Antiquaries in the Age of Romanticism: 1789-1851 - Queen Mary ...

and was published in full, suitably perhaps, only posthumously under a title that embraced the
contrarieties of Langlois’s approach: Essai historique, philosophique et pittoresque sur les
Danses des Morts [Philosophical, historical and picturesque essay on the Dances of Death].
Charles Richard describes his former master and friend arriving at the subject that was to
preoccupy him, in terms that suggest that metaphor, narrative and the intertwining of fact and
fiction were an accepted and admired characteristic of Langlois’s method. During a ‘promenade
fantastique à travers notre vieille ville ressucscitée’ [imaginary walk through our resurrected old
town], in pursuit of Rouen’s history, Langlois came, in his mind’s eye, to the cemetery of St
Maclou. 161 Here, contemplating the dead and the futility of life, he awoke from his dream. ‘Alors
il sauté à pieds joints de l’illusion dans la réalité, et tombe au milieu de l’aître.’ [Then he leapt
with both feet together from fantasy into reality and landed in the middle of the churchyard.]. 162
The cemetery at St Maclou is notable for the much mutilated but still decipherable Dance of
Death carved round its interior walls. From here Langlois progressed to a study of the Danse
Macabre as it appeared elsewhere in France and Germany. The starting point for his interest,
however, the slide from present imagination to past reality, from nineteenth-century walk to
medieval dance, was preserved in the published account, the first parts of which appeared in
Langlois’s lifetime from 1832. It is reflected in the illustrations from the first illuminated capital
to the startling engraving that prefaces Volume Two of the final version [fig: 34] and in the text
which begins with Langlois calling up the past like Lucan’s witch on the battlefield:
A la classique melodie de la lyre d’Amphion, les murailles de Thebes se contruirent d’elle-memes: essayons de
relêver nos ruines aux grincements romantiques du rebec de MACABRE.’ [To the classical strains of Amphion’s
lyre the walls of Thebes rose up unaided: let us try to rebuild our own ruins to the romantic grinding of the rebec of
the MACABRE.] 163
161
Richard, ‘Notice sur E-H Langlois’, p. 63.
162
Richard, ‘Notice sur E-H Langlois’, p.63.
163
Langlois, Essai Historique, Philosophique et Pittoresque sur les Danses des Morts, p.3.
152