Chapter 7 THE VALLEY OF THE OISE

WHEN the first automobiles made their appearance upon the highways, some persons thought that, thanks to this new mode of locomotion, the French were finally going to discover the thousand beauties of France. They awoke from their dream when they heard the conversations of automobilists. The latter, when they returned from their excursions, told of the achievements of the engine, the misfortunes of the tires, the treacheries of the road.

They computed distances, counted kilometers, passed judgment on macadam; but of the country traversed they had seen, it was manifest, only the wide ribbon of the road unrolling before their cars. If one talked to them of the picturesqueness of a region through which they had passed, they replied: "Too steep grades!"; and they cursed the rough cobbles when one praised to them the pretty church in a village through which they had passed. They were full of stories of autos, as hunters are of hunting yarns; but every one knows that the beauty of the forest is the last thing a hunter thinks of. The chauffeurs went into ecstasies at the memory of a straight, smooth, deserted highway, drawn like an arrow for leagues across an endless plain, far from the villages which are populated by hens, children and straying dogs. The most romantic celebrated the pleasure of speed, the intoxication of danger. In all of them one guessed, though none would consent to avow it, the wild pride of hurling themselves across the world, with a terrible uproar, in the midst of universal fright, like petty scourges of God.

Some protested, and swore that it is easy to avoid the contagion of this delirium, that they themselves had succeeded in using their machine as a commodious vehicle and not as a simple instrument of sport. I only half believed them. Some experiences had shown me that one feels himself becoming an automobilist an hour after one is seated in an automobile....

But recently one of my friends asserted: "Your experiences prove nothing. You chose your auto badly, or perhaps your chauffeur, or even your companions. Three conditions are indispensable for traveling, or rather for loitering, in an automobile: 1. A firm decision to see everything, which depends on you alone; 2. A docile chauffeur; 3. A comfortable auto of moderate speed. My chauffeur and my machine fulfil the two latter conditions. Arrange the itinerary yourself. We will stop as often as you please. Will an experience of three days consecrated to archaeology seem conclusive to you?"

I proposed to my friend to pass in review all the churches of the Oise Valley from Saint Leu d'Esserent to Noyon.... There is not in this part of France a single village whose church is not worthy of a visit. It is the cradle of Gothic art.

My friend was right. You can loiter in an automobile; but it is necessary, to be successful, to be a lover of loafing almost to a mania, and to be a lover of sightseeing until it is a passion.

If you are not sustained by a tenacious and obstinate curiosity, you immediately succumb to the mania of automobilism. Do not speak of the attraction of rapidity; for, to get rid of this, there is a sure and simple means, that of choosing a machine of medium speed. But, whatever may be the rapidity of the machine, you remain exposed to a double obsession. There is at first the search for a good road, the hatred of cobblestones, dirt roads and badly kept pavements; doubtless an automobile, well built and prudently driven, can overcome the most difficult roads; but the fear of jolts and the terror of breakdowns cause us to see, always and everywhere, the good road, where the machine reaches its maximum of speed. Every detour becomes odious if it compels the abandonment of a smooth road for more dangerous crossroads. The chauffeur is therefore desirous of following blindly the line marked on his special map. (Let us remark in passing that maps for the use of automobilists are generally detestable.) But the essential peculiarity of the state of mind common to automobilists is a disgust with halts. "Keep on, keep on!" a mysterious voice seems to cry to us whenever there comes a desire to stop. Nothing hurries us; we are loafing; we have long hours ahead of us before we reach the end of the day's rim; nevertheless the briefest stop seems to be an unnecessary delay. We can no longer admit the idea of immobility; we experience a sort of ennui when trees, houses and men cease their regular flight along both sides of the road. Then we understand how it is that so many automobilists are happy in driving between moving pictures, without looking at anything, and how they get from it a pleasure which is both careless and frenzied.

These are unfortunate circumstances for the contemplation of landscapes and of monuments. It is, however, possible to triumph over them. The slavery of the good road can be escaped, But do not count upon it without a veritable effort of the will.

