Saving the Light at Chartres

by Victor A. Pollak

  “Cathedral would protect itself”: An example was a small periodical aimed at pilgrims who visited the cathedral, called La Voix de Notre-Dame de Chartres. Its message, and that of its editors and followers, was essentially that the only way to help the devotees of Chartres Cathedral persevere in the face of the incomprehensible horrors of war was to “retreat to an inner world of warm devotion and merit.” There was “little point,” they argued, “to reveling in the glories of the cathedral, so intelligently and brilliantly crafted, or the historical traditions of a people who were—both cathedral and people—in danger of destruction.” Joseph F. Byrnes, “Perspectives of ‘La Voix de Notre-Dame de Chartres’ on the Pilgrimage at Chartres during the XIXth and XXth Centuries: A Profile in Social History,” Marian Library Studies 10, no. 12 (1978): 159–206, https://ecommons.udayton.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1082&context=ml_studies.

  “Would those changes hold for the next war?”: Military air activities near the cathedral temporarily subsided. The military aviation school closed in favor of other schools at Avord, Istres, and Étampes. But the field was soon devoted to the fleet of military bombing aircraft and expanded, to be known as Air Base 122, on flatter terrain only two and a quarter miles from the cathedral.

  “It overly reassured those who opposed so-called passive defense”: Byrnes, “Perspectives,” 199–201.

  “A handful of young men . . . would go on to play vital roles”: René Planchenault, Ernest Herpe, and Lucien Prieur each served during the war.

  Planchenault served for forty-five years in the service of French historic monuments in various capacities, first elevated from archivist to inspector of historic monuments in 1930 and then inspector general of the Historical Monuments Service in 1945. In World War II, he had left civil administration to join the Monument Service, designing in 1932 the mobilization plan implemented at the outbreak of the war for removing artworks from the museums of France to safekeeping sites in the countryside, and also stained-glass windows from churches. During World War I, at age fifteen, Planchenault had served in a cavalry regiment and later as a decorated officer in the artillery, which caused him to become deaf, an encumbrance throughout the remainder of his career.

  Herpe served in the military during World War I and would go on to serve as chief architect for the Historical Monuments Service (1920–1956) and inspector general of historic monuments in 1941. During the Chartres stained-glass-window project, Herpe was a principal in the Historical Monuments Service and had to deal with Achille Carlier, who would become his nemesis.

  And Lucien Edward Louis Prieur was in active service as a captain in World War I, serving from 1912 to 1918. He served in the interwar years as chief architect of historic monuments and then again in the second war as chief of the Historical Monuments Service to France’s wartime Grand Quartier Général (GCG) from September 1939 to July 1940, and in 1947 he became deputy to the inspector general of historic monuments.

  NOTES TO CHAPTER 4

  “Sydney Good”: He was John Good’s oldest son.

  “Watched Sydney’s casket lowered”: Griff had known Josephine, John’s second wife, as Sydney’s stepmother, and the only mother Sydney had really known, but she had also died when Sydney had been seventeen and Griff eleven. Griff perhaps thought of Josephine as his own second mother, and his view of Sydney’s casket descending into the ground likely planted in Griff’s mind his earliest impression of the cost of human loss in war. Griff knew that Sydney—having been killed by the flu in camp—had never really made it into the war. On Griff’s return ride to Dallas, he likely thought about that; maybe it contributed to his choice of a military career.

  And Griff learned something else from the Good family: By the time Sydney had died, John had remarried—his third wife, Rosa—a sister of John’s first and second wives, so Griff saw that when John had lost his first wife, John had found and married a second, and that even after losing the second, John had found and married a third. Griff saw that a personal loss—even deaths of successive wives—need not mean the end for a man. There could be other wives. This is the way men could sometimes get by. It may not be with a sister-in-law, or even two, but there could be someone else out there for a man to find, and often was.

  “Harvest work”: Griff learned that back in Quanah his mother advocated requiring school children and their mothers to pick cotton in the fields on Saturdays from October to December.

