Appendix
I A Few More Interesting Walks in Rouen
It was in my mind at first to place here an itinerary I had planned by which it would be possible to visit everything of interest in Rouen in six days, starting from the Hôtel du Nord near the Grosse Horloge, and returning to the same spot. But it is perhaps better after all that you should visit the places mentioned in my chapters as the spirit moves you, and that I should merely set down in these last pages a few old streets or houses which you must not miss, merely because I have had no space to speak of them before.
Returning from the Chartreuse de la Rose, it will be good to take the Route de Lyons la Forêt past the château called Nid de chiens (a name which preserves the memory of the old Dukes’ Kennels) where Henri IV. was entertained. You will see the seventeenth-century house on your left, between two railway bridges which cross the road, just before the Caserne Trupel. Continue by the same road, keeping the Aubette on your right, and turn round the wall of the great Hospital enclosure till you reach the Rue Edouard Adam, and pass the Rue Eau de Robec which is beautiful on each side of you. Pass the new Fontaine Croix de Pierre, and as you turn down the Rue Orbe look quickly at the backs of the houses on the Robec, and then swing to the right up the Rue des Champs. At the Rue Matelas you must stop. St. Vivien’s Church closes the quaint vista of the street, and at No. 19 is an aged doorway to a dark courtyard, and beyond that, a charming turret staircase on the roadway with a gallery outside all wreathed in roses. The gables and the woodwork and the shadowed windows make up an exquisite little picture of mediæval domesticity. When you return again to the Rue Orbe, look down the Rue Pomme d’Or to your left, and then turn up the Rue Poisson and admire the beautiful choir of St. Nicaise, remembering the story of the famous “boise” I told you in the last chapter. Up the Rue St. Nicaise, past the Rue Floquet, the hideous slit of the Rue d’Enfer opens on the left, so you turn away to the Rue Roche opposite, and keep swinging to the left up the Rue de la Cage and so on to the Boulevard Beauvoisine. The Place du Boulingrin, where I have no doubt the English garrison of 1420 played at bowls, is still green and inviting a little to your right. But pushing on still westwards to the left you come to the Boulevard Jeanne d’Arc, and pass the road that leads northwards to a fascinating Cider-tavern in the Champs des Oiseaux. A little further on is the Rue Verte (leading northwards to the Railway Station and southwards to the Rue Jeanne d’Arc and the river) and at last you reach the Place Cauchoise and the Rue St. Gervais which mounts to the north-west. Look at No. 31 (the Menuiserie Brière) as you pass, for the sake of the charming old wooden gallery in its courtyard, and then at No. 71 with its pretty eighteenth-century panels like plaques of Wedgewood, an ornament which is closely imitated in the medallions on the wall at the corner of the Rue Chasselièvre. After visiting St. Gervais come back to the Place Cauchoise and take the Rue Cauchoise until you reach the Rue des Bons Enfants, where at No. 134 died Fontenelle. As you pass the Rue Étoupée stop to look at the sign of the house at No. 4, built in 1580. If you are wise you will lunch at the old inn at No. 41 Rue des Bons Enfants, admire the stables, and inspect Room No. 10. Refreshed and fortified, go straight on, across the Rue Jeanne d’Arc into the Rue Ganterie and so by way of the Rue de l’Hôpital to the crossing of the Rue de la République. Almost in front of you on the other side is the queer little alley called the Rue Petit Mouton, and as you pass down it you will see how much bigger the streets look on my Maps (for the sake of being clear) than they are in reality. This leads you across the Place des Ponts de Robec to the beginning of the Rue Eau de Robec where you will notice at once, on the left, the house at No. 186, with the sign which shows the faithful horse returning from the scene of his master’s murder to bring the news into the town. No. 223 on the other side at the corner of the Rue de la Grande Mesme is fine, and so is No. 187 at the angle of the Rue du Ruissel. All the while the inky water is trickling under countless bridges on your left hand (“Ignoble little Venice” Flaubert calls it all in “Madame Bovary,” which gives you, otherwise, the worst impression of Rouen in any book I know), and swarms of little children chatter and play about the cobblestones, while women throng the countless dens and cubbyholes, until you fly for shelter into one of the numerous curiosity shops and buy a fifteenth-century door-knocker manufactured expressly for your visit. Past the Place St. Vivien and the Church, the Eau de Robec still continues; and, as the Rue du Pont à Dame Renaude opens on your left, there is a good house at the corner of the opposite street. Further on to the left a great building with overhanging eaves stretches from 34 to 30. Then, over a broader bridge, the Rue des Célestins goes northwards, and this street of bridges ends in the green trees of the Boulevard, with a lovely view of that Maison des Célestins which the Duke of Bedford endowed, far to your right in the distant corner of the old wall of the Hospital.
Coming back by the Robec (for it well deserves looking at from each end), when you reach the Rue de la République turn northwards for a sight of the south front of St. Ouen, and then leave the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville by way of the Rue de l’Hôpital due west. No. 1 is an exquisite Renaissance house with its colonnade and arches and carved capitals. In the courtyard within is a beautiful doorway of the same period set at right angles to the street façade. Upon its entrance columns (which are double, one set above another) two delicately moulded statuettes of women are placed on each side of the slender upper shaft. Over the door is the motto—“DomiNuS MICHI ADIUTOR,” the same which occurs above the arms of Cardinal Wolsey on the terra-cotta plaque at Hampton Court. This fine house extends some way down the street, and leads you pleasantly onwards till the Rue Socrate opens to your left. Go down it and glance on each side as the Rue des Fossés Louis VIII. crosses your path. At the end is the great Palais de Justice. Beyond that (you may go through Louis XII.’s archway or keep the Palace wall upon your right) is the Rue aux Juifs, in which No. 35 is an exact model of its ancient predecessor. In the Rue du Bec there are remains of fine houses and spacious courtyards, and through it you arrive at the Rue de la Grosse Horloge and the great archway that holds the famous clock of Rouen.
The only other houses I can remember as worthy of a special visit are Nos. 5, 7, and 18 in the Rue St. Étienne des Tonneliers, which opens out of the Rue du Grand Pont just before the quays. Where the Rue Jacques Lelieur enters it are the ruins of a lovely church fallen upon very evil days. All over Rouen you may find walks equally interesting, but I have done enough in suggesting a few of the most typical.