to the Feast of Flora and another essay to the Academy of Dijon on this
subject: "Why have modern republics acquired less splendor than the
ancient republics?" Some people ascribed the dissertation of the Jesuit
to Rousseau: it was the dawn of his glory. Then, to defend his company,
Cérutti composed an Apologie de l'institut des Jésuites. This work
brought him the favor of the Dauphin: he came to court. The poor man
became smitten with a beautiful lady who was cruel to him and he fell
into the deepest melancholy. He emerged from it only to compose verses
on charlatanism or chess, and to give his opinion on public affairs in
short pamphlets. He was very friendly to new ideas: but, at need, he
put his muse to the service of his noble protectresses. One of his works
acquired a certain reputation: it was an interminable apologue, The
Eagle and the Owl, "a fable written for a young prince whom one dared to
blame for his love for science and letters." Grimm, though he was very
indulgent to Cérutti, made a remark in regard to this fable which is not
lacking in subtlety or truth: "There is no sovereign philosopher, there
is no celebrated man of letters, who has not received a tribute of
distinguished homage from M. Cérutti. Let us congratulate philosophy on
seeing the apologist of the Jesuits become today the panegyrist of the
wise men of the century, praise the progress of illumination and counsel
the kings to take as confessors only their conscience, good works, or
some philosophic poet. _All this is perhaps not so far from a Jesuit as
one might imagine_... When the Revolution broke out, despite his poor
health and the deafness with which he was afflicted, Cérutti, who, in
accordance with the strong expression of the Marquise de Créqui, owed
everything to the century, wished to pay his debt to it. He multiplied
his pamphlets and booklets, collaborated in the discourses of Mirabeau,
and it was he who pronounced the funeral oration of the orator in the
church of Saint Eustache. He was elected a member of the Legislative
Assembly, edited a little newspaper, La Feuille villageoise, whose
purpose was to spread the spirit of the Revolution in the country
districts, and died in 1792. If he had lived a few months longer, the
guillotine would doubtless have interrupted the ingenuous dream of this
unfrocked Jesuit, maker of alexandrines."
What led Cérutti to describe the gardens of Betz? I despaired of
discovering what circumstances might have placed him in the household
of the Princess of Monaco, until I noticed, scattered through his poem,
some verses which had been engraved in the Temple of Friendship at
Betz. So Cérutti had been charged with composing the mottoes and the
inscriptions indispensable to every English garden. Such a task was
well suited to his poetic talent: it seemed to agree less well with his
philosophical convictions. But the philosopher required the poet, in
accomplishing his task, to tell the truth to the clergy as well as to
the nobility. Thus Cérutti's conscience was appeased. Madame de Monaco,
doubtless, was less satisfied. This perhaps explains why the poem was
not published until 1792; the nation had then confiscated the chateau
and the beautiful gardens, and the princess was living a life of exile
at Mayence, where, for her glory, a better poet than Cérutti sketched
her charming portrait in five lines.
Let us follow the sinuous ways which lead across the park to the
different "scenes" invented for the amusement of the Princess of Monaco.
The author of the poem, Les jardins de Betz, Cérutti, will revive for us
the buildings which are gone. He is a prosy guide, somewhat of a
ninny. But his heavy diatribes on priests, nobles and kings make the
description of these childish fancies almost tragic. Behind the canvas
so pleasingly covered by Hubert Robert, we might almost believe we could
hear the heavy tramp of the stage hands preparing for the change of
scene.
The chateau which was inhabited by the Princess of Monaco stood on an
island in the Grivette, quite near the village of Betz. Its towers were
reflected in the river, on which floated white swans. Baskets of flowers
ornamented the banks. Farther up, the Grivette formed another isle,
embellished with exotic shrubs and an oriental kiosk. A Chinese bridge
joined it to the park, and little junks were moored to the margin. Pekin
gave this kiosk and Nankin these light boats.
Nothing more remains of the château, which was sold during the
Revolution and was totally demolished in 1817. There also remains
nothing more of these Chinese fancies, by which the landscape artists of
the eighteenth century endeavored to recall the true origin of irregular
gardens. The rotted planks of the Chinese bridge fell into the little
river long ago.
In vain also would we seek some trace of the "Druid Temple." To erect
this curious construction, this "little bosky oratory," there had been
chosen for cutting young oaks of equal thickness and perfectly straight;
they had been cut off at the same height and planted in a circle on
an isolated mound; then this circular palisade was crowned by a wooden
cupola, whence were suspended pine cones and tufts of sacred mistletoe.
On beholding this spectacle Cérutti burst forth:
Who would believe it? This place so pure and peaceful
Was the cruel nest of superstition!
