protuberances if it were not for the enormous girth of its round towers,
which appear to give it a robust lateral development. These towers,
however, fine as they are in their way, struck me as a little stupid;
they are the exaggeration of an exaggeration. In a building erected
after the days of defence and proclaiming its peaceful character from
its hundred embroideries and cupolas, they seem to indicate a want of
invention. I shall risk the accusation of bad taste if I say that,
impressive as it is, the Château de Chambord seemed to me to have
altogether a touch of that quality of stupidity. The trouble is that it
stands for nothing very momentous; it has not happened, in spite of
sundry vicissitudes, to have a strongly-marked career. Compared with
that of Blois and Amboise its past is rather vacant; and one feels to a
certain extent the contrast between its pompous appearance and its
spacious but somewhat colourless annals. It had indeed the good fortune
to be erected by Francis I., whose name by itself expresses a good deal
of history. Why he should have built a palace in those sandy plains will
ever remain an unanswered question, for kings have never been obliged to
give reasons. In addition to the fact that the country was rich in game
and that Francis was a passionate hunter, it is suggested by M. de la
Saussaye, the author of the very complete little account of the place
which you may buy at the bookseller's at Blois, that he was governed in
his choice of the site by the chance that a charming woman had
previously lived there. The Comtesse de Thoury had a manor in the
neighbourhood, and the Comtesse de Thoury had been the object of a
youthful passion on the part of the most susceptible of princes before
his accession to the throne. This great pile was reared, therefore,
according to M. de la Saussaye, as a _souvenir de premières amours_! It
is certainly a very massive memento; and if these tender passages were
proportionate to the building that commemorates them, the flame blazed
indeed. There has been much discussion as to the architect employed by
Francis I., and the honour of having designed this splendid residence
has been claimed for several of the Italian artists who early in the
sixteenth century came to seek patronage in France. It seems well
established to-day, however, that Chambord was the work neither of
Primaticcio, of Vignola, nor of Il Rosso, all of whom have left some
trace of their sojourn in France; but of an obscure yet very complete
genius, Pierre Nepveu, known as Pierre Trinqueau, who is designated in
the papers which preserve in some degree the history of the origin of
the edifice, as the _maistre de l'oeuvre de maçonnerie_. Behind this
modest title, apparently, we must recognise one of the most original
talents of the French Renaissance; and it is a proof of the vigour of
the artistic life of that period that, brilliant production being
everywhere abundant, an artist of so high a value should not have been
treated by his contemporaries as a celebrity. We make our celebrities
to-day at smaller cost.
The immediate successors of Francis I. continued to visit Chambord; but
it was neglected by Henry IV. and was never afterwards a favourite
residence of any French king. Louis XIV. appeared there on several
occasions, and the apparition was characteristically brilliant; but
Chambord could not long detain a monarch who had gone to the expense of
creating a Versailles ten miles from Paris. With Versailles,
Fontainebleau, Saint-Germain and Saint-Cloud within easy reach of their
capital, the later French sovereigns had little reason to take the air
in the dreariest province of their kingdom. Chambord therefore suffered
from royal indifference, though in the last century a use was found for
its deserted halls. In 1725 it was occupied by the luckless Stanislaus
Leczynski, who spent the greater part of his life in being elected King
of Poland and being ousted from his throne, and who, at this time a
refugee in France, had found a compensation for some of his misfortunes
in marrying his daughter to Louis XV. He lived eight years at Chambord
and filled up the moats of the castle. In 1748 it found an illustrious
tenant in the person of Maurice de Saxe, the victor of Fontenoy, who,
however, two years after he had taken possession of it, terminated a
life which would have been longer had he been less determined to make it
agreeable. The Revolution, of course, was not kind to Chambord. It
despoiled it in so far as possible of every vestige of its royal origin,
and swept like a whirlwind through apartments to which upwards of two
centuries had contributed a treasure of decoration and furniture. In
that wild blast these precious things were destroyed or for ever
scattered. In 1791 an odd proposal was made to the French Government by
a company of English Quakers, who had conceived the bold idea of
establishing in the palace a manufacture of some peaceful commodity not
to-day recorded. Napoleon allotted Chambord, as a "dotation," to one of
his marshals, Berthier, for whose benefit it was converted, in
