show you that the chief _ateliers_ of the district are the wash-houses
of the tanners and the wool-workers. Along the base of the mouldering
wall which skirts the diverted arm of the Eure lie the backs of old
houses with their adjoining tanyards. Many of them, too, are garnished
with little wooden galleries, lavatories of the town’s soiled linen.
‘These galleries are filled with washerwomen, who crane over and dip
their many-coloured rags into the yellow stream. The old patched and
interrupted wall, the ditch with its weedy edges, the spots of colour,
the white-capped laundresses in their little wooden cages--one lingers
to look at it all.’[73]
Wine was another commodity for which Chartres was once famous. The
author of the _Book of Miracles_ tells us of a troubadour who left his
companion to pursue his pilgrimage alone whilst he himself paid a
prolonged visit to a _cabaret_.
‘Car la parole et le renon
Des bons vins avoit entendu
Qui a Chartres erent vendu
Clers seins nes et delicieux.’
The monks, it seems, had not planted their vines in vain. But, alas! the
modern vintage of La Beauce cannot claim any of the epithets assigned to
it above. The _grands clos de très bon vin_ of which Souchet speaks
(1640), which cardinals had found excellent in 1506, and which were sold
with pride and profit at the _Étape-au-vin_ or the various taverns, is
but a thin and dreary liquor to-day. Either the soil has been exhausted
and the grape lost its virtue, or the taste of the former connoisseurs
was faulty. No doubt their standard of taste in wine was lower than
ours. A cup of sack, I doubt, would not prove so pleasant to the modern
palate as it is to the modern ear. But even so the vintage of La Beauce
must have suffered a sore deterioration. The flourishing condition of
the old tavern-keepers and vintners is indicated by their generous
donation of the magnificent window which records the chief events of the
life of S. Lubin (second in the north aisle of the nave).
It remains to close this chapter with a bald list of the subjects of the
windows, taken in order, starting from the western front and moving
round the Cathedral from the Clocher Neuf along the north or left-hand
side.
1. Rose Window. Last Judgment. Described above.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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