because you happen to know its name) is possessed not only by men and
women, but also by places; and, no more than with people, has it
anything to do with their being remarkable or beautiful. The White
Mountains in New Hampshire haven't a trace of it; it fills the mountains
of North Carolina; there is almost none along our Atlantic seaboard, but
it hangs over and haunts nearly every foot of our Pacific Coast.
Whenever one of these happy spots has been long known to man, man has
invariably cherished it in word and deed. His chronicles celebrate it;
he sets it lovingly like a jewel in his romances, dramas, verse, prose,
song; he graces it with his best in architecture; his roads and gardens
bring it alike into his hours of work and of ease; in fine, he garlands
it with his imagination, weaves it into his life century after century,
until it comes to smile upon him from the heart of his History and
Literature, as well as upon his daily present. That is what mankind has
done beneath the spell of a place which has charm.
Thus Touraine to the Frenchman,--_beau pays de Touraine_, as the page in
Meyerbeer's _Huguenots_ sings of it in that opera's second act, which
takes place at Chenonceaux. I suppose--indeed I remember--that rain
falls in that country; yet, when I think about it, sunshine invariably
sparkles through the picture--not the kind that glares and burns, but
the kind that plays gently among leaves and shores and shadows; sunshine
upon the twinkling, feathered silver of the poplars, the grapes in
sloping vineyards, the green islands and tawny bluffs of the Loire, the
quiet waters of the Indre and the Cher; a jocund harmony seems to play
about the very names,--Beaulieu, Montrésor, Saint-Symphorien,--but were
I to begin upon the music in the names of France, I should run far
beyond the limits of Touraine and of your patience. Say to yourself
aloud, properly, Amboise, Châteaurenault, La Chapelle-Blanche,
Saint-Martin-le-Beau, and then say Naugatuck, Saugatuck, Pawtucket,
Woonsocket, Manayunk, Manunkachunk, and you will catch my drift.
Stevenson's joy in our names was at bottom purely that of the collector.
But have you ever seen the Loire and its tributary realm? I have already
owned myself (together with all other men) as unable to explain the
mystery of charm. No Niagara is hereabouts, nor Matterhorn, nor anything
you could call sublime; nothing so lustrously beautiful as Bar Harbor,
or the Berkshire Hills. Wildness is wholly absent, but so is tameness
too. It is somehow through its very moderation that the glamour of this
land is wrought. But we must nicely distinguish between the poetry and
the prose of moderation: Princeton Junction, New Jersey, is perfectly
moderate, and is also the type and pattern of hundreds of thousands of
square, comfortable, unoffending miles in the United States which you
would never wish to see again--indeed which you would never wish to see
once; whereas, even as I write, I am homesick for Touraine, though it
isn't my home.
Once again I must draw the parallel between human qualities and the ways
of our mother earth. We place at the top of our esteem those people who
take chivalrously the heavy blows of life, who are not brave merely, but
gallant. We draw scant inspiration from the sight of somebody who is all
too obviously and dutifully bearing something; who goes, day after day,
with a set and sombre expression that says as plainly as words: 'Just
watch me carrying my Cross. Just wait till you have one.' We prefer
those whose gayety so conceals the fact that they're behaving well, that
we should never suspect it, did we not know what they have passed, and
are passing, through. Thus also does Touraine conceal the tears and the
blood she has known. Louis the Eleventh, Catherine de' Medici, the
gibbet balcony of the Salle des Armes at Amboise, the iron cage and the
black dungeons of Loches,--Touraine, with her smiling, high-bred
elegance, keeps all this to herself, and gives you a bright welcome.
Often as she has been the scene of Tragedy, often as the glaive and not
the lute has been the instrument of her drama, she might well look in
her glass and exclaim with Richard the Second,--
Hath sorrow struck
So many blows upon this face of mine,
And made no deeper wounds?
Wearing no crape, betraying no scars, hinting naught of its dark
experience of life, this realm, this _beau pays_, more than any in
Europe, to my thinking, lies in the true key of high comedy, of masque
and pastoral. If, here and there above its trees or upon its hills, the
brooding frown of some tower, the gaunt stare of some donjon in ruins,
fierce with memories, brings one up short, so that in joy's mid-current
some smack of the bitter wells up--this is not Nature's doing. Look away
from these works of man to the feathered poplars, the vineyards, the
gentle waters, and see the earth's countenance, smiling and serene.
