Dame disgrace

10:05am Saturday 8th November 2008

The column takes French leave and visits the magnificent cathedral best known for being the beautiful backdrop to a certain hunchback, and now in sore need of sanctuary from the tourist hordes.

THE beggars are up early in Paris; maybe they’ve never been to bed. The halt and the lame, many missing an arm or a leg, stand or kneel facing the magnificent cathedral of Notre Dame. It is last Sunday, All Souls’ Day, 9am.

Nothing being sacred, bilingual signs near the great west door warn to beware of pickpockets. Another indicates that baseball caps are forbidden.

There is nothing about mobile phones or cameras, or gizmos which flash-harry both functions. The Dean of Durham would not be happy.

We are on a weekend break, French leave. The morning dawns bright, the bells – the bells – long tolling the faithful to their contemplations.

The city’s great Gothic grandmama, still high and still handsome, has nonetheless become oddly and ineluctably secular, an uncomfortable menage of ifs and flying buttresses.

The building was begun in 1163, took 182 years to complete, withstood the English, the Revolution and two World Wars but may yet be best remembered for The Hunchback of Notre Dame, an 1831 novel by the Frenchman Victor Hugo.

There have been silent films and talkies, stage shows, operas, cartoons, rock musicals – even a disco production – about poor Quasimodo and his love for Esmerelda.

Lon Chaney, Anthony Hopkins, Warren Clarke and Anthony Quinn are among those who’ve played the Hunchback but the best of all may have been the 1939 film starring Charles Laughton.

The great, 13-ton bell to which Quasimodo retreated is named Emanuel, meaning God With Us.

Charles Laughton could almost have made Emanuel weep.

At right angles to the cathedral, a street – the Rue de Tat – includes somewhere called Quasimodo Souvenirs among its sundry spin-offs.

It’s a long time since I read Hunchback; I can’t remember if he wore a cowboy hat or not.

Back in the cathedral, the 8.30am Mass is reaching its solemn zenith.

It’s in the nave, already hundreds of twittering tourists – many Oriental – strolling around the periphery with their Nokias, their Nikons and their apparent indifference to what it’s meant all to be about.

There are slot machines selling Notre Dame medals for two euros, others offering souvenir and prayer cards. The scriptural bit about the money changers and them that sold doves may not translate too well into French.

As the Mass proceeds, the souvenir shop is in full vigour, too, the lady of this house disappointed that she is unable to buy a Notre Dame snow globe.

She collects snow globes, those little plastic things which, when shaken, cascade brief blizzards of childhood.

At a Roman Catholic church in Middlesbrough I once bought her a snow globe of Pope John XXIII; I’m not sure if it were my mistake or the Vatican’s.

Around the walls are little chapels which notices in French, English and German advise are for private prayer and silence. Half the visitors stroll in, phones flashing, anyway.

The Dean of Durham would be growing pretty hot under the dog collar.

The mass ended, it is followed almost immediately by lauds, one of the seven monastic offices. Identified on the service sheet as Laudes de Defunt, it translates as praise for the departed.

It’s beautifully sung by soprano and alto, but still the attendant hubbub continues stereophonically. A sole member of the congregation essays a multi-national Shhhh. As the irreverent English would say, it is like peeing against the wind.

The nave fills up all the time, twothirds more present at the end of the service than at the beginning.

Though it is at the centre of the cathedral the service is almost a sideshow, not so much an act of worship as a conveyor belt, an ecclesiastical go-as-you-please.

Next to us, near the end, a chap arrives in black homburg and matching top coat. He sits down, crosses himself, opens his briefcase.

Had it contained a strawberry jam croissant – had, indeed, there been a cardinal selling indulgences in the corner or the Archbishop of Paris bearing a sandwich board with the message “Eat at Joe’s” – it would not by now be particularly surprising. In the event, it’s another camera. He photographs the priest as he prays.

From the front, another Oriental lady walks down the centre aisle with her mobile, inscrutably snapping the folks as she processes. The Dean of Durham (and his admirable chapter steward) would long since have sought sanctuary.

There is no sermon. Had there been it would by no means have been the first occasion on which the column had failed to understand a word, and mostly within 25 miles of Darlington.

Lauds lasts for half an hour. As they used to say at the pictures, half those present stay for the next house.

Yet more beggars are outside, motionless like those living statues so familiar on Parisian streets. A lady emerges from the cathedral and gives one of them a banana.

Doubtless it is all quite normal, doubtless the French would shrug and suggest that it is simply a case of vive la difference, of what they call ca ne fait rien and my old mother called san-fairy-ann.

Maybe they are right, but to me it just seems a Dame disgrace.