If one is master of himself as of his machine, then traveling in an auto becomes delightful, for one can modify, shorten, lengthen, the itinerary of the excursion according to one's fancy. We turn aside at a crossroad to climb a hill, from which we hope to discover an agreeable outlook, or perhaps to visit a church of whose spire, rising in the midst of the woods, a glimpse has been caught. If we perceive that we have passed, without noticing it, a monument or a picturesque site, we turn back. Yes, we turn back. This assertion will leave more than one chauffeur incredulous. But everything is possible when one really has the taste of travel, even to losing two minutes by turning his machine around on a straight road.

This way of traversing the highroads of France has, I admit, its inconveniences, the most serious of which is the necessity of incessantly watching the map to guide the chauffeur at every fork. The signboard always appears too late, when the machine has already made the wrong turn. The speed of the auto is such that it is not possible to study the map and to enjoy the view at the same time. It is necessary to choose. The wisest plan is to make up your mind to miss the road occasionally. The mistake is so quickly corrected!

I also recognize that traveling in an auto will never replace the slow promenade, in which one stopped at every turn of the route, amused by people and by things. But it has the great advantage of annihilating distance, of bringing sites and monuments close to one another, of permitting rapid comparisons without any effort of memory, and of revealing the general characteristics of a whole region. It suits synthetic minds. It repels a little those who have the passion of analysis. In short it makes us acquainted with the forest, but leaves us ignorant of the beauty of the trees....

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From Paris to Chantilly there is at first the monotonous plateau which separates the valley of the Marne from that of the Oise. In this gently rolling plain the villages are numerous, and everywhere, overlooking the housetops, rise the pointed or saddle-roofed spires of old belfries. There is not a hamlet of the Ile-de-France which does not possess a precious and exquisite church. It is here, on the soil of the royal domain, that the soul of France was formed. It is here that its national art was born.

We will stop, as the luck of the road wills.

Louvres formerly possessed two churches: one of them has disappeared and of it there remains only a fine Romanesque belfry; in the other, which shows the somewhat absurd elegance of the fifteenth century, we see a frieze of vine leaves running all around the wall. And behold, at the very first stop, in this petty village, a charming résumé of the whole of French art; a robust Romanesque tower, finished in the first period of pointed Gothic and, beside the gray belfry, the excessive and delightful luxury of flamboyant Gothic. A league farther on, the church of Marly-la-Ville offers a perfect example of the art of the thirteenth century; with its little flying buttresses and its low triforium, one might say that it was the tiny model for a great cathedral. By the side of the road, a poor half-ruined shed, with a broken roof, a hollowed pavement and moldy walls, is the church of Fosses; in its misery and its degradation, the humble nave of the twelfth century still preserves some remnants of its pure beauty....

A glance at the pleasing Renaissance fa?ade of the church of Luzarches.... The automobile rolls along the edge of the forest.... Villas of horsebreeders and jockeys.... Some English cottages.... The immense greensward and the very uneven cobbled street of Chantilly.... A few more woods, and we behold the wide valley of the Oise.

On the opposite hill rises the church of Saint-Leu-d'Esserent, on a large terrace, above the houses and the gardens of the town. The apse turned toward the Oise, the robust flying buttresses and the radiating chapels, two great square towers which flank the choir, the tower of the porch with its tapering steeple, the grand and harmonious mass of the edifice, all give to this church the aspect of a proud and gracious citadel.

Saint-Leu-d'Esserent is one of the most moving types of the architecture of the twelfth century, of that architecture which is called transitional. The fa?ade is still semi-Romanesque, but its openings are already finer and more numerous. Internally, the mixture of Romanesque and pointed gives to the monument an extraordinarily varied aspect; the arches which separate the nave from the low side aisles are broken; the full semicircle reappears in the triforium, and in the upper windows the arch is pointed again. The vaulting is formed by the intersection of pointed arches; but in the chapels of the apse there are trilobes inscribed in circular arches. And this diversity of styles is here the result neither of gropings nor of fresh starts; it results from a marvelously conceived plan in which the builders knew how to mingle and harmonize the beauties of tradition and the audacities of the new art. The Romanesque architecture had no period of decadence and, on the other hand, at the period when Saint-Leu-d'Esserent was built, the time of research and of trial whence emerged the pointed architecture was already past. It is the meeting of the two styles which renders so magnificent certain churches of the twelfth century, such as Saint-Leu-d'Esserent and Noyons.