Decorous it is always; only the irregularities of the Loire and its
channel seem to bear any reference to the conduct of those beautiful
historic ladies who dispersed their reputations in the vicinity. Even
man did not always build a Langeais or a Loches. Urbane and gracious
amid their parks or on their bluffs rise those dwellings planned when
France's architectural genius was in its happiest mood--though not its
loftiest. They look like the good society which once assembled in them;
their mere aspect suggests the wits, the brilliant talkers and listeners
of a day when conversation was a living art still, the day which
furnishes us even now with those letters and memoirs which are the
dainty wainscotting and mantelpieces, the interior decorations of
Literature. You may wander almost anywhere among the poplars and the
chestnuts in the valleys of the Loire's quiet tributaries; you can
hardly go wrong; if the turrets of Ussé against their rising woodland do
not regale your eye, it will be Azay-le-Rideau, or something less
famous, or, best of all, Chenonceaux, to which I now return.
II
I saw it first upon an afternoon when no air was stirring, even in the
poplars, when the green of Touraine was changing to gold: golden fruit,
pears, and apples, where summer's fruit had been; golden leaves
flickering down from high branches, or raked into golden heaps; while
the faint, sweet smoke of burning twigs hovered in the autumn day. It
was the moment and scene of the year when, just because other things
have ceased to grow, memories blossom in the mind; and on every golden
heap of leaves retrospect seemed to be sitting. We visitors were three.
I can recall the first sight of the château's yellow façade, framed by
the distant end of the high, formal avenue into which we turned to
approach it. All sorts of feet had stepped where we were walking:
almost four centuries of distinguished feet had gone in and out of that
beautiful front door; but over its appealing associations the still more
appealing aspect of the wonderful house triumphed. If I knew about _Le
Devin du Village_ then, the scene of its first performance interested me
much more because that long and many-windowed gallery was built right
over the water, right across the Cher, upon arches that the glassy
surface of the stream reflected symmetrically. I was captured then and
for ever by the beauty and the originality of this residence. Our best
country houses take earth and air into partnership, but this abode of
grace possessed, embraced, a little river. To go in at your front door
on one green margin and come out of your back door on the other; to
dwell in a masterpiece that was house and bridge in one--I can still
recover my first sensations of delight at this triumph of French art.
Only--the concierge didn't let us go out of the back door; and my
disappointment was cherished through long years, until its sequel, which
I shall presently reach. This first afternoon became a chapter in the
most delightful of guide-books, from which I quote the following:--
'We took our way back to the Grand Monarque, and waited in the little
inn parlor for a late train to Tours. We were not impatient, for we had
an excellent dinner to occupy us; and even after we had dined we were
still content to sit a while and exchange remarks upon the superior
civilization of France. Where else, at a village inn, should we have
fared so well?... At the little inn at Chenonceaux the _cuisine_ was not
only excellent, but the service was graceful. We were waited on by
mademoiselle and her mamma; it was so that mademoiselle alluded to the
elder lady, as she uncorked for us a bottle of Vouvray mousseux.'
On another page of this same guide-book you may read how, at the Hôtel
de l'Univers in Tours, the château of Amboise was described to us by an
English lady of a type that I sadly miss to-day. One met her everywhere
then. She was a more fragile sister of that robust, brick-complexioned
spinster who used to climb all the Alps in practical but awful garments.
She didn't often venture to speak to you for fear you weren't
respectable, or might think she wasn't. When she did, it was apt to be
with explosive shyness, running all her words together, as she did about
Amboise. 'It's-very-very-dirty-and-very-keeawrious!' Curious and furious
she always pronounced to rhyme with glorious and victorious; and it
invariably made me think of 'God Save the Queen.'
In my interest as to whether we should again have the excellent fare and
graceful service which I so well remembered at the little inn, and
whether now at last my long-cherished wish to step out of that back door
on the river's farther side were to be gratified, Chenonceaux itself had
so dropped out of my thoughts that it fairly burst upon my sight.