  “Influenza pandemic”: Sydney’s death in El Paso had been one of the early ones. The pandemic spread in waves for seventeen weeks, from September 1918 through January, and killed twenty to forty million people worldwide, with the highest death rates among young, healthy adults, in rural areas and cities, and among soldiers, killing more solders than did battles in the war. By late October, in El Paso nearly five thousand cases had been reported, with four hundred dead. By October 4, there were seven hundred cases at Camp Logan near Houston, and in thirty-five counties, and by October 25 reports exceeded twenty-six thousand cases and five hundred deaths, and then a week later more than one hundred thousand cases and two thousand deaths were reported in the state’s urban centers alone.

  “Liberty Loan parade”: In those years, Griff’s father, Welborn Sr., was also active in Quanah’s own campaign to sell Liberty Bonds for the war effort.

  “Orville (F. O. Jr.)”: He studied electrical engineering at Texas A&M and would be a junior if and when Griff were to enroll and with the other students from North Texas was one of sixteen members of its Panhandle Club, along with cousin L. H. Griffith.

  “Griff found time for football”: With his height, when Griff looked downfield—even crouched in a three-point stance, wearing cleats, his number twenty-five uniform, and soft leather helmet—he was able to look over opposing linemen and backfielders.

  “Griff’s demeanor”: Perhaps it had been Griff’s experiencing the work and dedication of his father, mother, uncles, and cousins that had led him to distill dignity from their workaday accomplishments, despite their drudgery, or perhaps it had been his time away from his family—attending school and earning his keep—that had done it.

  This Dallas time in Griff’s life was one of getting himself under way, setting his life in motion, launching his young adulthood—on his own terms. He had a foundation to develop a fairly good sense of who he was and from where he had come. At age nine, he had met more than one hundred Griffith and Smith relatives at a June long-weekend family reunion in Salado, the town south of Temple where Welborn had grown up. The group had included ten of his father’s brothers and sisters, and their families, some of whom had traveled several hundred miles to attend. On that trip, with his family, Griff had also visited his mother’s parents and aunts and uncles in Temple. While growing up in Quanah, Griff had also learned about Quanah Parker, leader of the Comanches by the end of the forty-year Comanche Wars, who had been respected by whites and Indians alike for his bravery, integrity, and willingness to change.

  Griff knew of his own Welsh ancestors who had lived in New York, including Alonzo Griffith, his grandfather, who had traveled overland to Texas as surveyor for Stephen Austin’s second colony “to better their lot,” his aunt Tiny would later say. Alonzo had then fought in the Civil War and, after the war, was known to have walked back to Texas from Tennessee; he had eventually settled in Salado and had been a founder of its Grange chapter. And Griff was aware and proud of his father’s business and civic leadership in Quanah. Also, on Griff’s mother’s side of the family, he knew there had been military leaders like Captain Smith, his maternal grandfather, and—several generations back—on this maternal side, there had been also Ham White—a notorious Texas and Oklahoma bank and stage robber who had been famous as almost a Robin Hood.

  But now it was time for Griff to determine who he was to be, and, whatever the outcome, he wanted to earn it himself—by dint of his own wits and strength—and he wanted to do something big, something ambitious, and something consequential.

  “Ca
lls for a good scrap and furnishes a thrill”: The “good scrap” and “thrill” foretold in this quotation would become rich with irony.

  “Welborn sold the store:” In September back in Quanah, another recently arrived businessman teamed up with Tom Mitchell to offer to buy Welborn Sr.’s Piggly Wiggly. Welborn named his price, and they snapped it up so quickly he said it made his head swim.

  “Griff and Alice’s daughter was . . . named . . . Alice”: That Griff’s wife Alice bore the same first name as her mother and daughter, both also named Alice, and that Major Torrey’s middle name, Houston, was the same as that of his material grandfather, Colonel Daniel Houston, were indicative of the role that tradition and proper order must have played in the life of the Torreys. Griff’s name, Welborn Barton Griffith, was the same as his father’s, but the names Welborn and Barton were not family names; Welborn Barton had been the name of Griff’s grandparents’ family doctor—also their close friend—who had delivered their children in Salado in the second half of the nineteenth century, including his father, Welborn. Griff’s grandparents had chosen the name out of gratitude to honor the doctor, a gesture that Welborn repeated during his lifetime in naming his horses and dogs after his lifelong friends, John R. Good and his wife Rosa.