Napoleonic fashion, into the so-called principality of Wagram. By the
Princess of Wagram, the marshal's widow, it was, after the Restoration,
sold to the trustees of a national subscription which had been
established for the purpose of presenting it to the infant Duke of
Bordeaux, then prospective King of France. The presentation was duly
made; but the Comte de Chambord, who had changed his title in
recognition of the gift, was despoiled of his property by the government
of Louis Philippe. He appealed for redress to the tribunals of his
country; and the consequence of his appeal was an interminable
litigation, by which, however, finally, after the lapse of twenty-five
years, he was established in his rights. In 1871 he paid his first visit
to the domain which had been offered him half a century before, a term
of which he had spent forty years in exile. It was from Chambord that
he dated his famous letter of the 5th of July of that year--the letter,
directed to his so-called subjects, in which he waves aloft the white
flag of the Bourbons. This rare miscalculation--virtually an invitation
to the French people to repudiate, as their national ensign, that
immortal tricolour, the flag of the Revolution and the Empire, under
which they have won the glory which of all glories has hitherto been
dearest to them and which is associated with the most romantic, the most
heroic, the epic, the consolatory, period of their history--this
luckless manifesto, I say, appears to give the measure of the political
wisdom of the excellent Henry V. The proposal should have had less
simplicity or the people less irony.
On the whole Chambord makes a great impression; and the hour I was
there, while the yellow afternoon light slanted upon the September
woods, there was a dignity in its desolation. It spoke, with a muffled
but audible voice, of the vanished monarchy, which had been so strong,
so splendid, but to-day had become a vision almost as fantastic as the
cupolas and chimneys that rose before me. I thought, while I lingered
there, of all the fine things it takes to make up such a monarchy; and
how one of them is a superfluity of mouldering, empty palaces. Chambord
is touching--that is the best word for it; and if the hopes of another
restoration are in the follies of the Republic, a little reflection on
that eloquence of ruin ought to put the Republic on its guard. A
sentimental tourist may venture to remark that in presence of all the
haunted houses that appeal in this mystical manner to the retrospective
imagination it cannot afford to be foolish. I thought of all this as I
drove back to Blois by the way of the Château de Cheverny. The road took
us out of the park of Chambord, but through a region of flat woodland,
where the trees were not mighty, and again into the prosy plain of the
Sologne--a thankless soil to sow, I believe, but lately much amended by
the magic of cheerful French industry and thrift. The light had already
begun to fade, and my drive reminded me of a passage in some rural novel
of Madame Sand. I passed a couple of timber and plaster churches, which
looked very old, black and crooked, and had lumpish wooden porches and
galleries encircling the base. By the time I reached Cheverny the clear
twilight had approached. It was late to ask to be allowed to visit an
inhabited house; but it was the hour at which I like best to visit
almost anything. My coachman drew up before a gateway, in a high wall,
which opened upon a short avenue, along which I took my way on foot; the
coachmen in those parts being, for reasons best known to themselves,
mortally averse to driving up to a house. I answered the challenge of a
very tidy little portress who sat, in company with a couple of children,
enjoying the evening air in front of her lodge, and who told me to walk
a little farther and turn to the right. I obeyed her to the letter, and
my turn brought me into sight of a house as charming as an old manor in
a fairy tale. I had but a rapid and partial view of Cheverny; but that
view was a glimpse of perfection. A light, sweet mansion stood looking
over a wide green lawn, over banks of flowers and groups of trees. It
had a striking character of elegance, produced partly by a series of
Renaissance busts let into circular niches in the façade. The place
looked so private, so reserved, that it seemed an act of violence to
ring, a stranger and foreigner, at the graceful door. But if I had not
rung I should be unable to express--as it is such a pleasure to do--my
sense of the exceeding courtesy with which this admirable house is
shown. It was near the dinner-hour--the most sacred hour of the day; but
I was freely conducted into the inhabited apartments. They are extremely
beautiful. What I chiefly remember is the charming staircase of white
embroidered stone, and the great _salle des gardes_ and _chambre à
coucher du roi_ on the second floor. Cheverny, built in 1634, is of a
much later date than the other royal residences of this part of France;
it belongs to the end of the Renaissance and has a touch of the rococo.