Bursting is, of course, a thing which that delicate and restrained
edifice could never really do, only I wasn't thinking about it as our
party (we were four on this second visit, and it was spring-time) came
into the avenue. There at the other end stood the fair, gay vision of
the château, and its beauty and wonder so suddenly waked my admiration,
that I exclaimed, 'How young it looks!'
Yes; it didn't look new, but it looked young: youth is the particular
and essential note of this enchanted building. None of its neighbors
have it, not even Azay-le-Rideau or Blois, which are its rivals, though
never its equals. Chenonceaux was four hundred years old in January,
1915. Age makes one type of person decrepit, and so it is with houses.
But Chenonceaux, if ever it come to show its years, will belong to the
other type: it will look venerable. Did it, do you think, catch its
secret from the ring of Charlemagne, by whose sorceries its mistress,
Diane de Poitiers, was accused of preserving her youth? This lady's
success with François Premier so disconcerted the amiability of the
Duchesse d'Etampes, that she constantly reminded Diane she was born on
the day Diane was married.--But I resist the temptation to dwell upon
Diane and everybody else linked to Chenonceaux by history; it's all
accessible to you in books; and I proceed with the visit our party of
four made, this spring day.
Touraine was now all delicate in green; as lovely, as gracious, as
discreet in its budding leaves as when the leaves had flickered down,
spangling the air and grass and garden-walks with their gold. We had met
at the little inn the same welcome, the same excellent _cuisine_, the
same agreeable Vouvray mousseux. Mademoiselle was not there, but mamma
was. Her premises and herself showed no ill effect from the prosperity
brought to her through the guide-book I have already quoted. No
guide-book in its author's plan, it was now become established as one,
and he, petitioned in a letter from mamma, had corrected a certain
error. In the first edition, page 60, you may read that we took our way
back to the Grand Monarque; in later editions it is the Hôtel du
Bon-Laboureur. The confusion to travelers, the injury to her custom,
ensuing from the wrong name, madame had represented to the author; and
now all was well. The inn wasn't any larger, but more and more each
season were pilgrims with expectant appetites led to her door.
'Tenez, monsieur,' she said to me eagerly, when I narrated to her how I
had been present at the germination of her renown, 'tenez. Voilà!' She
showed me the precious guide-book. She treasured it, though she couldn't
read it, because it was in English. And I came in for her smiles and
cordiality, which really belonged to the author.
You will have perceived, our party this time took their _déjeuner_, not
their dinner, at the Bon-Laboureur. The good omelette and cheese and
fruit and wine, mamma's prosperity and her well-preserved state,--for
now she was really an elderly woman,--all this had brought us in
peaceful and pleased spirits to the château. When we had seen the rooms
downstairs and the concierge was conducting the other sightseers--some
ten or twelve--to the second story, our party under my guidance stole
away to the back door.
'Back door' implies no dishonorable passage through pantry and kitchen;
we simply didn't go up the staircase in the wake of the concierge, but
independently along the hall instead, and thus across the Cher through
Catherine's celebrated gallery. _Le Devin du Village_ came into my mind,
and I wondered which figure was the more diverting, Jean-Jacques
Rousseau composing opera, or Richard Wagner dabbling in philosophy.
The door was open. I emerged, the happy leader of my party, upon stone
steps, crossed a little draw-bridge, and our triumphant feet trod the
grass beneath the trees which shaded the river's bank. I had my wish;
and as my obedient band followed me, I fear my complacent back and
Anabasis manner expressed some sentiment like this: 'Only observe how it
pays to see France with a person who knows the ropes!' We sauntered, we
expatiated, we paused before what I'll call by metonymy the tocsin--a
great bell and chain suspended from strong framework; from this point
the château, with its fine, detached, cylindrical donjon tower of the
fifteenth century, looked, in the afternoon light, particularly well:
those poor sheep with the concierge weren't getting this view. We must
have lingered by the tocsin a quarter of an hour, enjoying ourselves,
before returning to the back door.
It was shut. It was locked. Rattling made no impression upon it, nor
shaking, nor kicking. We knocked then, fancying this to be an accident.