  “Military-defense planning in case of Japanese attack”: There were two plans for the Thirty-First Infantry’s employment. One plan employed the regiment north of Fort Stotsenburg to counter landings at Lingayen Gulf, and the other plan employed the regiment to defend beaches along Legazpi Bay, south of Manila. Thirty-First Infantry Regiment Association, “Chapter 5: Manila Again, 1932–1941,” Association website, 2014, http://www.31stinfantry.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Chapter-5.pdf, page 8 (also available as chapter 4 in B. McCaffrey, The 31st Infantry Regiment: A History of “America’s Foreign Legion” in Peace and War, afterword by S. Townsend [Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2018]).

  “After almost two years . . . defense planning”: The readiness of the Thirty-First Infantry for combat eventually diminished. It started with two officers and about seventy men, but after subtracting cooks, clerks, supply personnel, orderlies, guards, and those on leave, sick call, or in confinement, company strength was around twenty men for training. Thirty-First Infantry Regiment Association, “Chapter 5: Manila Again, 1932–1941,” 3.

  NOTES TO CHAPTER 5

  “Émile Brunet, chief architect”: He was also architect-in-chief for the restoration of the Soissons Cathedral from 1915 to 1919 and demonstrated his knowledge in that project. Carl F. Barnes, “The Gothic Architectural Engravings in the Cathedral of Soissons,” Speculum 47, no.1 (January 1972): 60–64.

  “Repaired or restored the windows through the centuries”: Cathedral records list the year of origin of each of the 176 windows and the year or years in which the work on each was performed, including the names of artisans who did restoration work. See, for example, Mediathèque Charenton (Paris), 81 28 17.

  “Losing the original artists’ iconographic intention”: For example, see discussion in Clark Maines, “The Charlemagne Window at Chartres Cathedral: New Considerations on Test and Image,” Speculum 52, no. 4 (October 1977): 804–805.

  “This iconographic debate . . . would not be settled”: And the debate has continued. One scholar concluded in 1977 that Delaporte’s new sequence was deficient compared to the “original” order in place before the 1918 removal and resequencing of the panels: “In the arrangement of the panels today, the three narratives represented in the Charlemagne Window are only additively linked and are inadequately related. In contrast, the original order of the panels expresses an iconologically complete statement. It offers a more complex iconography and, at the same time, a more integral comprehensive meaning, fusing two legends into a new iconographic statement about the nature of Charlemagne’s sin in relation to the Spanish crusade and subtly integrating a third legend, in the Jerusalem crusade, into the total statement of Christian victory.” Maines, “The Charlemagne Window,” 823.

  “Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc”: One of the most famous French architects of the nineteenth century, Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc was known to the general public for his restorations of medieval buildings, initially commissioned by Prosper Mérimée, and later became professor of art history and aesthetics at the École des Beaux-Arts before his death in 1870. He spent 1845–1864 restoring Notre-Dame de Paris. When he’d finished, in the words of one commentator, “all signs of previous alterations by royalty and clergy, of destruction by mobs, revolutions, and former misguided repairs and restorations, as well as the decay of six centuries, had been removed. Criticism of his work at Notre-Dame and at other sites has ranged from virulent condemnation to hesitant praise.” Daniel D. Reiff, “Viollet le Duc and Historic Restoration: The West Portals of Notre-Dame,” Journal of the Society of Architectural History 30, no. 1 (1971): 17–30.

  The same commentator concluded that “the restorations of Viollet-le-Duc [the author Reiff presents the name as ‘Viollet le Duc’] saved literally dozens of churches from destruction, both by decay and barbaric amateur ‘restoration.’ Because it was part of the Romantic movement, he carried the restoration further in some places than a purely historical approach would sanction; but from his theories, and the specific example of his restoration of the portals of Notre-Dame, we can unquestionably put far greater faith in his work than many have previously allowed.” Ibid., 30.

