Sens and Sensibility: A Few Days on Another Planet
Some time ago I mentioned a long-unfulfilled urge to visit the cathedral at Sens, in France, whose striking tower…
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…glimpsed in the middle-distance catching the last of the setting sun, marks the true beginning of the rail journey south out of Paris, a sign that one has slipped past the gravitational pull of the French capital and into the deeper more ancient France that lies outside it. I’ll come to that. But why does it haunt me so? I think it is a symbol of sort of adventurous travel that you can’t find in Europe any more. I took this journey on late summer evenings (often just beginning my supper as we passed this point) many times in the days before TGVs, when continental rail travel was slower, more exciting, smellier, and much, much more foreign than it has since become. I recall an evening train heading for the Alps, with Chamonix as my destination (and E.L.Voynich’s novel ‘The Gadfly’ in my pocket – could I read that now?) many autumns ago, the great matt grey-green coaches far higher up and broader than British ones, swaying and clanging to a different rhythm, bounding down the track southwards, through vast yards of electric trains and cables, evidence of France’s huge investment in infrastructure, embarrassingly far ahead of our own.
Waking at midnight in Bourg-en-Bresse, miles from Paris but still only halfway to our destination, waking again for dawn by the lake at Annecy, a sight I never even knew existed, then, at the end of the main line, up on a little red rack-and-pinion train into the mountains themselves. Another time, on the single grey Italian coach waiting at Dover which was grandly called the ‘Rome Express’, shunted through the sepulchral tunnels of Paris’s now abandoned ‘Petite Ceinture’, a circular track which linked all the main stations, then at the Gare de Lyon slammed on to the back of the real express, and all the way to Rome without once changing. How much more foreign it all was. You were in the unknown. Nobody spoke English. You immediately lost contact with home. A telephone call was a carefully-planned exercise involving a specially obtained token, a cubicle in a café under the grumpy eye of the proprietor, and the operator, English newspapers rare and usually days old, the consumer goods (and the advertisements for them) all specifically French as ours were specifically English, needing to be learned and discovered with care. Once, a sort of extravaganza, travelling by the now forgotten Trans Europ Expresses, a late 1950s vision of Euro-luxury (one, the Mistral, which had a copper bar, ran down the Rhone past all the great vineyards of the region. I encountered it again, a sagging but still-comfortable relic, on the Havana to Santiago line in Cuba).
That world vanished some time in the 1980s when my attention was distracted by things further East. The old clangorous carriages, the lovely blue dining cars which were the best restaurants in the world because of the sense of motion and the view, disappeared. So did the dark and basic station hotels with their iron bedsteads and brown lino, and the incredibly cheap brasseries where we eked out our Francs and wondered, as we stared at the Thomas Cook Continental Timetable, how far and how deep we could get into France that night. Pretty far, and pretty deep, as it turns out and to places no longer reachable by train , for France has had its own Beechings and Marples.
But after a particularly satisfying visit to the Cathedral city of Chartres I suspected that a pilgrimage to Sens might be rewarding, though obviously not as astonishing as Chartres. Happening to be in Paris, I found the new Gare de Bercy (once the depot through which wine arrived by rail in the city) and, remembering to stamp my ticket on the platform ( failure to do this can be very costly and embarrassing) I swung aboard the morning train to Sens. Despite the fog, it was perfection. It awoke dozens of memories, not least as we rattled (in reasonably old-fashioned rolling stock) through the forest of Fontainebleau. It was a proper express journey, with Sens the first stop.
Here, alas was the imescapable modern world, plenty of people with piercings and tattoos, much as you would find at an English small-town station on an autumn morning, a small crowd of sub-Saharan Africans searching for who knows what. But the old world persisted. I’d chosen the quietest day of the week, and the many closed shops and absence of traffic emphasised the decay of the pretty old town, which has grown up round an island in the middle of the river Yonne, packed with swans (who owns them in France? Obviously not the Queen. Can you eat them there? I’ve never been offered swan), sometimes traversed by enormous barges bound for the sea via Paris and the Seine. It underlined the feeling I often get in France of public affluence and private decay. My walk to the Paris station had reminded me , as I slogged past an immense concrete ministry the size of a small town, just how Soviet France can be, bureaucratic, obsessed with gigantic projects, worshipping the state and forgetful and neglectful of the small and private.