Next we called, or rather, I, the party's personal conductor and
competent guide, began to call. Nothing happened. I augmented my
efforts. Catherine's gallery, famous scene of the first performance of
Rousseau's _Devin du Village_, responded with cavernous echoes. Between
these reigned silence, and a gentle breeze rustled the young leaves of
the chestnuts. We abandoned the door and went a few steps down the river
to where our gesticulations could be seen from the windows of
Chenonceaux. We made these gesticulations with our four umbrellas,
whilst I shouted continually. Not a window blinked. It might have been a
sorcerer's palace, and we his four new victims, presently to be roasted,
boiled, or changed into cats. We looked down the river--no escape; up
the river half-a-mile was a bridge; but what impediment mightn't lie
between? And even if the way were clear, to go round by the bridge would
lose us our train to Tours. One of us, in her deep voice, said that she
hoped the robin-red-breasts would find her body and cover it with
leaves. Again we flourished our four umbrellas, during vociferations
from me, at the imperturbable château. Then, quite suddenly, something
did happen. Out of a window in the donjon tower of the fifteenth century
was thrust a head, and from across the river it wagged at us
malevolently.
It was the concierge. The shock of discovering he had locked us out
purposely in punishment of our independent excursion, threw me into
extreme rage. My Anabasis manner had already dropped from me; but
Xenophon got his party successfully back, and this same task was now
searchingly, compellingly, 'up to me.' More malevolent wagging from the
tower was all that resulted from my next demonstrations. In these I was
now alone; my party, at the apparition of the concierge, had become
abruptly quiet, thinking doubtless that loud calls and wavings would
diminish my dignity less than theirs, whose years and discretion were
more than mine. Therefore my companions brandished their umbrellas no
more, but stood upon the banks of the Cher decorously, in a reserved
attitude, patient yet stately, as if awaiting the tumbril; I, meanwhile,
hurled international threats across the river. These wrought no change.
In repose my French halts, but when roused it acquires both speed and
point; yet none of my idioms disturbed the concierge at his window. And
now I was visited by inspiration. I seized the chain and rang the
tocsin. It sounded as if Attila were coming at once. Somebody would have
come, undoubtedly,--the whole _arrondissement_ I should think,--but
after a few moments of that din, the head disappeared; in a few more the
door was unlocked, and my companions preceded me with restraint yet with
celerity across Catherine's gallery and out of Chenonceaux's front door
and away, down the avenue to the railway, whilst I delivered some final
idioms to the concierge. I am happy to record that these made him livid,
and in the presence of a highly attentive audience. But--we had in truth
small idea with whom we were dealing. Some time later we got final news
of him. He had committed a murder, been caught, tried, convicted,
sentenced, and executed.
You will remember the British lady at the Hôtel de l'Univers in Tours,
who, in her description of Amboise, pronounced curious to rhyme with
glorious. Her kind was still pervading the quieter hotels of the
continent (the Hôtel de l'Univers was still quiet) while her more
muscular sister was still climbing all the Alps in valiant weeds. This
time, another of the identical type sat next me at the table d'hôte, and
from the corner of my eye I perceived her to be making endless and
surreptitious dives with her head at my bottle of Vouvray mousseux.
Becoming sure that this was neither St. Vitus's dance nor kleptomania,
but a desire to learn the name of my wine, I made her a slight bow,
turning my bottle so that she could more easily read its label; at which
she squeaked skittishly, 'I-didn't-think-you'd-see-me!'
III
The mid-Victorian spinster was gone, the automobile was come, the much
expanded Hôtel de l'Univers was quiet no more and had abandoned the
table d'hôte for small tables when next I saw Chenonceaux. Eager as I
had been to return to it, still more did I desire to enjoy that
particular pleasure which one takes in introducing a scene one delights
in to a friend. We were, this time, as we had been the first time, a
party of three, and the day was July 4, 1914; but in the Cathedral of
Bourges that morning, and at Montrichard and along the Cher that
forenoon, firecrackers seemed remote. Later, the Hôtel de l'Univers had
illuminations and national melodies for the benefit of its American
patrons--these having now swelled to the lucrative proportions of
invasion.
