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BURGUNDY: THE SPLENDID DUCHY
BURGUNDY: THE SPLENDID DUCHY
BY THE SAME AUTHOR IMPRESSIONS OF PROVENCE. FOOLSCAP QUARTO, 12/6 NET SONGS OF OLD FRANCE. CROWN 8VO. 6/- NET LONDON: FRANCIS GRIFFITHS MONT BEUVRAY. Frontispiece BURGUNDY: THE SPLENDID DUCHY STORIES AND SKETCHES IN SOUTH BURGUNDY BY PERCY ALLEN AUTHOR OF "IMPRESSIONS OF PROVENCE" ETC. Fully illustrated with eight water-colour and 86 line drawings by Miss Marjorie Nash LONDON FRANCIS GRIFFITHS 34 MAIDEN LANE, STRAND, W.C. 1912...
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PREFACE
PREFACE
I have to thank very cordially my friend, Monsieur François Fertiault, for his kindness in permitting me to make use of the valuable material comprised in his charming books upon rural Burgundy; and I have also to thank M. A. de Charmasse and his publisher, M. Dejussieu, of Autun, for placing at my disposal the information contained in that author's Précis Historique to "Autun et ses Monuments" and in the archeological portion of the same work, written by the late M. H. de Fontenay, a book which
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LIST OF WORKS CONSULTED
LIST OF WORKS CONSULTED
THE DATES REFER TO THE EDITION MADE USE OF Olivier de la Marche "Mémoires" 1819 "Le Chevalier délibère." 1842 C. R. de Caumont de la Force "Histoire secrète de la Bourgogne" 1694 Brugière de Barante "Histoire des Ducs de Bourgogne de la Maison de Valois" 1825-6 Ernest Petit "Histoire des Ducs de Bourgogne, de la Race Capétienne" 9 vols. 1835-1905 Dom Urbain Plancher "Histoire Générale de la Bourgogne." 4 vols. 1739-81 Philippe de Comines "Chroniques", etc. 5 vols. Claude Courtépée "Voyages en
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INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
Although the history of Burgundy is intimately connected with that of England—the policy of the Valois Dukes, for example, affected profoundly our national destinies during the hundred years' war—the average English reader's knowledge of the subject is contained within the four corners of a wine list. He knows Beaune—knows the name well, as that of a drinkable brand, may have blessed it in his heart, when a ray from the shaded lamp shot through its ruby depths. If by any chance he loves Meredith
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CHAPTER I
CHAPTER I
We had expected quiet, rural times in this far-away village of St.-Léger-sous-Beuvray; but I doubt whether we shall get them. The village green in front of the Hotel du Morvan shows signs of unusual animation; it is dotted with carts, which are discharging tent-poles, canvas, golden cars, and other paraphernalia of a country festival; and, surer sign still, through the door of an open shed, I can see hanging, headless and lamentable, the gaping corpse of a fatted calf. Yes! there is his tawny co
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CHAPTER II
CHAPTER II
In the railway station of Autun we had waited long for our bicycles to be taken out of the train. They did not appear. The porters were all busy with a cattle-truck that they were pushing casually down a siding, till it was stopped in mid-career by the buffers of another truck. Bang!! Rattle! Bang!! The thicket of horns, visible from without, shook like a wood in a winter gale. A mild white head was thrust over the lime-washed barrier, mutely protesting. We echo the animal's protest, and our own
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CHAPTER III
CHAPTER III
Leaving the Hotel St. Louis, about which I shall have more to say later on, and passing along the Rue de l'Arquebus, you emerge upon an open space, where stands a statue to a Gaulish chieftain with whom we have already made acquaintance—the Druid, Divitiacus. It may be heresy on my part, but I must admit that I have very little sympathy with the French passion for erecting statues of known or unknown persons, in every public place, quite irrespective of any ulterior considerations, such as wheth
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CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER IV
After two or three days among the relics of Pagan civilization, we were ready to turn our attention to Christian monuments of the town, and it was with our expectations fully aroused that we left what might be described as the neutral ground of the Hôtel St. Louis, and climbed the busy streets that lead within the castrum to the Cathedral of Saint Lazarus, in which the relics of the saint are enshrined. Readers unfamiliar with the Provençal legends will ask, not unnaturally, how the body of Chri
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CHAPTER V
CHAPTER V
The loitering train, that, climbing, winds among the vine-clad slopes of the Mâconnais, gave us our first glimpse of the vendangeurs gathering the last of a scanty crop. Those blue shirts, moving through the bronze-clad bushes, were our first intimation that the Saône-et-Loire had escaped the utter ruin that the winds and rains of a wintry summer had wrought among the vines of the Côte d'Or. But this incident did not impress us as it might have done at another time or in another place. Our thoug
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CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VI
It is time to turn from Cluny of the past to Cluny of the present. We have not far to go; for the town is still the abbey, and will be so yet, I hope, for many a year to come. Early on the first morning of our stay, we left the little Hotel de Bourgogne, which stands on the site of the nave, in the very shadow of the last remaining gaunt tower of Cluny. The entrance to the alley is through the façade of the ancient "Palace of the Pope Gélase," as it is called, a fine, fourteenth-century building
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CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VII
Purity and simplicity having been always potent factors in the development of the spiritual life, it followed, as the night the day, that Cluny's ever-growing indulgencies and luxury, while they sapped her own strength, laid her open to supercession by the devotees of an uncorrupted order. By the time of Pierre le Vénérable, that rival had already arisen. The Cistercian Order, under the rule of St. Bernard, at Clairvaux, had already supplanted Cluny as the first religious power of Europe. The st
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CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER VIII
The country, as one travels from Cluny to Paray-le Monial, is varied and interesting—so were the other passengers. At Charolles, there entered our compartment two priests, one of whom devoted himself to his book, while the other, a very tall, spare ecclesiastic, divided his time evenly between his breviary, the sign of the cross, and a close scrutiny of my wife. Whether there was any connection in his mind between the last two occupations, I am unable to determine. This little incident was suffi
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CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER IX