The guard-room is a superb apartment; and as it contains little save its
magnificent ceiling and fireplace and certain dim tapestries on its
walls, you the more easily take the measure of its noble proportions.
The servant opened the shutters of a single window, and the last rays of
the twilight slanted into the rich brown gloom. It was in the same
picturesque fashion that I saw the bedroom (adjoining) of Henry IV.,
where a legendary-looking bed, draped in folds long unaltered, defined
itself in the haunted dusk. Cheverny remains to me a very charming, a
partly mysterious vision. I drove back to Blois in the dark, some nine
miles, through the forest of Russy, which belongs to the State and
which, though consisting apparently of small timber, looked under the
stars sufficiently vast and primeval. There was a damp autumnal smell
and the occasional sound of a stirring thing; and as I moved through the
evening air I thought of Francis I. and Henry IV.
[Illustration]
Chapter vi
[Amboise]
You may go to Amboise either from Blois or from Tours; it is about
half-way between these towns. The great point is to go, especially if
you have put it off repeatedly; and to go, if possible, on a day when
the great view of the Loire, which you enjoy from the battlements and
terraces, presents itself under a friendly sky. Three persons, of whom
the author of these lines was one, spent the greater part of a perfect
Sunday morning in looking at it. It was astonishing, in the course of
the rainiest season in the memory of the oldest Tourangeau, how many
perfect days we found to our hand. The town of Amboise lies, like Tours,
on the left bank of the river--a little white-faced town staring across
an admirable bridge and leaning, behind, as it were, against the
pedestal of rock on which the dark castle masses itself. The town is so
small, the pedestal so big and the castle so high and striking, that
the clustered houses at the base of the rock are like the crumbs that
have fallen from a well-laden table. You pass among them, however, to
ascend by a circuit to the château, which you attack, obliquely, from
behind. It is the property of the Comte de Paris, another pretender to
the French throne; having come to him remotely, by inheritance, from his
ancestor, the Duc de Penthièvre, who toward the close of the last
century bought it from the Crown, which had recovered it after a lapse.
Like the castle of Blois, it has been injured and defaced by base uses,
but, unlike the castle of Blois, it has not been completely restored.
"It is very, very dirty, but very curious"--it is in these terms that I
heard it described by an English lady who was generally to be found
engaged upon a tattered Tauchnitz in the little _salon de lecture_ of
the hotel at Tours. The description is not inaccurate; but it should be
said that if part of the dirtiness of Amboise is the result of its
having served for years as a barrack and as a prison, part of it comes
from the presence of restoring stonemasons, who have woven over a
considerable portion of it a mask of scaffolding. There is a good deal
of neatness as well, and the restoration of some of the parts seems
finished. This process, at Amboise, consists for the most part simply of
removing the vulgar excrescences of the last two centuries.
The interior is virtually a blank, the old apartments having been
chopped up into small modern rooms; it will have to be completely
reconstructed. A worthy woman with a military profile and that sharp,
positive manner which the goodwives who show you through the châteaux of
Touraine are rather apt to have, and in whose high respectability, to
say nothing of the frill of
[Illustration: AMBOISE--THE CHÂTEAU]
her cap and the cut of her thick brown dress, my companions and I
thought we discovered the particular note, or _nuance_, of Orleanism--a
competent, appreciative, peremptory person, I say--attended us through
the particularly delightful hour we spent upon the ramparts of Amboise.