There formerly, frightening the shadows every evening,
The Druid, surrounded by a hundred funereal torches,
Strangled a mortal at the foot of Theutatès.
It is probable that the vision of human sacrifices obsessed neither the
Princess of Monaco nor her friends, when they came to rest themselves
in this sort of belvedere. But Cérutti is a philosopher; and from the
Druids his indignation spreads to all theocracies--Hebrew, Scandinavian,
Roman. The priests of Theutatès force him to think of the fagot fires
of the Inquisition, of the crimes of monasticism and of the massacre of
Saint Bartholomew.... So much so that he can no longer restrain himself
and passes to other structures:
Cursing the incense bearer, I leave the fatal hill.
Not far from the Druid Temple rose the ruin of a "Feudal Tower." It
still stands. Time has somewhat enlarged the breaches provided by Hubert
Robert when he drew the plan. But the ivy has grown for more than a
century and it has given an almost venerable aspect to this factitious
ruin. Everything here is imagined to show the ravage of centuries: the
battlements have crumbled; the interior is empty, and we still see the
traces of the floors which separated the various stories; the stone
fireplaces still remain attached to the walls. Over the lintel of a
door, we may read in Gothic characters an inscription in the purest "old
French" of the eighteenth century. Below the tower there are dungeons.
We love to imagine the blonde princess for whom this romantic ruin had
been erected, coming to sit at the foot of her tower, and, in order to
put her thoughts in harmony with the melancholy of this legendary site,
reading, in a nice little book published by Sieur Cazin, bookseller of
Rheims, some chivalrous romance by M. de Mayer, for example Geneviève de
Cornouailles et le Dameisel sans nom. Even for us, this imitation is not
without charm; its picturesqueness is agreeable; then we surprise here
the first awakening of the romantic imagination, the birth of the modern
taste for the Middle Ages, and we regret a little the time when people
amused themselves by fabricating entirely new ruins, without thinking
of restoring and completing the true ruins, those which are the work
of time.... As to Cérutti, the spectacle of this false donjon cannot
distract him from his folly:
Oh, castles of the oppressors! Oh, insulting palaces!
Walls of tyranny, asylum of rapine,
May you henceforth exist only in ruins!
Instead of those barons who vexed the universe,
We see on the remains of your deserted donjons
Cruel wolves wander, together with hungry foxes:
Under different names, they are of the same race.
And he immediately adds a note of which I reproduce only these few
lines: "I am very far from confounding modern castles with ancient
ones, and the castellans of today with those of former times. The modern
chateaux are not soiled with the blood of their vassals, but how
many are still bathed in their tears!... The castellans of today are,
however, distinguished for the most part by a reputation for humanity,
philosophy, politeness. But let us plumb these shining exteriors. In
these so human mortals, you will find... tyrants inflexible to their
inferiors. Their philosophy is still less solid than their humanity....
As to this politeness so vaunted by them, it is in the final analysis
nothing but the art of graduating and seasoning scorn, so that one
does not perceive it and even enjoys it.... They seem to except you,
to distinguish you from the common herd; but try to emerge from it, and
they will thrust you back." The whole bit would be worth quoting. It is
beautiful, this outpouring of venom on account of a garden pavilion!
In the midst of a thicket, in a place which was formerly open, a little
pyramid stands on a high base. The inscription which it formerly bore in
golden letters:
L'INDEPENDANCE AMERICAINE
has disappeared. Reflections of Cérutti upon "the impetuous car of
revolutions": events have combined to give them a certain opportuneness
here.
The mingling of centuries and the diversity of allusions were one of
the laws of the composition of an English garden. This is why, a little
farther on, we penetrate to the "Valley of Tombs." A Latin inscription
invites visitors to meditation and silence. An avenue of cypress, of
larches, of pines, of junipers, "of all the family of melancholy
trees," led to the tombs and disposed the soul to meditation. Sepulchers
"without worldly pomp and without curious artistry," bore naïve
epitaphs. Here were the tombs of Thybaud de Betz, dead on a Crusade,
and of Adèle de Crépy, who, having followed her knight to the Holy Land,
brought back his mortal remains and "fell dead of grief, at the last
stroke of the chisel which finished ornamenting this monument." The
epitaphs were engraved in Gothic characters; for "this Gothic form is
something more romantic than the Greek and the Roman." It is needless
to remark that these tombs were simple monuments intended for the
ornamentation of the garden and that no lord of Betz was ever buried in
this place. Some of the "melancholy trees" planted by the Princess of
Monaco still remain among the thickets which have since grown in the
"Valley of Tombs," which valley was an "elevated esplanade": a pleasing
incongruity of the friends of nature! As to the tombs, there remain only
a few mutilated remnants of the statues of the two recumbent figures.
