the work is of the confirmed Norman variety of Romanesque; there are no Primitive traces hanging about it, such as we see at Jumieges.

The perfection of the Norman nave seems to have been tampered with in later days by cutting through a low transepted chapel on each side. The arches look as if they had supplanted a sixth arch of the nave. But far greater changes were presently designed. As at Gisors, as at a hundred other places, the Flamboyant architects thought the elder building too plain, and above all things too low. In a great number of cases they rebuilt the choir after their own fas.h.i.+on, but never carried the work on to the nave. Here at Exmes the work in the eastern part was never finished. That seems most likely; but it is possible that the work was finished and has been pulled down. The apse at least was done, and very pretty it is; but a tall transept on each side with a large chapel to the east of each, perhaps built, certainly designed, are not there now.

Within, there is no vaulting, and a mean wooden roof has been thrown across at about half the proper length. The nave, too, is covered with a wooden roof, a kind of coved roof with tie-beams. A real barrel-vault would be best of all; but a good flat ceiling, such as was common in Romanesque times, would do very well. It is one of the differences between French and English architecture that the French designers always meant or hoped to have a vault; the wooden roof in a French church is always a mere s.h.i.+ft. It was the builders of English parish churches who found out that the wooden roof could be made into an equal subst.i.tute for the vault, preferred to it by a deliberate taste.

For one very anxious to work out in detail the curious little bit of history with which the two places are chiefly concerned, it might be better, if he could manage it, to take Exmes and Almeneches in a single round. But it is easier to make them the objects of two separate excursions from Argentan. We set out then from that town with a twofold anxiety on the mind. Shall we find any signs of the abbey of the persecuted Emma? We do not give up all hope till we shall see with our own eyes. Shall we find any signs of the "_munitio_" occupied by her brother Arnulf? Signs we may fairly look for, if not for the thing itself. Our guidebook describes a church of Almeneches, but it does not distinctly say whether it is the church of the abbey or a separate parish church. It speaks of a "beau tumulus" in the "environs" of Almeneches, and says that the neighbourhood is full of "equestrian memories," whatever those may be. One of them, to be sure, bears the name of the "Manoir de la Motte," which has a very tempting sound. On the ordnance map we can find nothing of this manor; but we do find "Almeneches" and "le Chateau d'Almeneches" marked as two distinct _communes_. This is encouraging; we seem to have lighted on what at home we should call "Abbess Almeneches" and "Castle Almeneches." We see Emma at the one and Arnulf at the other; but we still do not know what traces either sister or brother may have left. At last we reach Almeneches, Abbess Almeneches, and we see the church described in our Joanne. It is not very tempting in its general look, and there is nothing particular about its site, except that the ground does slope away from its east-end. Is this Emma's minster or its successor, or is it merely a parish church, and have we to look for the abbey elsewhere? Some signs of the cloister roof on the south side soon settle this question. But we begin to hope, for the credit of the house of Montgomery, that Emma, either before or after her troubles, and her niece after her, had a better church than this to preside over. We find from Joanne that Almeneches boasts of its church; but it doth falsely boast. Instead of the nave of Romsey or of Matilda's church at Caen, we have a single body of late Gothic, with windows like very bad Perpendicular, a form not uncommon hereabouts. We get its date from an inscription:--

"Ce temple lequel a este ruine par l'antiquite fut commence a reedifier l'a^n de grace 1534 et fut perfaict l'a^n 1550 par revere^nde dame Madame Loyse de Silly abbesse de cea^ns. Gloire et hon^r. soyt au seigneur."

Louise of Silly's work may be just endured; it is at any rate better than the choir built by a later Abbess Louise--we have got out of the age of Emmas and Matildas--in 1674. That is the lowest depth of all; it is the depth reached by the choir of Saint Wulfram of Abbeville; that is, it is of no style at all; a decent Italian building would be welcome by the side of it. But its modern adornments may teach us the history of Saint Opportuna down to our own day. That may be said, because it represents her translation in the days of the second Republic in 1849.

What most strikes one is the appearance in stained gla.s.s of modern uniforms and--we were going to say modern bonnets, only we are told that the bonnets of 1849 are not counted as modern in 1891. Still we are sure that neither Abbess Emma nor even Abbess Louise ever wore such before they entered religion. Altogether one never saw so poor an abbey church anywhere. One is curious to know what it immediately supplanted, and whether the sisterhood was again in such straits as those which it had been in the time of Emma of Montgomery. Did the house never recover from the seizure of its lands by King Henry?

