The Tapestry Book Part 21

CHAPTER XXIII

THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY

A. D. 1066

So long as one word continues to have more than one meaning, civilised man will continue to gain false impressions. The word tapestry suffers as much as any other--witness the attempt made for hundreds of years among all nations to set apart a word that shall be used only to designate the hand-woven pictured hangings and coverings discussed in this book; arras, gobelins, _toile peinte_, etc. In English, tapestry may mean almost any decorative stuff, and so comes it that we speak of the wonderful hanging which gives name to this chapter as the tapestry of Bayeux (plates facing pages 242, 243 and 244), when it is in reality an embroidery. But so much is it confused with true tapestry, and so poignantly does it interest the Anglo-Saxon that we will introduce it here, even while acknowledging its extraneous character.

To begin with, then, we say frankly that it is not a tapestry; that it has no place in this book. And then we will trail its length through a short review of its history and its interest as a human doc.u.ment of the first order.

In itself it is a strip of holland--brown, heavy linen cloth, measuring in length about two hundred and thirty-one feet, and in width, nineteen and two-thirds inches--remarkable dimensions which are accounted for in the neatest way. The hanging was used in the cathedral of the little French city of Bayeux, draped entirely around the nave of the Norman Cathedral, which s.p.a.ce it exactly covered. This indicates to archeologists the original purpose of the hanging.

On the brown linen is embroidered in coloured wools a panoramic succession of incidents, with border top and bottom. The colours are but eight, two shades each of green and blue, with yellow, dove-colour, red and brown.

This, in brief, is the great Bayeux tapestry. But its threads breathe history; its st.i.tches sing romance; and we who love to touch humorously the spirits of brothers who lived so long ago, find here the matter that humanly unites the Eleventh Century with the Twentieth.

The subject is the conquest of England by William the Conqueror in 1066. That is fixed beyond a doubt, so that the precious cloth cannot trail its ends any further back into antiquity than that event.

However, even the most insatiable antiquarian of European specialties is smilingly content with such a date.

Legend has it that Queen Matilda, the wife of the conqueror, executed the work as an evidence of the devotion and adulation that were his due and her pleasure: There are lovely pictures in the mind of Matilda in the safety of the chambers of the old castle at Caen, directing each day a corps of lovely ladies in the task of their historic embroidery, each one sewing into the fabric her own secret thoughts of lover or husband absent on the great Conqueror's business. In absence of direct testimony to the contrary, why not let us believe this which comes as near truth as any legend may, and fits the case most pleasantly?

[Ill.u.s.tration: BAYEUX TAPESTRY (DETAIL), 1066]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BAYEUX TAPESTRY (DETAIL), 1066]

The history it portrays in all its seventy-odd yards is easy enough to verify. That is like working out a puzzle with the key in hand. But the history of this keenly interesting embroidery is not so easy.

The records are n.i.g.g.ardly. Inventories record it in 1369 and 1476. In an inventory of the Bishop of Bayeux it is mentioned in 1563. About this time it was in ecclesiastical hands and used for decorating the nave of the Bayeux Cathedral.

Then the world forgot it.

How the world rediscovered that which was never lost is interesting matter. Here is the story:

In 1724 an antiquarian found a drawing of about ten yards long, taken from the tapestry. Here, said he and his fellow sages, is the drawing of some wonderful, ancient work of art, most probably a frieze or other decoration carved in wood or stone. Naturally, the desire was to find such a monument. But no one could remember such a carving in any church or castle.

Father Montfaucon, of Saint Maur, with interest intelligent, wrote to the prior of St. Vigor's at Bayeux, and received the most satisfactory reply, that the drawing represented not a carving but a hanging in possession of his church, and a.s.sociated with many yards more of the same cloth.

So all this time the wonderful relic had lain safe in Bayeux, and never was lost, but only forgotten by outsiders. The rediscovery, so-called, aroused much comment, and England declared the cloth the n.o.blest monument of her history.

It was in use at that time, and after, once a year. It was hung around the cathedral nave on St. John's Day, and left for eight days that all the people might see it.

The fact that it was not religious in subject, that it could not possibly be interpreted otherwise than as a secular history, makes remarkable its place in the cathedral. This is explained by the suggestion that while Bishop Odo established that precedent, all others but followed without thought.

Since 1724 the world outside of Bayeux has never forgotten this panorama of a past age, and its history is known from that time on.

The Revolution of France had its effect even on this treasure; or would have had if the clergy had not been sufficiently capable to defend it. It was hidden in the depositories of the cathedral until the storm was over.

It seems there was no treasure in Europe unknown to Napoleon. He commanded in 1803 that the Bayeux tapestry, of which he had heard so much, be brought to the National Museum for his inspection. The playwrights of Paris seized on the pictured cloth as material for their imagination, and, refusing to take seriously the crude figures, wrote humorously of Matilda eternally at work over her ridiculous task, surrounded with simple ladies equally blind to art and nature.

It is only too easy to let humour play about the ill-drawn figures.