But Chenonceaux hadn't changed, Chenonceaux looked just as young as
ever. Its bright, serene aspect showed no confusion at changing masters
so often. To my friends it more than fulfilled my promises for it, while
for me it was even fairer than my memory. The concierge, a woman this
time, told her band of sightseers enough, but much less than she knew.
She had acquired (one somehow divined and discerned) a certain scorn
for her sightseers. She had found (one saw) the affluent automobile to
be the chariot of well-informed stomachs, but seldom of intelligences
which had ever heard, or would ever care to hear, about Madame Dupin and
her many distinguished guests. They knew their Michelin, where to buy
_pétrol_ along the road, which roads to avoid; and the road they had
particularly avoided was the one conducting to civilization. Some of
them were present on this occasion with their goggles, their magenta
veils, and their brass voices. To these the concierge imparted what she
deemed them able to digest. She didn't mention the _Devin du
Village_--but I did! This brought an immediate _rapprochement_, as we
lingered with her behind the departing goggles. She knew and loved her
Chenonceaux; her scorn fell from her; but she told us nothing so
interesting as the fact that during the last twelvemonth _twenty
thousand_ visitors had given each their required franc to see the place.
The château, at this rate, will pay its way down the ages.
But what of the Bon-Laboureur? If the mid-Victorian spinster and the
table d'hôte hadn't survived the pace of the new century, what had the
automobile done to the innocent village inn? I hope you will be glad to
learn that it hadn't--as yet--done much. I have now reached the third of
those meals which I mentioned at the outset. The Bon-Laboureur seemed a
little larger,--people were lunching in two rooms instead of one, and
out behind, kitchenward, there was a hint of bustle and of chauffeurs,
and perhaps the personal note of welcome was fainter. But it wasn't
quite absent; and still the food was excellent, still the service was
courteous, a pleasant young woman waiting; and I felt that here was a
good, small tradition still somewhat holding out against the
beleaguering pressure of the wholesale. So I spoke to the pleasant young
woman and inquired if the old _patronne_ were still living.
'Mais si, monsieur!' I was, to my astonishment, answered. 'A deux pas
d'ici.'
The personal note of welcome warmed up on learning that I was an old
visitor here; the patronne would value a call from one who remembered
her good cooking; she was now very old; she had sold the business and
the good-will; she lived very quietly; would I not go to see her? And
her house was pointed out to me.
Along the street of the little white village I went, slowly, in the
midsummer warmth. The grape-leaves, trailing and basking on the walls,
the full-leaved trees, the light and laziness of earth and sky, conveyed
the same hush of repose that had exhaled from the golden autumn and the
delicate spring I remembered so well; in this July sunshine, also, the
pleasant land lay dreamy and unvexed. At a door standing slightly open,
I knocked. Though a pause followed, I felt I had been heard; then I was
bidden to enter, by a very old voice. Two rooms were accessible from the
tiny hall, but I entered the right one, and there by the window sat the
patronne. I had remembered her as moving alertly round her table, quiet
and vigorous, above average height. All of this was gone; and as her
dark, feeble eyes looked at me, I felt in them a certain apprehension,
and found myself unpremeditatedly saying,--
'Madame, I trust you will not think ill of an intruder when you learn
why it is that he has ventured to knock at your door. They assured me
you would like my visit. Here is my little story: One Sunday afternoon
in September, 1882, three travelers came to the Bon-Laboureur. I was one
of them; and never forgetting your excellent meal and service, I
returned at my first opportunity, in April, 1896. Meanwhile that good
meal of yours, and you its hostess, had been mentioned in a book by
another of those three guests; and you told me of the prosperity this
had brought you. Since that visit, thirty-two years ago, I have become a
writer of books too. Of me you will not have heard, but you cannot have
forgotten Mr. Henry James, whose praise brought so many guests to the
Bon-Laboureur.'
Her eyes, during my speech, had awakened, and now she stood up.
'My servant is absent,' she said, 'or you would not have had to come in
so. But my son lives close by in that large place. He will like very
much to see you. I will call him.'
She would have gone for him on her trembling feet, but this I begged she
would not do; I had but five minutes; friends were waiting for me.
'I am ninety years old,' she said. 'Ah, monsieur, il est bien triste de
vieillir. One has nothing any more.' She became suddenly moved, and
tears fell from her.