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The ambulatory of the choir was enriched in a free and infinitely harmonious style; the columns and the capitals, even as early as this, show an admirable purity of style.

Saint-Leu-d'Esserent was an important priory of the Cluniac order. Some arcades of the cloister still adhere to the wall of the church. Other remains of the monastery exist on private property. We would have been pleased to visit them. The proprietor answered us: "It is impossible; this is the day I dry my washing." An inhabitant of Saint-Leu-d'Esserent said to us a few moments later, in a mysterious tone: "The monks were rich. There is buried treasure there. That man is sifting all the soil on his land: he is looking for gold..." (Saint-Leu is sixty kilometers from Paris.)

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For two days we are going to follow the valley where the river slowly coils its long bends through the wheat fields and the poplars. The low hills, covered with forests, lie in the distance and never come near enough to force the Oise to sudden detours. This river is not like the Marne, incessantly turned aside by the spur of a hill. It flows indolently under a pale horizon, in a vast landscape whose shades are infinitely delicate, and whose lines are infinitely soft. It bears silent barges through the fertile plains. Daughter of the north, it reflects in its clear green waters villages of brick. The smoke of workshops mingles with the mist-banks of its sky. At night the lights of the glass furnaces brighten its banks. By talking with the men who drive their horses upon the towpath, it is easy to guess that the Oise is born in Belgium.

Bell-towers dot the valley on both banks of the river. That of Montataire rises above the trees of a park at the top of a bluff. The church possesses an exquisite portal surmounted by a frightfully mutilated bas-relief of the Annunciation; but how much grace the draperies still possess!

It is useless to stop at Creil, since a barbarous municipality thought it advisable to pull down the church of Saint Evremont, one of the most beautiful specimens of the architecture of the twelfth century.

The people of Nogent-les-Vierges are not barbarians: they have preserved their church. It is not as pure in style as that of Saint Evremont. But its belfry-terribly restored-is adorned with original details. The rectangular choir, which the thirteenth century added to the Romanesque nave, possesses a rare elegance, with its slender pillars. What a diversity there is in the creations of Gothic architecture! How inventions in construction permitted infinite variation in the plans of churches! It is only by thus traversing the countrysides of France that one can admire the abundant imagination of the builders of the thirteenth century. There are many churches, especially in the north, which, like that of Nogent-les-Vierges, possess a choir terminated by a flat wall. But the type is diversified from edifice to edifice. Open a manual of arch?ology; take the most recent and the most complete of all, that of M. Enlart, and you will observe what difficulty the author has in classing and characterizing such work, after the last years of the twelfth century. At no other period was architecture so profoundly individual an art. We may say that every building was then original, not only in the details, but especially in the plan.

I have written that the people of Nogent-les-Vierges were not barbarians, but I am on the point of taking it back, when I think of a sort of panoramic Calvary which they have installed in their beautiful church. Let them look at this picture which might seem beautiful to a Kanaka: then let them look at the two beautiful bas-reliefs of the fifteenth century which are placed at the extremity of the nave, and let them blush!

A little farther on, the church of Villers-Saint-Paul also possesses a Romanesque nave on low, squat pillars, and a Gothic choir whose columns expand into wide branches of stone. This choir is square, like that of Nogent-les-Vierges. The two villages are only a league apart; without doubt only a few years separated the two buildings, yet it will always be impossible for us to confound these two churches in our memory!

Rieux also had its Romanesque nave and its Gothic choir. The nave has been made into a schoolhouse. As to the choir, it is being restored, but the orientation of the altar is being changed in the process, so that the width of the choir becomes the length of the church. And they are executing this lovely transformation without any thought of the ancient plans, or any more respect for the wishes of the dead who, buried under the pavement of the sanctuary, will no longer occupy the position with respect to the altar in which they had wished to rest forever.

On the left bank of the Oise, Pont-Sainte Maxence: a pointed-arched church of the Renaissance, heavy, massive. This type of architecture, which has produced so many elegant works in Normandy, has been less happy in the Isle of France. Pontpoint: a Romanesque nave, a pointed choir, at the end of which they have preserved an old apse of the eleventh century, and these patchings are delightful! We salute at the portal of the church of Yerberie an adorable statue of the Virgin. We cross back to the right bank of the Oise to admire the stone steeple of Venette, pleasingly planted on the pedestal of a Romanesque tower: we reach Compiègne.