They must be taken grandly serious, or ridicule will thrust tongue in cheek. It is to these French plays of 1804 that we owe the firmness of the tradition that Queen Matilda in 1066 worked the embroidery.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BAYEUX TAPESTRY (DETAIL), 1066]

Napoleon returned the cloth to Bayeux, not to the church, but to the Hotel de Ville, in which manner it became the property of the civil authorities, instead of the ecclesiastic. It was rolled on cylinders, that by an easy mechanism it might be seen by visitors. But the fabric suffered much by the handling of a curious public. Even the most enlightened and considerate hands can break threads which time has played with for eight centuries.

It was decided, therefore, to give the ancient _toile fatiguee_ a quiet, permanent home. For this purpose a museum was built, and about 1835 the great Bayeux tapestry was carefully installed behind gla.s.s, its full length extended on the walls for all to see who journey thither and who ring the guardian's bell at the courtyard's handsome portico.

Once since then, once only, has the venerable fabric left its cabinet.

This was at the time of the Prussians when, in 1871, France trembled for even her most intimate and special treasures.

The tapestry was taken from its case, rolled with care and placed in a zinc cylinder, hermetically sealed. Then it was placed far from harm; but exactly where, is a secret that the guardians of the tapestry do well to conserve. There might be another trouble, and asylum needed for the treasure in the future.

The pictures of the great embroidery are such as a child might draw, for crudeness; but the archeologist knows how to read into them a thousand vital points. History helps out, too, with the story of Harold, moustached like the proper Englishman of to-day, taking a commission from William, riding gaily out on a gentleman's errand, not a warrior's. This is shown by the falcon on his wrist, that wonderful bird of the Middle Ages that marked the gentleman by his a.s.sociations, marked the high-born man on an errand of peace or pleasure.

In these travelling days, no sooner do we land in Normandy than Mount St. Michael looms up as a happy pilgrimage. So to the same religious refuge Harold went on the pictured cloth, crossed the adjacent river in peril, and--how pleasingly does the past leap up and tap the present--he floundered in the quicksands that surround the Mount, and about which the driver of your carriage across the _pa.s.serelle_ will tell you recent tales of similar flounderings.

And when in Brittany, who does not go to tumbley-down Dinan to see its ancient gates and walls, its palaces of Queen Anne, its lurching crowd of houses? It is thither that Harold, made of threads of ancient wool, sped and gave battle after the manner of his time.

Another link to make us love this relic of the olden time: It is the star, the star so great that the s.p.a.ce of the picture is all too small to place it; so the excited hands of the embroiderers set it outside the limit, in the border.

It flames over false Harold's head and he remembers sombrely that it is an omen of a change of rule. He is king now, has usurped a throne, has had himself crowned. But for how long is he monarch, with this flaming menace burning into his courage? The year finishing saw the prophecy fulfilled by the coming of the conqueror.

It was this section of the tapestry that, when it came to Paris, had power to startle Napoleon, ever superst.i.tious, ever ready to read signs. The star over Harold's head reminded him of the possible brevity of his own eminence.

The star that blazed in 1066--we have found it. It was not imaginary.

Behold how prettily the bits of history fit together, even though we go far afield to find those bits. This one comes from China. Records were better kept there in those times than in Christian Europe; and the Chinese astronomers write of a star appearing April 2, 1066, which was seen first in the early morning sky, then after a time disappeared to reappear in the evening sky, with a flaming tail, most agreeably sensational. It was Halley's comet, the same that we watched in 1910 with no superst.i.tious fear at all for princes nor for powers. But it is interesting to know that our modern comet was recorded in China in the Eleventh Century, and has its portrait on the Bayeux tapestry, and that it frightened the great Harold into a fit of guilty conscience.

The archeologist gives reason for the faith that is in him concerning the Bayeux tapestry by reading the language of its details, such as the style of arms used by its preposterous soldiers; by gestures; by groupings of its figures; and we are only too glad to believe his wondrous deductions.

There are in all fifteen hundred and twelve figures in this celebrated cloth, if one includes birds, beasts, boats, _et cetera_, with the men; and amidst all this elongated crowd is but one woman. Queen Matilda, left at home for months, immured with her ladies, probably had quite enough of women to refrain easily from portraying them.

Needless to say, this one embroidered lady interests poignantly the archeologist.

Most of the animals are in the border--active little beasts who make a running accompaniment to the tale they adorn. This excepts the very wonderful horses ridden by knights of action.

Scenes of the pictured history of William's conquest are divided one from the other by trees. Possibly the archeologist sees in these evidences of extinct varieties, for not in all this round, green world do trees grow like unto those of the Bayeux tapestry. They are dream trees from the gardens of the Hesperides, and set in useful decoration to divide event from event and to give sensations to the student of the tree in ornament.

Such is the Bayeux tapestry, which, as was conscientiously forewarned, is not a tapestry at all, but the most interesting embroidery of Europe.

CHAPTER XXIV

TO-DAY