Works of Grant Allen

by Grant Allen

  Those whom this book may have interested in church-lore will find very full details on all these subjects in Miss Beale’s “Churches of Paris.” Another useful book is Lonergan’s “Historic Churches of Paris.” With the key I have striven to give, and the aid of these works, the visitor should be able to unlock for himself the secrets of all the churches.

  Two pretty little parks which deserve a passing visit are the Parc Monceau, near the Ternes, and still more, the Buttes Chaumont, in the heart of the poor district of La Villette and Belleville, showing well what can be done by gardening for the beautification of such squalid quarters. The Jardin d’Acclimatation in the Bois de Boulogne, and the Jardin des Plantes, at the extreme east end of the South Side are both interesting, especially to the zoologist and botanist. The last-named is best reached by a pleasant trip on one of the river steamers.

  Of collections, not here noted, the most important is the Musée Guimet of Oriental art, near the Trocadéro. It should be visited (if time permits) by all who are interested in Chinese, Japanese, and Indian products. The Trocadéro itself contains a good collection of casts, valuable for the study of comparative plastic development; but they can only be used to effect by persons who can afford several days at least to study them (in other words, residents). The Ethnographical Museum in the same building is good, but need only detain those who have special knowledge in the subject.

  To know what to avoid is almost as important as to know what to visit. Under this category, I may say that no intelligent person need trouble himself about Père-Lachaise and the other cemeteries; the Catacombs; the various Halles or Markets; the interiors of the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers (except so far as above indicated), the Bourse, the Banque de France, the Bibliothèque Nationale (unless, of course, he is a student and wishes to read there), the Archives, the Imprimerie Nationale, the various Courts and Public Offices, the Gobelins Manufactory, the Sèvres porcelain works, the Institut, the Mint, the Invalides, the Chamber of Deputies, the buildings in the Champ-de-Mars (except while the Salon there is open), the Observatory, and so forth. In Paris proper, I think I have enumerated above almost everything that calls for special notice from any save specialists.

  Three Excursions from Paris are absolutely indispensable for any one who wishes to gain a clear idea of the France of the Renaissance and the succeeding epoch.

  The first, and by far the most important of these, is that to Fontainebleau, a visit to which is necessary in order to enable you properly to fill in the mental picture of the change wrought by François Ier and his successors in French art and architecture. It is an inevitable complement to your visits to the Louvre. This excursion, however, should only be made after the visitor has thoroughly seen and digested the Renaissance collections in the Louvre, and the École des Beaux-Arts, as well as the Tombs of the Kings at St. Denis. Baedeker is an amply sufficient guide for this the most interesting and instructive excursion that can be made from Paris. One day suffices for a visit to the Château and a glimpse of the Forest; though a week can be pleasantly spent in this charming region. After your return, you will do well to visit the Renaissance Sculpture at the Louvre again. Many of the works will gain fresh meaning for you after inspection of the surroundings for which they were designed, and the architecture which formed their natural setting.

  The second excursion, also valuable from the point of view of the study of the Renaissance, is that to St. Germain, where the Château itself, and the exquisite view from the Terrace, are almost equally delightful. Those interested in prehistoric archæology, too, should not miss seeing the very valuable collection in the Museum installed in the Château, probably the finest of its sort in the world, and rich in drawings and other remains of the cave-men of the Dordogne.

  The third excursion, in every respect less pleasing and instructive, is that to Versailles. This must be taken rather as a duty than as a pleasure. Leave it for some enticing day in summer. Neither as regards art or nature can the great cumbrous palace and artificial domain of Louis XIV be compared in beauty to the other two. The building is a cold, formal, unimposing pile, filled with historic pictures of the dullest age, or modern works of often painful mediocrity, whose very mass and monotony makes most of them uninteresting. The grounds and trees have been drilled into ranks with military severity. The very fountains are aggressive. Nevertheless, a visit to the palace and gardens is absolutely necessary in order to enable the visitor to understand the France of the 17th and 18th centuries, with its formal art and its artificial nature. You will there begin more fully to understand the powdered world of the du Barrys and the Pompadours, the alleys and clipped trees of Le Nôtre’s gardens, the atmosphere that surrounds the affected pictures of Boucher, Vanloo, and Watteau. Take it in this spirit, and face it manfully. Here, again, the indications in Baedeker are amply sufficient by way of guidance.