Of the "Manoir de la Motte" nothing can be heard. But the "_munitio_"

must be represented, at least in name, by Le Chateau d'Almeneches. Our driver protests that there is no _chateau_ there, only a _commune_. So much the better. If there is no _chateau_ there in his sense, that is, no intruding modern house, we are more likely to find the site of the real _chateau_, the _munitio_. And we presently do find it. We are going on in some difficulties, amidst a good deal of rain; but we see something in a field by the roadside, between Almeneches and the church of Le Chateau d'Almeneches which is evidently the right thing. There is a manifest mound and ditch of some kind. We go on to the church, one about as worthless as may be, but which will serve as a place at least of shelter. But by that time the rain has stopped, and we are able to study our mound and ditch without let or hindrance. Here is the castle, the _munitio_, of Almeneches, whence the Duke's followers first troubled Abbess Emma. But yet more, here is Joanne's "_beau tumulus_" thrown in along with it. A plan is almost needed to set forth what we see. Here is a piece of slightly elevated ground girded by a ditch on all sides except where the sluggish river Don--how many Dons are there in Europe?--which in times past clearly supplied the ditch with water, itself flows. Here then is the castle; at least here are its essential features. And they are all clearer, because there is no _chateau_ in the driver's sense, but only a farmhouse of decent age, which does no harm.

But then the ditch, on one side at least, is prolonged to follow one side of a much more striking mound, a long mound which is clearly the "_beau tumulus_." We do not like to be too positive about prae-historic tumps, but this certainly looks very like one. Indeed it need not be prae-historic, it may cover the bones or ashes of some invading Northman, who was cut off too soon to be christened, to learn French, and to become the founder of a Norman house. The tump must be older than the _munitio_ proper; but we may be sure that the makers of the _munitio_ did not leave it out of their reckonings. It had to be guarded; it could not well be lived on. Here then we have found all that we want at Exmes and Almeneches. We understand the scene of the petty war which drove Abbess Emma to Saint-Evroul. We have found our two castles, all that we cared to find of them. We have found our abbey, or at least a successor on its site. And we have both the tump and the church of Exmes thrown in [Greek: en parergoo]. It is not at all a bad two days' work that we have done in the immediate land of the _Oximenses_.

LAIGLE AND SAINT-EVROUL

1892

Our next halting-place is Laigle on the Rille, the Rille that runs out to flow by Brionne and the Bec of Herlouin. We choose it as a halting-place less from any merits of its own than because it is the best centre for some very remarkable places indeed, and because the place itself calls up certain a.s.sociations. There is, perhaps, more interest attaching to the name of Laigle and to the lords of Laigle than to Laigle itself. Its name supplies us with the crowning instance of the singular incapacity of so many in England to understand that these Norman towns and castles are real places. They give surnames to a crowd of men who figure in the English history of the eleventh and twelfth centuries; but, as we have said before, hardly anybody seems to understand that those surnames are taken from places which are still standing, and to most of which the railway is open. There is the renowned Bishop William of Durham in the days of the Conqueror and the Red King, the greatest name in the history of Romanesque art. He is _Willelmus de Sancto Carilefo_, just like William of Malmesbury or William of Newburgh, simply because he had been monk and prior in the monastery of _Sanctus Carilefus_, in modern form, _Saint-Calais_, in the land of Maine. It is better to say "William of Saint-Calais" than "William of Saint-Carilef," because the use of the modern form shows that we know where the place is; but "William of Saint-Carilef" is not so bad as "Bishop Carilef," as if Carilef were no place at all, and as if it had been usual in those days to talk of Bishops or anybody else by their casual surnames. So with Laigle, _Aquila_, a place which must have somehow taken its name from an eagle, possibly from some incident or legend, as there is certainly nothing in the look of Laigle to suggest eagles in a general way. Its lords of course called themselves "Gilbertus," "Richeras," or anything else "de Aquila," "of Laigle." On the whole, for the same reason as in the case of Saint-Calais, it is better to speak in English of the place and its lords by the now received form _Laigle_ rather than _L'Aigle_, though _L'Aigle_ is not quite forgotten on the spot. But the events of the Norman Conquest brought men of the house of Laigle into England, and their presence led to a possession in Suss.e.x being called "Honor de Aquila." When South-Saxon antiquaries, or possibly lawyers, of whatever age, translated this into "the Honour of the Eagle," they plainly did not know that _Aquila_, _Laigle_, was a real place from which men had taken their name and brought it into Suss.e.x. And we have heard of an Englishman being christened "Richard de Aquila," as if it were hopeless trying to put "de Aquila" into plain English. We have also heard of a man being christened "Joseph of Arimathaea"; but that was at least in English, and not in French, Latin, or Hebrew.