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Compiègne has a beautiful chateau which everybody knows, and Compiègne is a charming town which many sojourners do not know. More than one traveler has gone through it without ever having seen the chapel of the ancient H?tel-Dieu, whose grand reredos of carved wood is one of the most brilliant masterpieces of the French sculpture of the seventeenth century.

Compiègne possesses a historical society, which shows much zeal in causing the preservation of the appearance and the monuments of the old town. Let us praise in passing the efforts of these worthy men: we must not lose a chance for exalting the good and saying evil of the wicked, On one occasion this historical society intervened to prevent that, under pretext of straightening a line, the remnants of an old bastion should be destroyed because they injured, it was said, the beautiful perspective of the subprefecture. It also undertook the defense of the old tower called the Tower of Joan of Arc, and succeeded in saving this venerable monument. Alas, it did not succeed in protecting the bridge of Compiègne against the engineers who wrapped it up in an iron apron, under pretext of facilitating traffic.... Yes, the traffic of the bridge of Compiègne!

From belfry to belfry, we continue our route toward Noyon.

At the junction of the Aisne, in a pleasing landscape, the church of Choisy-au-Bac seems to watch over the tombs of a little cemetery filled with flowers. It is Romanesque, fairly well restored, and charmingly picturesque.

At Longueil-sous-Thourotte, the poor old church is about to disappear. By its side they have built a grand new church, a copy of twelfth-century architecture. Was it worth while to demolish the modest and venerable edifice of earlier days? Could it not be preserved beside the proud modern construction, even if it were tottering and dilapidated? It contained beautiful funeral slabs of the Renaissance, which are going to be exiled, no one knows where; it contained, above all, superb stained glass of the thirteenth century. Two windows have been placed in the new church; but there remains a third, and there remain also remarkable monochromatic frescoes. What is going to be done with these precious remnants? They have not been listed as national treasures.

... Tomorrow, perhaps, they will go to decorate the dining room of a Chicago millionaire: what a disgrace! And all the windows of the new church are adorned with stained glass whose banal horror makes the magnificence of these ancient windows apparent to every eye!

The church of Thourotte-it is of the twelfth century, but has lost much of its character-contains a fine altar screen of gilded wood, representing the different scenes of the Passion. It is said to be Flemish work; judging by the types of certain personages, this might be doubted; but the shutters which close upon the screen bear paintings whose origin is not in the least doubtful. Poor paintings, whose restoration was confided by a too-zealous curate to a pitiable dauber! Now, the Commission of Historic Monuments has fisted the beautiful sculptures and has put them under glass: the effect of this is abominable, but we live among barbarians and second-hand dealers, and we are actually forced to put our works of art under lock and key to defend them. As for the painted shutters, they are hung up on the wall: a few were spared by the dauber. In the same church we may still see two beautiful altars supported by torsos of the seventeenth century. How many beautiful works of art still remain in our little churches of France, in spite of revolutions and dealers in antiques!

The Cistercian abbey of Ourscamp is now a cotton spinning mill. Behind a magnificent iron fence stretch vast buildings of the seventeenth century. In the center rises a grand pavilion. We pass through an open door between the high columns which support the balcony of the upper story, and suddenly discover that this immense construction is a mere veneer to hide the old church of the monastery. Of the nave there is no longer anything remaining; but a little farther on, in the midst of the park, the choir still lifts its arches of magnificently pure architecture. The roof has fallen, but the columns and the walls still stand. It is a picture like that of the church of Long-pont, in the forest of Villers-Cotterets. (There is also great similarity between the architecture of Longpont and that of Ourscamp.) It seems that the intimate beauty of Gothic art is better revealed to us when we thus discover the ruin of one of its masterpieces among the trunks and branches of trees; we then can better feel the living grace of its columns and the freedom of its arches.... There is so much truth in this admirable page from the Génie du christianisme: "The forests of the Gauls have passed in their turn into the temples of our fathers, and our forests of oak have thus maintained their sacred origin. These vaults carved into foliage, these jambs which support the walls and end suddenly like broken trunks, the coolness of the vaults, the darknesses of the sanctuary, the obscure wings, the secret passages, the lowly doorways, all retrace the labyrinths of the woods in the Gothic church: everything makes us feel in it religious horror, mysteries and divinity, etc...." The centuries have accomplished their work, and, in the ruins of the edifice, which is surrounded and invaded by the verdure of the forest, we recognize still better what art learns from nature. 13