Denuded and disfeatured within and bristling without with bricklayers'
ladders, the place was yet extraordinarily impressive and interesting. I
should mention that we spent a great deal of time in looking at the
view. Sweet was the view, and magnificent; we preferred it so much to
certain portions of the interior, and to occasional effusions of
historical information, that the old lady with the profile sometimes
lost patience with us. We laid ourselves open to the charge of
preferring it even to the little chapel of Saint Hubert, which stands on
the edge of the great terrace and has, over the portal, a wonderful
sculpture of the miraculous hunt of that holy man. In the way of plastic
art this elaborate scene is the gem of Amboise. It seemed to us that we
had never been in a place where there are so many points of vantage to
look down from. In the matter of position Amboise is certainly supreme
in the list of perched places; and I say this with a proper recollection
of the claims of Chaumont and of Loches--which latter, by the way (the
afterthought is due), is not on the Loire. The platforms, the bastions,
the terraces, the high-niched windows and balconies, the hanging gardens
and dizzy crenellations, of this complicated structure, keep you in
perpetual intercourse with an immense horizon. The great feature of the
place is the obligatory round tower which occupies the northern end of
it, and which has now been completely restored. It is of astounding
size, a fortress in itself, and contains, instead of a staircase, a
wonderful inclined plane, so wide and gradual that a coach and four may
be driven to the top. This colossal cylinder has to-day no visible use;
but it corresponds, happily enough, with the great circle of the
prospect. The gardens of Amboise, lifted high aloft, covering the
irregular remnants of the platform on which the castle stands and making
up in picturesqueness what they lack in extent, constitute of course but
a scanty domain. But bathed, as we found them, in the autumn sunshine
and doubly private from their aerial site, they offered irresistible
opportunities for a stroll interrupted, as one leaned against their low
parapets, by long contemplative pauses. I remember in particular a
certain terrace planted with clipped limes upon which we looked down
from the summit of the big tower. It seemed from that point to be
absolutely necessary to one's happiness to go down and spend the rest of
the morning there; it was an ideal place to walk to and fro and talk.
Our venerable conductress, to whom our relation had gradually become
more filial, permitted us to gratify this innocent wish--to the extent,
that is, of taking a turn or two under the mossy _tilleuls_. At the end
of this terrace is the low door, in a wall, against the top of which, in
1498, Charles VIII., according to an accepted tradition, knocked his
head to such good purpose that he died. It was within the walls of
Amboise that his widow, Anne of Brittany, already in mourning for three
children, two of whom we have seen commemorated in sepulchral marble at
Tours, spent the first violence of that grief which was presently
dispelled by a union with her husband's cousin and successor, Louis XII.
Amboise was a frequent resort of the French Court during the sixteenth
century; it was here that the young Mary Stuart spent sundry hours of
her first marriage. The wars of religion have left here the ineffaceable
stain which they left wherever they passed. An imaginative visitor at
Amboise to-day may fancy that the traces of blood are mixed with the red
rust on the crossed iron bars of the grim-looking balcony to which the
heads of the Huguenots executed on the discovery of the conspiracy of La
Renaudie are rumoured to have been suspended. There was room on the
stout balustrade--an admirable piece of work--for a ghastly array. The
same rumour represents Catherine de'Medici and the young queen as
watching from this balcony the _noyades_ of the captured Huguenots in
the Loire. The facts of history are bad enough; the fictions are, if
possible, worse; but there is little doubt that the future Queen of
Scots learnt the first lessons of life at a horrible school. If in
subsequent years she was a prodigy of innocence and virtue, it was not
the fault of her whilom mother-in-law, of her uncles of the house of
Guise, or of the examples presented to her either at the windows of the
castle of Amboise or in its more private recesses. It was difficult to
believe in these dark deeds, however, as we looked through the golden
morning at the placidity of the far-shining Loire. The ultimate
consequence of this spectacle was a desire to follow the river as far as
the castle of Chaumont. It is true that the cruelties practised of old
at Amboise might have seemed less phantasmal to persons destined to
suffer from a modern form of inhumanity. The mistress of the little inn
at the base of the castle-rock--it stands very pleasantly beside the
river, and we had breakfasted there--declared to us that the Château de
Chaumont, which is often during the autumn closed to visitors, was at