"Richard de Aquila" is a form notable on another ground, as implying a confusion between the two wholly distinct names of _Richard_ and _Richer_. We do not at this moment remember a Richard of Laigle, but Richer of Laigle is, perhaps, the man of his house who is best worth remembering. He lived in the days of the Conqueror, he bears the best character possible in those times, and his one recorded act bears it out. He was fighting for William, Duke and king, against that castle of Sainte-Susanne in Maine which the Conqueror of Le Mans and Exeter could not take. In a skirmish below the castle a beardless-boy, sheltered behind a thicket, aimed an arrow which gave Richer a mortal wound. His comrades would have killed the lad; but Richer bade them spare him; his own sins deserved death. For want of a priest, he confessed those sins to his comrades, and died.

The lords of Laigle did plenty of other things besides this; but it is the thought of the last act of Richer which cleaves most firmly in the memory, and makes us most wish to see the place where the lords of Laigle dwelled. And we set out with some vague notion, a notion not exactly to be fulfilled, that the home of the lords of Laigle--"domini de Aquila"--must be something of an eagle's nest. But alas, when we reach Laigle from Argentan, we find that, with all its historic a.s.sociations, it is in itself far from being a town of the same interest as Argentan. The position of the two is quite different. The chief buildings of Argentan cover a small hill in the midst of scenery in no way strongly marked. Laigle covers the slope of the hill which forms one side of the valley of the young Rille, while another height matches it on the opposite side. At Laigle the chief church, standing out with a dignity which it hardly keeps when we come near to it, is the one striking object. Of the castle we see nothing but the surrounding woods, and in truth there is nothing more to see. The large brick house known as _le vieux chateau_, standing a little to the east of the church, marks, it is to be supposed, the site of the home of Richer and all the rest of the brood of the eagle. But no site of any castle can well be further from the eagle's nest which we came in search of. The town, as distinguished from castle and church, has little or nothing to show; like Flers, it has risen to some modern importance through manufactures.

The chief church, St Martin, has already struck us on our approach by its stately tower of late Gothic such as in England we might have looked to see crowned with battlement and pinnacles, but which here is finished with a high roof bearing statues on its ridge. Beside the tower there is something, one hardly knows what, a very high roof and a kind of spire.

When we come near, we find that the church, though very short, has two western towers. The northern one is the rich piece of Flamboyant work with which we have already got familiar--or rather not familiar, as its narrow windows may in the distance be taken for a Romanesque arcade. Its southern fellow is a real Romanesque tower with pilaster b.u.t.tresses, which bears the spire. It is very plain, of the eleventh century rather than of the twelfth, so that the lord of Laigle, who awakens an interest above the rest of his house, may have looked at it or even built it. The same may be said of the apse which ends the central of the three bodies--they are hardly to be called nave and aisles--which make up the church of Laigle. But a Romanesque apse, rich or plain, is not improved by first cutting pointed windows in it and then blocking them up. And the apse, thus sadly mutilated, is further imprisoned. It barely peeps out between the east ends of the northern and southern bodies, of which the northern takes the form of a kind of transept. They are in the worst style of the late French Gothic, with windows of the same wretched Perpendicular as those of Almeneches. Whence came this strange taste?

Henry the Fifth and John Duke of Bedford might, somewhat earlier, have taught their Norman subjects to build good Perpendicular, but not this kind of stuff.

There is not much more to see in Laigle itself. Of the castle we can hardly be said to have even seen the site. The house which represents it has ceased to be a _chateau_ even in the latter sense. It stands pleasantly at the end of the town, with fields beyond it, and a good slope down to the river, if only it could be seen. But the whole way from the castle to the Rille is blocked with modern buildings. We wish that the home of Richer was in the same case as the head of the _Oximenses_, where the gardens in the ditch do comparatively little harm. Or rather we cherish a hope that the _vieux chateau_ may not be the true _castrum de Aquila_. We cannot say that we saw any other castle anywhere else at Laigle; but we saw one or two sites higher up the hill where a castle might have stood very fittingly.

But the main object at Laigle is not Laigle. The place may be used, like Argentan, as a centre for seeing several objects, and in the case of Laigle the objects to be seen from the centre are certainly of higher interest than the centre itself. There are the famous border castles of Verneuil and Tillieres, easily to be reached by railway, and there is an ecclesiastical spot of still higher fame which can in a rather complicated way be reached by railway, but which it is pleasanter and certainly more appropriate to take by road. Yet as a means of approaching Ouche, Atic.u.m, Saint-Evroul, even the road seems too modern.

It is essentially a place of pilgrimage, not a Canterbury pilgrimage, but a pilgrimage to the cell of a hermit, to the _scriptorium_ of a chronicler of whom we get more personally fond than of any other.