Yet, shabby as much of it was, the town was also often handsome, with plenty of half-timbering and serene stone – it sits just at the northern limit of Burgundy, and you can feel the influence in details like the patterned roof tiles on the old Bishops’ Palace. It also possesses one of the most wildly architecturally extravagant town halls I have ever seen. This view does not really do it justice.
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Seen from just beneath the spire, it is even wilder:
But it was the Cathedral I had come to see. Why *are* French cathedrals so different from their English cousins? They even smell different. The buildings are not that dissimilar and are clearly of the same family. The towns and cities in which they stand have much in common. My guess is that we were lucky with our Reformation, severe as it was a mild thing compared with the furious ‘deChristianisation’ visited on the churches of France by the Jacobins during the revolution. This was a systematic desecration not just directed against graven images, but designed to drive the very spirit of belief out of the buildings. Sometimes prostitutes were hoisted on to the high altar (in scenes rather reminiscent of the climactic riot in Simon Raven’s novel ‘Places Where they Sing’, discussed here some time ago).Perhaps it succeeded. Loudspeakers inside the Sens cathedral played fine church music. But it only served to emphasise the fact that here was no choir school, no choir practice, no regular daily matins and evensong. This was a museum where a bit of worship was permitted, not a living church.
There is some beautiful glass including a window dedicated to the greatest of English martyrs, Thomas a Becket of Canterbury ( Or ‘Canterbory’, as the French spelling was in the days when we both had our own names for the famous cities of other countries. (There’s an elaborate running joke on Dorothy Sayers’s great detective story, perhaps her greatest, ‘The Nine Tailors’ about the French referring to Lincoln as ‘Laincolonne’ . Did they really?
Becket (there’s also a statue supposed to be him) was in exile here for two years, a memory they treasure. Other glass , as in Chartres and just as beautiful, tells the stories of Saints, or recounts parables – there is a ‘Prodigal Son’ almost as good as the one at Chartres. I wished I’d had binoculars, and an account of the rather horrible story of St Eustace, now generally thought to be untrue, in which he ends up being roasted to death inside a pagan idol, along with his family.
There were not that many visitors. Perhaps if I’d waited long enough I could have found myself, like M.R. James’s character Dennistoun in the deserted cathedral of St Bertrand of Comminges, listening out for the strange and alarming noises that great old buildings produce to scare us on darkening winter afternoons.
One, an enjoyably single-minded Swede, had come entirely to visit the very odd and unexpected tomb of the father of Louis XVI, a Dauphin (heir to the French throne, (He was the son of Louis XV and also the father of the post-revolutionary restored monarchs Louis XVIII and Charles X)) who died before he became King and who might, by his personal goodness, have changed the course of French history had he ascended the throne. The Swede thought so, and he had obviously gone into the matter a great deal. It is an extraordinary allegorical sculpture, in the high style of the late 18th century , depicting religion,, immortality, science and the arts. Westminster Abbey has lots of this sort of thing, though not often as stylish or exuberant. But in France it was all smashed, with this one exception, hidden at the crucial moment and brought out again in safer times.