  When you have seen these three, you need not trouble yourself further with excursions from Paris, unless indeed you have ample time at your disposal and desire country jaunts for the sake of mere outing. But these three you omit at your historical peril.]

  In conclusion, I would say in all humility, I am only too conscious that I have but scratched in this book the surface of Paris. Adequately to fill in the outline so sketched, for so great and beautiful a city, so rich in historical and artistic interest, would require a big book — and big books are not easy to carry about with one, sight-seeing. Moreover, I reflect by way of comfort, it is not good for us to be told everything; something must be left for the individual intelligence to have the pleasure of discovering. All I have endeavoured to do here is to suggest a method; if I have succeeded in making you take an interest in Mediæval and Renaissance Paris, if I have stimulated in you a desire to learn more about it, I have succeeded in my object. However imperfect this work may be — and nobody can be more conscious of its imperfections than its author — it will be justified if it arouses curiosity and intelligent inspection of works of art or antiquity, in place of mere listless and casual perambulation.

  It is common in England to hear superior people sneer at Paris as modern and meretricious. I often wonder whether these people have ever really seen Paris at all — that beautiful, wonderful, deeply interesting Paris, some glimpse of which I have endeavoured to give in this little volume. To such I would say, when you are next at your favourite hotel in the Avenue de l’Opéra, take a few short walks to St. Germain-des-Prés, the Place des Vosges, St. Étienne-du-Mont, St. Eustache, and Cluny, and see whether you will not modify your opinion.

  THE END

  Cities of Belgium

  CONTENTS

  PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

  INTRODUCTION

  HOW TO USE THESE GUIDEBOOKS

  ORIGINS OF THE BELGIAN TOWNS

  ORDER OF THE TOUR

  BRUGES

  A. ORIGINS OF BRUGES

  B. THE HEART OF THE CITY

  C. THE HOSPITAL OF ST. JOHN

  D. THE TOWN IN GENERAL.

  E. THE CHURCHES

  F. THE ACADEMY

  GHENT

  A. ORIGINS OF GHENT

  B. THE CORE OF GHENT

  C. THE CATHEDRAL

  D. THE OUTSKIRTS

  BRUSSELS

  A. ORIGINS OF BRUSSELS

  B. THE HEART OF BRUSSELS

  C. THE PICTURE GALLERY

  D. THE CATHEDRAL

  E. THE UPPER TOWN

  F. SURROUNDINGS

  ANTWERP

  A. ORIGINS OF ANTWERP

  B. THE CATHEDRAL

  C. THE PICTURE GALLERY

  D. THE TOWN IN GENERAL

  HISTORICAL NOTES

  PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

  RECENT alterations, especially in the Brussels Gallery, make a new edition of this book imperative, and, as I had been with my father during its inception, I have undertaken such revision as is necessary. In the main, however, my work has been merely mechanical, and the guide remains substantially identical in detail with th
at originally published in 1897.

  Since that date it has been remarked in more than one quarter that many interesting towns and objects have been omitted. I can only reply that it would be impossible to deal exhaustively with a country so rich in historical and artistic interest as Belgium in a single volume of this size, and that my father only professed to point out such sights in the chief towns as seemed to him most worthy of interest.

  To alter even slightly the work of an author (especially when, as in this case, that author is powerless to object) is a task to be approached with the utmost diffidence, and I can only trust that those who use this book will impute all blame for any errors or omissions wholly to me, rather than to one who is beyond the reach of criticism.