*****
After the inevitable tombs, come the inevitable chapel and the
inevitable hermitage. But the hermitage of Betz possessed this much
originality, that it was inhabited by an actual hermit.
The hermitage (today there remains of it no more than the lower part)
was composed of two little rooms, one above the other. The upper one was
a sort of a grotto used as an oratory.
This monastic cave is a charming spot.
There we see shining in a little space,
Transparent nacre and vermilion coral.
A ray of sun which penetrates the grot
Illumines it and seems a ray of grace.
Cérutti immediately delivers to us the "secrets" of this illumination.
The walls of the grotto were pierced by little crevices, closed by bits
of white, yellow, purple, violet, orange, green, blue and red glass.
When the sun passed through these glittering bits, its rays, tinged with
all the colors, produced a magical light within the grotto. "One would
believe that the hermit is an enchanter who brings down the sun, or an
astronomer who decomposes light." Cérutti adds judiciously:
"This curious phenomenon is, however, only child's play." Any other than
Cérutti would perhaps have a word of pity for the poor man condemned to
live in a home thus curiously lighted. But he does not love the "pale
cenobites"; he approaches them only to scandalize them by his frank
speech....
At the foot of the crucifix, the hermit in his corner
Celebrates his good fortune... in which I do not believe.
The hermit believed in it. He even believed in it so well that he lived
in his hermitage through the whole time of the Revolution and died there
in 1811, aged seventy-nine years,--having observed to the day of his
death the rules set for him by the Princess of Monaco. In accordance
with these rules, he was required to lead an edifying life, to appear at
mass in the habit of his estate, to preserve seclusion and silence, to
have no connection with the inhabitants of the neighboring villages,
to cultivate flowers and give his surroundings a pleasant appearance,
finally to exhibit the hermitage, the grotto and the chapel to curious
visitors and to watch that no one touched anything. He received a
hundred francs a year, the use of a little field and a little vegetable
garden, every Saturday a pound of tallow candles, and in winter the
right to collect dead branches to warm himself. He was furnished in
addition the necessary tools for kitchen and culture, two small fire
pumps, a little furniture, a house for his chickens and the habit of
a hermit. The tailor of Betz--his bill has been discovered--asked
ninety-nine francs, five sous for dressing a hermit. Finally two cash
boxes were placed, one in the chapel and the other in the hermitage,
to receive the offerings of generous souls who wished to better the
condition of the recluse.
*****
By passing from ruins to tombs and from tombs to hermitages, we have
reached the end of the park. Let us retrace our steps along the banks
of the Grivette. Under the trees which shade its banks, the little
river forms a little cascade, and the picture composed by the landscape
architect has here lost nothing of its pristine grace. Cérutti thus
describes it:
A vast mass of rocks arrests it in its course
But, soon surmounting this frightful mass,
The flood precipitates itself in a burning cascade.
Then, resuming its march and its pompous detours,
Etc....
Poor little Grivette!
[Illustration: 0339]
Upon the right bank of the stream stands a ravishing edifice. It is
the Temple of Friendship, the most beautiful and, fortunately, the best
preserved of the structures of Betz, which alone, the chateau having
been destroyed and the park disfigured, is sufficient to immortalize
here the memory of Madame de Monaco. Among the great trees which make an
admirable frame for it, it presents the four columns and the triangular
gable of its Neo-Greek façade. It is the most charming and the most
elegant of the Hubert Roberts--a marvelous setting for an opera
by Gluck. As we ascend the grassy slope, we savor more vividly the
exquisite proportions of the architecture, the sovereign grace of the
colonnade, the nobility of the gable, and also the strange beauty of the
pines which enframe the masterpiece. (These trees with red trunks and
twisted shapes made an important part of the decoration of all English
gardens. Introduced into Europe for the first time in the gardens of
Lord Weymouth, in Kent, they are called by the landscapists of the times
Weymouth pines, or more briefly, Lord pines.)
Formerly, a wood of oaks extended on both sides of the temple; it was
cut in the nineteenth century; the hillside is now partly denuded; this
is very unfortunate, for the picture conceived by Hubert Robert has thus
been altered. Nevertheless, the essential feature of the landscape
is intact, for the Weymouth pines still shelter the access to the
peristyle.