The melancholy crypt of the Basilica of St Denis in Paris is a monument to the desecration of the graves of the French monarchy. From then on France’s glory was to be secular, a thing I notice more and more about France. The astonishing gloomy Pantheon, near which I stayed for a few days in Paris recently, started life as a hilltop church dedicated to Genevieve, Patron saint of Paris. But the revolution converted it into a windowless stone box full of the corpses of the great, whose macabre and rational tombs one may visit. I cannot work out how it still happens to have a cross on top of its dome. I prefer Paris’s other great atheistical burial place, the great military hospital of the Invalides, where Bonaparte is entombed as if he were a god fallen to earth, (as if? I am not so sure it is that modest) with the lesser sarcophagi of his brothers nearby. At least it has plenty of windows, and for added interest there is the tomb of Marshal Foch, a rather fine affair, topped with a sculpture of the great soldier’s recumbent body borne on the shoulders of bronze soldiers (and adorned with English Poppy wreaths) , and the weird modernist box in which the very interesting Marshal Lyautey is entombed. It has an Arabic inscription on it . Can anyone tell me what it means?
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These are useful reminders for silly people that France is a martial nation and could easily have bested us in combat if things had turned out very slightly differently.
The St Denis basilica, now surrounded by one of the most Islamic districts of Paris, is one of the most beautifully desolate things I have ever seen. It reminds of how unsuccessful were the attempts to revive both religion and monarchy in 19th century France, of the utter, irrevocable loss of a world that may well not have been as wicked and cruel as we like to think, or as wicked and cruel as what succeeded it.
But in Sens, somehow, a remnant of that lost world has survived. So has one of the loveliest pieces of sculpture I have ever seen, a 16th century altarpiece, now in austere white stone but once, I think, richly painted, of Christ’s passion, stuck behind an iron grille in a locked side chapel (dedicated to Saint Martial, whoever he was) and so hard to see, but full of grace and truth. One of its panels, showing three men (their faces full of fury and contempt) forcing the Crown of Thorns on to Christ’s head, is by itself worth the journey. Rodin (whose works are wonderfully displayed in Paris in a museum largely made up of gardens) could not have done it better, superb as he is at portraying pain and grief.
There is no real purpose in what I have written here, except that, as it interested me, I thought it might interest you. It is why I travel, really. I love many things about France (including a restaurant devoted almost entirely to the cooking and eating of ducks, but not swans, which I visited last week, and which also provides the best apple pie with Armagnac that I have ever eaten) . But above all I enjoy the feeling of being in a parallel world, or even planet, similar to but yet utterly different from the one I inhabit.
It demonstrates, among other things, that ideas and beliefs have huge material consequences, and so that thought and argument are worthwhile.
Wonderful writing. I can raise only one minor quibble. Peter Hitchens writes that “France is a martial nation”. That simple sentence contains two errors. France is no more a nation than Britain is; it has been reduced to an aggregate of competing and mutually hostile populations. From that if follows that France’s ability to act as a single entity in pursuit of her own military (or political) objectives is non-existent. Like our own.
None of this should come as any surprise to anybody. It is, after all, the end to which a generation of politicians, administrators and social engineers have dedicated their careers.
Like us, France was once a martial nation. Like us, folk memories of those times and the institutional inertia of international organisations (the UN, NATO, etc.) allow France and the UK to pretend to abilities, strength and competencies that evaporated a long time ago. Perhaps, like us, the French have their own myth of “punching above our weight”.
Posted by: John Main | 06 November 2016 at 09:19 AM
What memories as a 17 year old travelling France by train to the south in 1970.
First time abroad and so different Garlic and Galluoise fags
Happy days now in a fog
Lovely and evocative writing - the best makes you want to visit there yourself- this did
Posted by: chris | 05 November 2016 at 10:54 PM
I remember reading Thomas a Becket once went to France- in the role of ambassador- entering the town (can't remember which) behind a long and spectacular train that included jugglers and horses ridden by monkeys. Those were the days..
Posted by: Rick Green | 05 November 2016 at 03:01 PM
" a nation which cannot protect its own children has no tomorrow".