Of the old abbey, there still remains a superb hall with Gothic vaults and a triple nave. It is called the "Hall of the Dead," because it is said that the bodies of the monks were placed there for two days before the funeral. So great a room for this use? Was it not rather the chapter room of the monastery?

I will say nothing of Noyon today. On another occasion we will return to this lovable and silent town, which is adorned with one of the most perfect religious edifices of our country.

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Upon the return trip, in the forest and valleys adjacent to the valley of the Oise, the obedient auto stopped before many other exquisite churches.

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The belfry of Tracy-le-Val is one of the pearls of French art. The tower rests upon a square subbasement; when it has reached the height of the apse, two long, narrow windows open upon each side, framed by little columns of adorably fine workmanship, and monsters and grotesques grimace on all sides under the arches and upon the capitals. Above these strange details, the tower suddenly becomes octagonal, but, to mask the abrupt change in the architectural scheme, statues with outstretched wings are placed at the four angles. A conical tower of stone crowns this strange belfry, twice admirable, by the richness of its decoration and by the grace of its proportions.

Saint-Jean-aux-Bois, in the midst of the forest of Compiègne, is a church of the twelfth century which the restorers have rebuilt. Perhaps it will still interest a few archaeologists by the originality of its plan: designed in the form of a Latin cross, its crossarms have double bays, like the nave; but this singularity of construction is the only merit which the church retains today: it is clean, new, frozen and dead.

Morienval, with its three towers, its triple nave, and its ambulatory, is a beautiful church. In the interminable controversies which have raged over the date and the place of the origin of the Gothic style, Morienval has been cited a hundred times, and it has been much discussed because of its ambulatory, which is vaulted with pointed arches and which certain historians affirm to have been built in the middle of the 'eleventh century.... I do not know. But what I know well, is that, in future controversies, one will do well to hold to the texts and to the drawings, and not to attempt to reason from the monument itself; for this exists no longer, or at least it is restored, which amounts to the same thing. Yes, they have restored the ambulatory of Morienval, and they have not half restored it, I can assure you. For they have completely recarved certain capitals.... It is truly a singular spectacle to see in the twentieth century so many stone carvers occupied, some in producing Romanesque, others Gothic, and still others classical architecture. It is also diverting to think of the mistakes into which future archaeologists will fall, led astray by all these copies. But, in spite of all, as it is the old monuments which pay for these debauches of sculpture, as it is at the expense of their conservation that this fury of restoration is exercised, we would willingly renounce these ironical joys. Oh, if the restorers would only consecrate each year to the placing of tiles or slates the sums which they squander in having capitals recarved!

Since the fancy of this archaeological excursion has taken me into the valley of the Authonne, a pretty name for a pretty brook, I desire to see that chateau of Vez which its owner, M. Dru, recently bequeathed to the nation. It is a magnificent fortress on the summit of a wooded hill. The donjon and the encircling wall have been skillfully restored. Of the main body of the building, of which only ruins remain, a part only was rebuilt by M. Dru.... Will the nation accept the legacy? I hope so, because it appears that M. Dru left a sum sufficient to finish the work. This sort of archaeological restitution seems to me very unnecessary; it would be far better to leave such things to theatrical scene builders. But it is not necessary to discourage the worthy who diminish the profits of the house wreckers by bequeathing their castles to the public.

Irony of geographical names! At the foot of the hill which sustains the donjon of Vez, we see, in the midst of the fields, a Gothic church of the flamboyant period, remnant of a Premonstraten-sian monastery. It is now used as a farmstead. ? consult my map to know the name of the hamlet: it is called Lieu-Restauré (Restored Place).

I took the road back to Paris through the great plains of Valois, overlooked by the sublime spire of the cathedral of Senlis.

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