  JERRARD GRANT ALLEN.

  July, 1902.

  INTRODUCTION

  THE object and plan of these Historical Handbooks is somewhat different from that of any other guides at present before the public. They do not compete or clash with such existing works; they are rather intended to supplement than to supplant them. My purpose is not to direct the stranger through the streets and squares of an unknown town towards the buildings or sights which he may desire to visit; still less is it my design to give him practical information about hotels, cab fares, omnibuses, tramways, and other every-day material conveniences. For such details, the traveller must still have recourse to the trusty pages of his Baedeker, his Joanne, or his Murray. I desire rather to supply the tourist who wishes to use his travel as a means of culture with such historical and antiquarian information as will enable him to understand, and therefore to enjoy, the architecture, sculpture, painting, and minor arts of the towns he visits. In one word, it is my object to give the reader in a very compendious form the result of all those inquiries which have naturally suggested themselves to my own mind during thirty-five years of foreign travel, the solution of which has cost myself a good deal of research, thought, and labour, beyond the facts which I could find in the ordinary handbooks.

  For several years past I have devoted myself to collecting and arranging material for a set of books to embody the idea I had thus entertained. I earnestly hope they may meet a want on the part of tourists, especially Americans, who, so far as my experience goes, usually come to Europe with an honest and reverent desire to learn from the Old World whatever of value it has to teach them, and who are prepared to take an amount of pains in turning their trip to good account which is both rare and praiseworthy. For such readers I shall call attention at times to other sources of information.

  These guide-books will deal more particularly with the Great Towns where objects of art and antiquity are numerous. In every one of them, the general plan pursued will be somewhat as follows. First will come the inquiry why a town ever gathered together at all at that particular spot — what induced the aggregation of human beings rather there than elsewhere. Next, we shall consider why that town grew to social or political importance and what were the stages by which it assumed its present shape. Thirdly, we shall ask why it gave rise to that higher form of handicraft which we know as Art, and towards what particular arts it especially gravitated. After that, we shall take in detail the various strata of its growth or development, examining the buildings and works of art which they contain in historical order, and, as far as possible, tracing the causes which led to their evolution. In particular, we shall lay stress upon the origin and meaning of each structure as an organic whole, and upon the allusions or symbols which its fabric embodies.

  A single instance will show the method upon which I intend to proceed better than any amount of general description. A church, as a rule, is built over the body or relics of a particular saint, in whose special honour it was originally erected. That saint was usually one of great local importance at the moment of its erection, or was peculiarly implored against plague, foreign enemies, or some other pressing and dreaded misfortune. In dealing with such a church, then, I endeavour to show what were the circumstances which led to its erection, and what memorials of these circumstances it still retains. In other cases it may derive its origin from some special monastic body — Benedictine, Dominican, Franciscan — and may therefore be full of the peculiar symbolism and historical allusion of the order who founded it. Wherever I have to deal with such a church, I try as far as possible to exhibit the effect which its origin had upon its architecture and decoration; to trace the image of the patron saint in sculpture or stained glass throughout the fabric; and to set forth the connection of the whole design with time and place, with order and purpose. In short, instead of looking upon monuments of the sort mainly as the product of this or that architect, I look upon them rather as material embodiments of the spirit of the age — crystallizations, as it were, in stone and bronze, in form and colour, of great popular enthusiasms.

  By thus concentrating attention on what is essential and important in a town, I hope to give in a comparatively short space, though with inevitable conciseness, a fuller account than is usually given of the chief architectural and monumental works of the principal art-cities. In dealing with Paris, for example, I shall have little to say about such modern constructions as the Champs Élysées or the Eiffel Tower; still less, of course, about the Morgue, the Catacombs, the waxworks of the Musée Grévin, and the celebrated Excursion in the Paris Sewers. The space thus saved from vulgar wonders I shall hope to devote to fuller explanation of Notre-Dame and the Sainte Chapelle, of the mediæval carvings or tapestries of Cluny, and of the pictures or sculptures in the galleries of the Louvre. Similarly in Florence, whatever I save from description of the Cascine and even of the beautiful Viale dei Colli (where explanation is needless and word-painting superfluous), I shall give up to the Bargello, the Uffizi, and the Pitti Palace. The passing life of the moment does not enter into my plan; I regard each town I endeavour to illustrate mainly as a museum of its own history.