The thing is, only a 'far right' politician *could* concievably say such (simple and sane) words in western Europe, and to the loud condemnation of everybody- including -sadly- our host..
and yet the reason for that is, probably, that we do indeed have no tomorrow..(so we may as well go down peaceably and in a sort of dream)
Posted by: Rick Green | 05 November 2016 at 02:13 PM
Louiseyvette;
*** "This is my favourite kind of writing from Mr Hitchens" ***
Yes, his travel writing, especially when reflecting on how things used to be, giving us a snippet of things we never saw and probably never will. A view though the Hitchenscope is always welcome.
Posted by: L Porter | 05 November 2016 at 11:39 AM
A remarable piece that has given me enormous pleasure and to which I know I will return from time to time. Thank you very much.
Posted by: Paul Leather | 04 November 2016 at 05:03 PM
What a lovely piece. 'The Gadfly' is available as a free download (not being under copyright) from the Gutenberg Project website, should anyone be interested in reading it.
Posted by: Hilary Paipeti | 04 November 2016 at 04:38 PM
Peter Hitchens wrote: "This was a museum where a bit of worship was permitted, not a living church."
I am sure the bishop and cathedral clergy celebrate mass daily and read the office. They promised to do so at their ordinations. They perhaps do not not use the main cathedral building, however. One thing I admire about the Eastern Orthodox is that they tend to insist that the liturgy be said in all their church buildings, whether the laity come or not. But let us not forget that French catholicism was ravaged by Jansenism, something worse than the Revolution.
Posted by: Peter Starr | 04 November 2016 at 01:55 PM
A wonderful post, thank you. It reminds me how much we owe (or the French do) to Alexandre Lenoir. Whilst undoubtedly reckless, he clearly had a love for his country's past, and it is to him that St Denis is still a home to an array of glorious royal tombs. As Revolutionary fever had reached its boiling point Lenoir (an archaeologist) noticed the danger of the mob, and acted to save these tombs (some were vandalised before he could act) and remove them to a museum of his creation. This undoubtedly saved some of the great carvings of Andre Beauneveu and Renaissance sculptors such as Germain Pilon and the Italian Primaticcio from destruction. He also saved Michelangelo's slaves from probable annihilation.
In 1793 the practice of Christianity was abolished, and Lenoir instantly recognised what effect this could have. In the face of mainstream anger and a will to destroy all links to the past, he stood up and argued the opposite, and achieved some notable results. It is not easy to oppose the spirit of the age, even if in hindsight it is obviously right to do so.
Posted by: Giambologna | 04 November 2016 at 09:13 AM
2 November was a good day for visiting these tombs. I am not sure whether Napoleon or the maréchal would want your prayers, but you did well to spare a thought for Ermentrude, Marie Antoinette and the other unfortunates in St Denis.
Posted by: Peter Starr | 03 November 2016 at 07:23 PM
This is my favourite kind of writing from Mr Hitchens, particularly enjoyable while lolling around, putting off the horrible moment of getting out of bed. (Though I didn't much enjoy the bit about the prostitutes on the high altar which made me feel very sad, and ill).
The bit about the churches smelling different was very amusing. I can't seem to pull up a google image of that lovely sounding sculpture from the side chapel.
I don't think we know much about St Martial. From Wikipedia: “Saint Martial (3rd century), called "the Apostle of the Gauls" or "the Apostle of Aquitaine", was the first bishop of Limoges.”
I know he doesn't much like Jane Austen, but I do, so I liked PH's title for this piece of loveliness.
PH: “But it only served to emphasise the fact that here was no choir school, no choir practice, no regular daily matins and evensong. This was a museum where a bit of worship was permitted, not a living church.”
Very sad, but all that could change in a moment and I hope it does.
Surely Mr Hitchens takes his binoculars with him everywhere, especially when he ducks over to France?
Whoever the Swede was, I thank him. That sounds like something very interesting to read about.
Posted by: louiseyvette | 03 November 2016 at 06:04 PM
Vladamir Putin always seems to hit the nail on the head. every time he addresses a subject hence the hatred with which he is now regarded by The Guardian and all the rest of the bien pensant left.Regarding Europes handling of the migration crisis he states the position in one sentence " a nation which cannot protect its own children has no tomorrow".A sentence to repeat, savour and let the meaning sink in.
