Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens ()
E. W. Godwin’s Month in Normandy: Travel Writing as Intertext
Abstract
In 1873, architect E. W. Godwin (1833‒86) embarked on a month-long trip through France’s Normandy region, accompanied by his partner, the actress Ellen Terry (1847‒1928), and their daughter Edy. A year later, Godwin published a series of articles on this excursion in a Victorian architectural periodical, The Building News. Entitled ‘Some Notes of a Month in Normandy’, the articles chronicled Godwin’s travels to Rouen, Mantes, Évreux, Lisieux, Caen, Bayeux, St Lô, and Coutances, ending in Dieppe. As would be expected of one of England’s prominent Gothic Revival architects, Godwin concentrated on the important examples of medieval architecture he encountered in what was a combined holiday and sketching tour. Nevertheless, a few human interest observations pepper his text, such as remarks on the cleanliness of provincial hotels and the quality of food and drink encountered. Compared to the autobiographical impulse of today’s travel writers, however, Godwin’s account is maddeningly self-effacing, with virtually no personal details vouchsafed. In line with his restricted focus on architectural themes, Godwin’s trip was to a large extent une répétition différente of the journey to Normandy taken by John Ruskin (1819‒1900) in 1848. Ruskin travelled throughout Normandy soon after his marriage to Euphemia Gray, visiting Boulogne, Abbeville, Rouen, Falaise, Avranches, Mont-Saint-Michel, Bayeux, Caen, and Honfleur, before arriving in Paris. The drawings of Norman cathedrals that Ruskin prepared during this trip became some of the most important illustrations to The Seven Lamps of Architecture, published in 1849, a volume Godwin referenced during his own trip through France. In order to assess Godwin’s travel account, I will make use of the concept of ‘intertextuality’ formulated in the twentieth century by the literary theorist Julia Kristeva (b. 1941). As Kristeva has posited, individual texts may be understood as participating in a matrix of relationships with previous texts. In Godwin’s case, his articles participated in a discursive field formed not only by Ruskin’s The Seven Lamps of Architecture but also by the accounts of Norman architecture published by the eminent French medievalist Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc (1814‒79) and restoration architect Aymar Pierre Verdier (1819‒80), in addition to the drawings by Godwin’s British colleagues Eden Nesfield (1835‒88) and William Burges (1827‒81), all of whom Godwin mentions. Kristeva’s concept of intertextuality will help clarify the extent to which Godwin’s travel narrative can be understood primarily as a contribution to this network of commentary. Finally, reading Godwin’s travel account as part of this textual and graphic fabric can also serve to identify the emergence of his individual interests. Following in Ruskin’s footsteps—literally and textually—Godwin began to articulate in the course of his ‘Notes’ the principles of ‘judicious eclecticism’ that would eventually differentiate him from Ruskin and form the basis of his later career.