that particular moment standing so wide open to receive us that it was
our duty to hire one of her carriages and drive thither with speed. This
assurance was so satisfactory that we presently found ourselves seated
in this wily woman's most commodious vehicle and rolling, neither too
fast nor too slow, along the margin of the Loire. The drive of about an
hour, beneath constant clumps of chestnuts, was charming enough to have
been taken for itself; and indeed when we reached Chaumont we saw that
our reward was to be simply the usual reward of virtue, the
consciousness of having attempted the right. The Château de Chaumont was
inexorably closed; so we learned from a talkative lodge-keeper, who gave
what grace she could to her refusal. This good woman's dilemma was
almost touching; she wished to reconcile two impossibles. The castle was
not to be visited, for the family of its master was staying there; and
yet she was loath to turn away a party of which she was good enough to
say that it had a _grand genre_; for, as she also remarked, she had her
living to earn. She tried to arrange a compromise, one of the elements
of which was that we should descend from our carriage and trudge up a
hill which would bring us to a designated point where, over the paling
of the garden, we might obtain an oblique and surreptitious view of a
small portion of the castle walls. This suggestion led us to inquire (of
each other) to what degree of baseness it is lawful for an enlightened
lover of the picturesque to resort in order not to have a blank page in
his collection. One of our trio decided characteristically against any
form of derogation; so she sat in the carriage and sketched some object
that was public property while her two companions, who were not so
proud, trudged up a muddy ascent which formed a kind of back-stairs. It
is perhaps no more than they deserved that they were disappointed.
Chaumont is feudal, if you please; but the modern spirit is in
possession. It forms a vast clean-scraped mass, with big round towers,
ungarnished with a leaf of ivy or a patch of moss, surrounded by gardens
of moderate extent (save where the muddy lane of which I speak passes
near it), and looking rather like an enormously magnified villa. The
great merit of Chaumont is its position, which almost exactly resembles
that of Amboise; it sweeps the river up and down and seems to look over
half the province. This, however, was better appreciated as, after
coming down the hill and re-entering the carriage, we drove across the
long suspension-bridge which crosses the Loire just beyond the village
and over which we made our way to the small station of Onzain, at the
farther end, to take the train back to Tours. Look back from the middle
of this bridge; the whole picture composes, as the painters say. The
towers, the pinnacles, the fair front of the château, perched above its
fringe of garden and the rusty roofs of the village and facing the
afternoon sky, which is reflected also in the great stream that sweeps
below, all this makes a contribution to your happiest memories of
Touraine.
[Illustration]
Chapter vii
[Chenonceaux]
We never went to Chinon; it was a fatality. We planned it a dozen times;
but the weather interfered, or the trains didn't suit, or one of the
party was fatigued with the adventures of the day before. This excursion
was so much postponed that it was finally postponed to everything.
Besides, we had to go to Chenonceaux, to Azay-le-Rideau, to Langeais, to
Loches. So I have not the memory of Chinon; I have only the regret. But
regret, as well as memory, has its visions; especially when, like
memory, it is assisted by photographs. The castle of Chinon in this form
appears to me as an enormous ruin, a mediæval fortress of the extent
almost of a city. It covers a hill above the Vienne, and after being
impregnable in its time is indestructible to-day. (I risk this phrase in
the face of the prosaic truth. Chinon, in the days when it was a prize,
more than once suffered capture, and at present it is crumbling inch by
inch. It is apparent, however, I believe, that these inches encroach
little upon acres of masonry.) It was in the castle that Jeanne Dare had
her first interview with Charles VII., and it is in the town that
François Rabelais is supposed to have been born. To the castle,
moreover, the lover of the picturesque is earnestly recommended to
direct his steps. But one always misses something, and I would rather
have missed Chinon than Chenonceaux. Fortunate exceedingly were the few
hours we passed on the spot on which we missed nothing.
"In 1747," says Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his "Confessions," "we went to
spend the autumn in Touraine, at the Château of Chenonceaux, a royal
residence upon the Cher, built by Henry II. for Diana of Poitiers, whose
initials are still to be seen there, and now in possession of M. Dupin,
the farmer-general. We amused ourselves greatly at this fine place; the
living was of the best, and I became as fat as a monk. We made a great
deal of music and acted comedies."