Posted by: Roy Robinson | 03 November 2016 at 11:13 AM
Mr. Hitchens,
Thank you for that atmospheric record of your trip.
I visited France for the first time in July, staying in Rambouillet, about an hour on the RER slow train from Paris. It's on the Chartres line, so you might want to hop off there for a few hours if you visit again. The chateaux in the middle of the forest is gorgeous, well worth the visit for it alone. There's a lovely market at the end of the main street too.
Thanks for the history lesson.
Posted by: Ryan Patterson | 03 November 2016 at 10:03 AM
Wonderful. Thank you for sharing so many subtle and elusive thoughts and feelings.
Though my experiences and memories are not as focussed on their churches and cathedrals, I have loved and continue to love that extraordinary country and sometimes catch myself feeling horribly sentimental about some remembered personality that could only have been formed in France. I cannot believe that the glass in Sens is as good as that in Chartres. ***PH Notes: *Some* of it is as good as *all* the glass in Chartres, not quite the same thing. There is much less of it, so obviously it is not as good as a whole. I hope I have not given a false impression here.*** I will have to go and look.
Perhaps it is that joy which I have found in the diversity of the european nations which has made me such a determined supporter of BREXIT. It is sad that so many seem to imagine that the conformity and sameness with which global corporatism replaces the unique and the special... are some kind of "progress".
Posted by: Frank Finch | 03 November 2016 at 09:34 AM
It did interest me. Thank-you very much.
Posted by: William Saunders | 03 November 2016 at 08:10 AM
Thank you for the attentive descriptions of your trip, Peter. I enjoyed the read. I've read elsewhere that Passy cemetery is worth a detour, Claude Debussy (non religious i believe, though a gifted composer in my opinion) is buried there.
Posted by: Alex Nesbitt | 03 November 2016 at 04:29 AM
'the more i know moroccans and the more i live in this country the more i am convinced of the greatness of this nation'
Posted by: tony archer | 03 November 2016 at 01:45 AM
this article is an oasis in a journalistic desert overcrowded with celebrities' bottoms, fear propaganda, hysteria and superficial modernity.
a therapeutic read.
Posted by: bob | 03 November 2016 at 12:49 AM
Mr Hitchens,
Thank you for such an evocative account. The two passages which particularly caught my attention were, firstly:
[at Sens Cathedral] ‘There were not that many visitors. Perhaps if I’d waited long enough I could have found myself, like M.R. James’s character Dennistoun in the deserted cathedral of St Bertrand of Comminges, listening out for the strange and alarming noises that great old buildings produce to scare us on darkening winter afternoons.’
This reminds me of living for one year in a slumped Elizabethan farmhouse, and how its creaky groans and sharp squeals in the middle of a windy night would wake me up in my bed.
your second evocative account:
[travelling through France in the past] ‘How much more foreign it all was. You were in the unknown. Nobody spoke English. You immediately lost contact with home. A telephone call was a carefully planned exercise...English newspapers [were] rare and usually days old, the consumer goods (and the advertisements for them) all specifically French as ours were specifically English, needing to be learned and discovered with care.’
[and in the present] ‘Here, alas was the inescapable modern world, plenty of people with piercings and tattoos, much as you would find at an English small town station on an autumn morning, a small crowd of sub-Saharan Africans searching for who knows what.’
Indeed. I too can vividly remember travelling through Europe as a young man. The differences which you describe in the modern age are only too true. Individual national characteristics are being steadily eroded away. This is perhaps the saddest result for all Europeans as a result of the grand European project, imposed upon us all by those who believe they know better.
But something else caught my eye, and I have a question for you, just out of curiosity. You also state:
‘France is a martial nation and could easily have bested us in combat if things had turned out very slightly differently.’
