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Above the arcade was a tall clerestory, seemingly without any triforium or with the triforium thrown into the clerestory. Altogether there is about enough left to suggest the memory of Glastonbury, though Saint-Evroul is certainly not on the scale of Glastonbury, even without the western church. The west front must have been very remarkable.
The church of the monastery is a mere ruin; but it at least stands open to the sky; it is not desecrated and disfigured by being put to any profane use. Quite enough is left to put together the whole plan of the building. There is perhaps a slight feeling of disappointment at finding that here at Saint-Evroul there is nothing directly to remind us of the man for whose sake we have come thither.
If he were more of a chronicler, that is, if he told his story in a more orderly way, without so many repetitions and runnings to and fro, that is, if he were other than the kindly, gossiping, rambling old monk who has made Saint-Evroul a household word for all students of English and Norman history in his own day we ought not to feel so warmly drawn to him as we are.
Here then we have found all that we want at Exmes and Almenèches. We understand the scene of the petty war which drove Abbess Emma to Saint-Evroul. We have found our two castles, all that we cared to find of them. We have found our abbey, or at least a successor on its site. Our next halting-place is Laigle on the Rille, the Rille that runs out to flow by Brionne and the Bec of Herlouin.
There are the famous border castles of Verneuil and Tillières, easily to be reached by railway, and there is an ecclesiastical spot of still higher fame which can in a rather complicated way be reached by railway, but which it is pleasanter and certainly more appropriate to take by road. Yet as a means of approaching Ouche, Aticum, Saint-Evroul, even the road seems too modern.
Or in its position against the hill-side, it may call up the memory of Brantôme far away in Périgord; it has nothing in common with a typical abbey church like Saint-Evroul, except the accident of being much of the same date and style. One building still remains to be noticed in the Beaumont of Roger. That is the church of his earliest home at Les Vieilles.
Hopes of this kind, hopes of any immediate memory of the days of Orderic or of days before Orderic are not fated to be gratified; but we have done well to come to Saint-Evroul none the less. The ruined church offers us much to see and study. The only thing that suggests itself as a possible memorial of Orderic's day is the foundation of the apse.
But as it is only a foundation and not a crypt, there is no need to think that he ever saw it. The apse itself has fallen; but traces enough are left to show that inside at least it was polygonal. But it was an apse of the old simple pattern, without surrounding aisles and chapels. It could not have been there when the young novice from Shropshire came to Saint-Evroul.
If we are to take his words literally, English must have been the only language of his childhood. He was sent in his childhood to be a monk of Saint-Evroul; one wonders why, as his father might surely have found him a cell either in the Orleans of his birth or the Shrewsbury of his adoption.
Himself more truly the founder of Shrewsbury Abbey than his patron, Earl Roger, Odelerius of Ettingsham, the married priest, preferred Saint-Evroul to any other house of religion as the home of his son.
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