  Carlier would not have agreed. In 1945, Carlier wrote that “Voillet-le-Duc is one of the greatest criminals in history.” Achille Carlier, Les anciens monuments dans la civilisation nouvelle (Paris: 55 Rue de Varenne, 1945), 2:469; quoted in Louis Réau, “Viollet-le-Duc et le problème de la restauration de monuments,” Le cahiers techniques de l’art 3 (1956): 29.

  “Carlier had grown incensed”: Carlier wrote: It was in February 1918, the memory of the place, as that of the people, has remained with me down to the smallest of details, and I still feel the indignation of my fifteen years given the inadequacy of protection available to shelter the gates of Notre-Dame de Paris, when every night an air raid could cause the most terrible of disasters. On Thursdays and Sundays, at Parvis, the high school I attended, where I observed that the construction of sandbags had hardly advanced, I could not understand why so urgent and grave a work was conducted with such slowness and negligence. One group started with the Saint-Anne gate; then, as little progress was made, they undertook to work simultaneously at the door of Judgment. Leading the operation was an old man in a white coat and black hat who, like his companions, moved incredibly slowly. It took so much time to get, lift, and put into position a single earth bag. And when five o’clock struck, everyone went away, conscious of having done far more work than [the result] was worth. “Gothas” [German heavy bombers] might come, but in the evening, the workers would not lift a single bag after 5 p.m. Nearby, a woman endlessly repeated that “it would be better to build hospitals than to take care of masterpieces.” The atmosphere was not one conscious of undertaking a great mission, nor one of enthusiasm.

  The “Gothas” were kind enough to respect Notre-Dame de Paris. And how much time they had generously been given to riddle the portals with bullets, during the interminable ascent of sandbags. Moreover, when everything was all over, one was astonished to find that, with the exception of the small bas-reliefs of the base and gates, the workers had stopped after protecting almost precisely all of the modern elements, leaving uncovered all the ancient elements, which are, it is true, the most finely wrought.

  Achille Carlier, “Des mesures préventives qui permettraient d’assuerer le sauvetage des Vitraux de la Cathérale de Chartres enc as d’attaque brusquée, Complément No. 1” [Preventive measures to ensure the rescue of the stained-glass windows of the cathedral of Chartres in the event of a sudden attack], Les pierres de France 7 (January 31, 1936): 48 [in reprint], Mediathèque Charenton (Paris), 81 28 17 (hereafter Carlier, “Supplement No. 1”).

  “Ardent supporter of the preservation of Frenc
h medieval monuments”: Tassos C. Papacostas, “Gothic in the East: Western Architecture in Byzantine Lands,” in A Companion to Medieval Art: Romanesque and Gothic in Northern Europe, ed. Conrad Rudolph (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 518–19.

  “Articles . . . defended the vision . . . championed by John Ruskin”: Achille Carlier, just like Camille Enlart, was a student at the French School in Rome and subscribed fully to Enlart’s views. He won the First Grand Prize of Rome and French Artists Medal of Honor. Papacostas, “Gothic in the East,” 518–19.

  Reims Cathedral, a symbol of the destruction of World War I, underwent stylistic changes through successive repairs, finally completed in 1937, eliminating features that architects for the repairs identified as misdeeds. Karlsgodt, Defending National Treasures, 103–104.

  “Extolled the value of creative freedom”: Carlier’s publication, Les pierres de France (the stones of France), was likely named after John Ruskin’s Stones of Venice (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1960), a three-volume treatise on Venetian art and architecture first published by Ruskin between 1851 and 1853. In The Stones of Venice, Ruskin examines Venetian architecture in detail, including over eighty churches, and discusses architecture of Venice’s Byzantine, Gothic, and Renaissance periods, Venice’s original buildings in Ruskin’s day then suffering from neglect and decay. The book has also been described as a social polemic, chronicling the fall of Venice from its peak through the Renaissance to what Ruskin viewed as Venice’s modern condition of political impotence and social frivolity.

  “Carlier militantly defended medieval art”: Nothing appears to have been published concerning the family or individual bearing of Achille Carlier.

  “Fervor and foresight”: Perhaps his uniquely French character of passion and patriotism drove them to adopt extreme measures that resulted in the windows’ being removed in time to avoid war damage.