CATHEDRAL PRANCE

By Sydney A. Clark'12. Robert M. McBride & Company, New York, 1931.

Reflecting on the aims of fables, La Fontaine stated that they should be both instructive and pleasing: "En ces sortes defeinte ilfaut instruire at plaire." This is sound advice to fabulists—since their race is not altogether extinct—and to all other writers as well.

Mr. Sydney A. Clark, author of OldGlamors of New Austria, Many-colored Bel-gium, and Cathedral France, is to be praised for never disregarding these two elements of utility and pleasure, without which a book is either empty or dull. There is, little danger that a travel book should ever be lacking in substance, such as historical facts or hypotheses, dates, arithmetical data, technicalities, etc., which make the indiscriminating traveler impatient of Baedekers, Blue Guides, and other monstrosities of the same sort; but travel books which are works of art as well as of erudition—or sometimes vulgarizations,—which create for the reader the impression of "having been there," are not very numerous. That is why Mr. Clark's new book, Cathedral France, seems so valuable to me.

There are about one hundred fifty towns in France which deserve the name of "Cathedral Towns" and which are well worth visiting, but travelling is an art and as such it is based on choice. Mr. Clark's selection of thirty-eight harbors where one or more of those "stone vessels" which the French call "nefs" have been anchored for the last six or seven centuries overlooks no cathedral which "simply must be seen." For the sake of convenience he has made his plan more geographical than historical. Starting from Notre- Dame de Paris he takes his reader to Chartres, the chosen cathedral of the Virgin Mary; Reims, where the angel Gabriel's smile has been restored; Beauvais, of the perfect choir; Amiens, with "its giant in repose"; Rouen, which has a great deal of everything; Tours, Henry James's city "sweet and bright"; black Angers; Poitiers, mighty in battle; Angouleme, Perigueux and Cahors, crowned with domes and minarets; Auch, Bayonne and Carcassonne, smiling in the shadow of the Pyrenees; Albi, with its martial cathedral; and a score of other vantage points of cathedral France. He regretfully ends his pilgrimage (and the reader feels the same way about it) at Bourges, the heart of France where the miracle of what the Middle Ages called "opus francigenum" and what the derisive Renaissance called "Gothic work" may be witnessed at full tide.

Those who desire the meaty kernel of information will find a supply of solid facts in this book. Although the author does not claim to be an expert on the subject of cathedrals or to rival in learning Viollet-le-Duc, Courajod, Emile Mile, and the Englishman G. G. Coulton, yet he is not satisfied merely with echoing these scholars of cathedral lore, and more than once his views about moot points are original and illuminating, as for example, his emphasis on the fact that enthusiasm and faith in Our Lady alone could not have built the cathedrals of France, and that the technical skill of the builders, the "logeurs de Dieu" owed much to the mathematical learning which travelling monks acquired from the Spanish Arabs in the 11th and 12th centuries. Nor is he afraid of stating his preferences, even though they do not coincide with the views of technicians, and he does so with forceful reasons, as in the case of the cathedral of Saint-Julien-du Mans which deserves to be more popular among the "genus tourist," and the cathedral of Blois, "a standing monument to the murder of architectural taste."

But satisfactory as the subject matter is, the great merit of the book lies more especially in the style. Mr. Clark has the gift of making his subjects living and intelligible, even to the "Simon pure Philistine," of bringing home to his readers with a minimum of graphic phrases, truths which are far from being apparent to one after having read obscure and ponderous volumes in which they are safely shrouded. Let those who, like myself, have never fully understood the technique of the stain glass makers pay a little attention to the various passages where this problem is treated and they will realize why if "the masons built the cathedrals, the glaziers made it" (p. 35). Mr. Clark's method is to give as much attention to the environment as to the cathedral itself; hence that inexhaustible fund of anecdotes, legendary, historical, and personal which enlivens the picture of the cathedral.

The book is most delightful on account of its humor. Mr. Clark is a reliable guide who very expertly leads his readers to coigns of vantage where they may view the cathedrals in the best light, but he also is thoughtful enough to afford a little relaxation. Often when the reader is about ready to complain of weariness, of a stiff neck, or of thirst, he finds himself seated at a cafe table sipping a Cointreau and enjoying humorous stories of the author's touring experiences: how he once stopped a coasting baby carriage only to be rewarded by a dagger-like look from the gossiping mother; how, on another occasion, a French lady mistook him for the sacristan and gave him five francs for a candle to be burned in honor of some saint. There are many other highly interesting incidents told with that delightful humor which makes Mr. Clark such a human guide, not weighted down with dates, but reminding one of Sterne in A Sentimental Journey and Henry James in his Little Tour in France.

All these outstanding qualities make the reader loath to speak of Mr. Clark's Cathedral France as a travel book. In my opinion it is a fine historical, artistic, and literary achievement.