I have long noticed a tendency from those right of centre to rather overplay Britain’s significance in the current age, based no doubt on our illustrious past. I have also noticed a tendency by those left of centre to do Britain down, as a matter of course.
So here’s my question to you, plain and simple: Would you regard the Battle of the Nile and the Battle of Trafalgar as being great British victories over the French?
***PH writes: Most certainly, In fact I made Trafalgar the opening and centrepiece of the BBC4 film I made about the need for this country to leave the EU. But then again I regard Yorktown as a great French victory over us, and am deeply uncomfortable over the sea-fight, if such it can be called, at Mers-el-Kebir.***.
Posted by: Ian Spriggs | 02 November 2016 at 09:29 PM
Movie-watching, book-reading. Now all this traveling and church-gazing. I sure hope this doesn't turn you into an impractical dreamer. Every so often you need to include an anecdote about mowing a lawn, cleaning a gutter, or even fixing a toilet. The practical world is just as important as the abstract one.
****PH writes: Good heavens. I am a fairly diligent lawn-mower, though it is a duty, not a pleasure, but I cannot think of anything interesting to say about this activity. Likewise I can if needs be unblock a lavatory but wouldn't think of troubling others with descriptions of this. I can do a diminishing number of repairs to a bicycle(these get harder as the technology gets newer. I can no longer repair a puncture, for instance, a task I once mastered, because modern inner tubes are shredded and torn by tyre levers, as the old ones were not ) . In my days in the USSR I became a reasonably competent telephone engineer, but I have forgotten my skills as I no longer need them. But I was an impractical dreamer before all this began and expect to remain one until I die. Contrasting what is possible (if unlikely) with what exists is mainly designed to improve the soul, not to improve the temporal world. ****
Posted by: Californian | 02 November 2016 at 09:09 PM
I don't read Arabic, but here is my very approximate translation of Lyautey's french wikipédia:
In 1961, France wanted to retrocede its embassy to Morocco because it had become too big. The marshal's mausoleum was in the residence's park. King Mohammed V wanted to avoid its profanation and thought the body should be repatriated. He sent his right hand man, Si Mammeri, to Paris to present the case and suggest that Lyautey be laid at the Invalides. General De Gaulle accepted.
The inscriptions written on his tomb were statements of the marshal.
The french side means: "To be of those in which men believe; inside the eyes in which thousands of eyes search for order; at the voice from which roads open, countries populate, cities arise"
The Arabic side means: "The more I live in Morocco, the more I am convinced of this country's greatness"
Posted by: Félix Michaux | 02 November 2016 at 09:07 PM
I looked into your blog expecting some fulminations on the latest controversy but instead found this delightful, thoughtful piece. I did note the conclusion, but thank you for a a pointer to what seems like a very worthwhile destination and something I will keep in mind for my next visit.
Posted by: Hugh Weldon | 02 November 2016 at 08:54 PM
I liked reading of your time in France. Thank you.
Posted by: Stephen Povey-Jones | 02 November 2016 at 08:52 PM
An excellent and evocative piece, Mr Hitchens and one for which I am grateful. I suggest, if I may, that you visit the Thomas Coats Memorial Church, (assuming that you have not already) in Paisley. A fantastic building, which is effectively Europe's Baptist cathedral. It will close soon due to costs but it is a truly amazing place and would be a tourist attraction were it in Rome or more fashionable city. I recommend that you experience one of Britain's great religious buildings before it closes.
Posted by: John Whyte | 02 November 2016 at 07:39 PM
This is a really beautiful piece that Peter has written...I hope he's not going to retire to France now that he's come of age. He could live on the German border and go to a Protestant church there on a Sunday. If you do leave, we will miss your poetry on question time and Latin words and fights against lefty nonsense, but I wouldn't blame you...I'm bailing out myself in January to Homburg Saarland. keep writting the books on France,Germany railways etc...as for Grand Britanya...la tritesse durera toujours as the manic street preachers would say...
Posted by: Alexi 17 | 02 November 2016 at 07:26 PM