  For this reason, too, I shall devote most attention in every case to what is locally illustrative, and less to what is merely adventitious and foreign. In Paris, for instance, I shall have more to say about truly Parisian art and history, as embodied in St. Denis, the Île de la Cité, and the shrine of Ste. Geneviève, than about the Egyptian and Assyrian collections of the Louvre. In Florence, again, I shall deal rather with the Etruscan remains, with Giotto and Fra Angelico, with the Duomo and the Campanile, than with the admirable Memlincks and Rubenses of the Uffizi and the Pitti, or with the beautiful Van der Goes of the Hospital of Santa Maria. In Bruges and Brussels, once more, I shall be especially Flemish; in the Rhine towns, Rhenish; in Venice, Venetian. I shall assign a due amount of space, indeed, to the foreign collections, but I shall call attention chiefly to those monuments or objects which are of entirely local and typical value.

  As regards the character of the information given, it will be mainly historical, antiquarian, and, above all, explanatory. I am not a connoisseur — an adept in the difficult modern science of distinguishing the handicraft of various masters, in painting or sculpture, by minute signs and delicate inferential processes. In such matters, I shall be well content to follow the lead of the most authoritative experts. Nor am I an art-critic — a student versed in the technique of the studios and the dialect of the modelling-room. In such matters, again, I shall attempt little more than to accept the general opinion of the most discriminative judges. What I aim at rather is to expound the history and meaning of each work — to put the intelligent reader in such a position that he may judge for himself of the æsthetic beauty and success of the object before him. To recognise the fact that this is a Perseus and Andromeda, that a St. Barbara enthroned, the other an obscure episode in the legend of St. Philip, is not art-criticism, but it is often an almost indispensable prelude to the formation of a right and sound judgment. We must know what the artist was trying to represent before we can feel sure what measure of success he has attained in his representation.

  For the general study of Christian art, alike in architecture, sculpture, and paintin
g, no treatises are more useful for the tourist to carry with him for constant reference than Mrs. Jameson’s Sacred and Legendary Art, and Legends of the Madonna (London, Longmans). For works of Italian art, both in Italy and elsewhere, Kugler’s Italian Schools of Painting is an invaluable vade-mecum. These books should be carried about by everybody everywhere. Other works of special and local importance will occasionally be noticed under each particular city, church, or museum.

  I cannot venture to hope that handbooks containing such a mass of facts as these will be wholly free from errors and misstatements, above all in early editions. I can only beg those who may detect any such to point them out, without unnecessary harshness, to the author, care of the publisher, and if possible to assign reasons for any dissentient opinion.

  GRANT ALLEN

  HOW TO USE THESE GUIDEBOOKS

  THE portions of this book intended to be read at leisure at home, before proceeding to explore each town or monument, are enclosed in brackets [thus]. The portion relating to each principal object should be quietly read and digested before a visit, and referred to again afterwards. The portion to be read on the spot is made as brief as possible, and is printed in large legible type, so as to be easily read in the dim light of churches, chapels, and galleries. The key-note words are printed in bold type, to catch the eye. Where objects are numbered, the numbers used are always those of the latest official catalogues.

  Baedeker’s Guides are so printed that each principal portion can be detached entire from the volume. The traveller who uses Baedeker is advised to carry in his pocket one such portion, referring to the place he is then visiting, together with the plan of the town, while carrying this book in his hand. These Guides do not profess to supply practical information.