To the outward eye Chalon-Sur-Saône is no more than a thriving, modern, commercial town, containing little of interest to the antiquarian; though the stir of life on the busy wharves may prove enticing to those who weary, sometimes, of the sleepiness of country towns, and the faded glories of mediæval cities. Yet, for our part, especially when we are in France, we prefer the shadows of the past to the realities of the present; and, no sooner were we in Châlon, than we set ourselves to picturing
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CHAPTER X
CHAPTER X
The first thing we did on arriving at Châlon was to mount our bicycles and cross the river to the Church of St. Marcel, all that now remains of the ancient abbey. The feature of the journey was the number of rough Bressane carts we met, filled with potatoes, and drawn, very deliberately, by yoked, dreamy, creamy oxen, whose mild eyes were veiled by fringes of string, tied across the forehead, to keep off the flies. The Abbey church is a well-proportioned and satisfactory early Burgundian buildin
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CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XI
Tournus is an attractive old town, lying asleep on a hill beside the Saône. Through it ran, north and south, the old Roman road of Agrippa. Its chief monument, the church of the ancient abbey of St. Philibert, whether viewed from within or from without, is one of the most striking examples I know, of the barbaric majesty of early Burgundian art. The grim façade, with its two-storied narthex of three bays—the oldest Clunisian porch—and its machicolations and towers, recalls the fortified churches
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CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XII
Ever since developing a keen interest in the fortunes of the great Burgundian monasteries, we had decided to take the first opportunity of seeing the Valley of the Ouche, and Labussière, the adopted daughter of Citeaux. It was a public holiday; and the train from Dijon was packed with excursionists. I found myself the only male in a compartment crammed with eight old ladies, mostly stout, and all in holiday spirits. We fell into conversation. They all expressed kindly interest in the task that h
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CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIII
Of the thousand who pass through the town annually, on their way to Switzerland or the Riviera, only a small percentage, probably, know Dijon as the ancient capital of the Duchy of Burgundy; fewer still have any conception of the vanished glories it stands for; or could name the three commodities—if I may so describe them—and the principal industry upon which the prosperity of the modern city is based. From the early middle ages to the closing years of the Capetian Dukes, from 1032 to 1364, the
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CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XIV
After this long historical digression, it is quite time that we returned to the Salle des Gardes, where there are many good things to be seen beside the tombs of the Dukes. Not the least interesting are the ducal portraits, all very Jewish, and bearing a strong family likeness. In the picture gallery adjoining is a portrait of Charles le Téméraire, by Van Hemerren, done, it is said, shortly before his death at Nancy. Here is Valois madness, indeed; shown in the wildly staring eyes, the furrowed
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CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XV
By a curious coincidence—by a real coincidence, reader, not by design—it was on a morning of Easter-day that we rode out from Dijon to Lux—on just such an Easter morning as that about which I am going to tell; the air fresh and fragrant, the larks in full song, and the sun shining so strongly in the deep, blue sky, that I had to make a Sunday purchase of a broad-brimmed straw hat. So that, you see, in one sense, I began the day badly, and perhaps deserved the trouble that befell me later. Lux, t
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CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVI
Ever since we left Beaune, my wife has been endeavouring, at frequent intervals, to extract from me an unconditional promise that, one day, we will go to live there. "It would be lovely," she says, "to live close to the Hôtel Dieu, and to watch the vines, for a whole summer, ripening on the Côte d'Or." So it would. Certainly, if we are to live in France, we might do worse than choose this little rampart-girdled town, that, though on the main line of the P.L.M., has retained so much of its mediæv
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CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVII
Leaving my wife to run the gauntlet of the gamins of Beaune, while she sketched the starry hood and the porch of Notre Dame, we fared forth on our bicycles, towards the ancient village of Bouilland, fifteen kilometres away, to which I received my first call when I happened upon the legend of its Abbey. Bouilland lies beyond Savigny, in the heart of the valley of the Bouxaise, a tributary of the Saône, by a road so lonely that, between Savigny and our destination we met only one individual—and he
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CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XVIII
The little town of Verdun sur le Doubs has no particular attraction for the archæologist nor for the tourist, yet it is a place with which all visitors to Beaune who wish to keep themselves in touch with the real Burgundy, with the life of the village and the ville de Canton, as well as with the larger movements of the great cities, cannot afford to neglect. For myself, the little town will always be associated with happy souvenirs, and with gracious pictures of country life, as it has been sinc
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CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XIX
When the train from Bourg had left the valley, and commenced its mountainous passage across the Jura, en route for Nantua, we felt that, historically, if not geographically, we were leaving Burgundy for an intermediate land that, while ceasing to be France, was not quite Switzerland. Yet, for all that, the journey is worth making, for the sake of the loveliness of the hills, and the links it forms in your mind between what you have left, and the regions of lake and mountain that once formed part
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CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XX
Our strongest impression of Bourg en Bresse—apart from its associations with the Eglise de Brou—was that it brought us almost within hail of the beloved Midi. As at Mâcon, the sun, when it shone, was aggressive. You welcomed the sight of leafy plane trees, you hugged the shady side of the road. Good peaches were to be had for a sou la pièce; and the cattle wore hats—red and yellow tassels and elaborate string fly-protectors bound about their foreheads. These things are full of significance for o
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