Under the colonnade, between two statues, opens a door of two leaves on
which are sculptured fine garlands of flowers. Within the temple, along
the naked wall, Ionic columns alternate with truncated shafts which once
supported the busts of the heroes of friendship, and nothing is more
original than the oblique flutings of these pedestals. Coffers of
singular beauty decorate the ceiling, in the midst of which an opening
allows light to enter. About the edifice runs a cornice, the design
of which is at once rich and delicate. A charming marble bas-relief
decorates the top of the doorway. The rear wall curves back between
two columns to form a little apse, raised by two steps: its curve is so
pleasing, its dimensions are so just, the arch of the demi-cupola which
shelters it is designed with so much grace, that we experience, in
contemplating these pure, supple and harmonious lines, that ravishment
of eye and soul which only the spectacle of perfect architecture can
produce. Before the steps is placed a round stone altar. In the little
apse, we might have admired until recently a plaster reproduction of
Love and Friendship, the celebrated group which Pigalle carved for
Madame de Pompadour, the marble of which--much damaged--belongs to
the Louvre. M. Rocheblave, who saw the statue in the place where the
Princess of Monaco had placed it, and who has written very interestingly
about it [26], affirms, and we can believe it, that this cast of the
original, made and lightly retouched by the sculptor Dejoux, was a
unique work, infinitely precious. It has been removed from Betz; but it
will soon be replaced by another cast of the same group. The divinity
will recomplete its temple.
On the pedestal of the statue appeared this quatrain:
Wise friendship! love seeks your presence;
Smitten with your sweetness, smitten with your constancy,
It comes to implore you to embellish its bonds
With all the virtues which consecrate thine.
And on the wall of the apse this was engraved:
Pure and fertile source of happiness,
Tender friendship! my heart rests with thee;
The world where thou art not is a desert for me;
Art thou in a desert? thou takest the place of this world.
This last motto is by Cérutti.
The cast of Love and Friendship is not the only object which has
disappeared from the temple of Betz. There was also there a "circular
bed," where meditation invited
Romantic Love and Ambitious Hope
to be seated.
This "circular bed" was also a poetic invention. A document, discovered
by M. de Ségur in the archives of Beauvais, shows us that Cérutti
was commissioned to "furnish" the Temple of Friendship. As his
archaeological knowledge was insufficient, he addressed himself to the
author of the Voyage du jeune Anacharsis. We possess the reply of Abbé
Barthélémy. The latter seems quite embarrassed: he states that the
ancients prayed standing, on their knees or seated on the ground, and
that there were no seats in the temples; he thinks that one might take
as a model either the curule chair of the Senators, or the throne on
which the gods were represented as seated, or even a bench, a sofa....
"Besides," he ended, "I believe, like M. Cérutti, that as friendship
is a goddess of all times, we may furnish her as we will." Quatrains,
sensibilities and puerilities, all these do not prevent the temple
of Betz from being one, of the most perfect works of the Greco-Roman
Renaissance of the last years of the eighteenth century. [27] In the
gardens of the Little Trianon, Mique produced nothing more exquisite
than this work of Le Roy. And how adorable they are, these little
monuments, supreme witnesses of classic tradition, suddenly revivified
by the discoveries of the antiquaries, by the Voyages of the Count de
Caylus, by the first excavations at Herculaneum and Pompeii! With what
surety of taste, with what subtlety of imagination, have the lines
and the forms of ancient art been accommodated to the adornment of the
northern landscape! It is the last flower of our architecture.
It is necessary to hearken to and meditate upon the instruction, the
eternal instruction given us by this temple so gracefully placed before
the verdant meadows of a valley of the Ile-de-France. The caprice of a
sentimental princess dedicated it to friendship. Let us dedicate it in
our grateful thought to the strong and charming god whose decrees were
respected and whose power was venerated for three centuries by poets and
artists without an ingratitude, without a blasphemy. This sanctuary was
doubtless the homage of a disappearing piety: already those who built it
celebrated in the neighboring groves the rites of a new cult; there they
deified disorder, ruin and melancholy; there they abandoned themselves
to childish and dangerous superstitions; already romanticism and
exoticism mastered hearts and imaginations. The more reason for admiring
and cherishing the last altars where men sacrificed to reason, order
and beauty. Besides, behold: a century has elapsed; the false ruins are
ruined; the false tombs are no more than rubbish; the Chinese kiosks
have disappeared; yet, upon the hillside, the four Ionic columns still
show the immortal grace of their spreading bases and their fine volutes.
Another stage, and the last, to the "Baths of the Princess." This rustic
retreat had been constructed in the midst of the woods. The woods have
been cut and now there remains no more than a single clump of trees in
the midst of a meadow, overshadowing the basin of a spring. Here were
formerly placed remnants of sculpture in the antique fashion,
Marbles broken and dispersed without arrangement.
The Graces sometimes came to rest themselves there.
*****
Seated near these benches, we easily forget ourselves;
Voluptuousness follows the shadow and melancholy....
Melancholy was not the only visitor to this charming retreat. Let
us rather listen to the Prince de Ligne describing the "baths" of an
English garden. His prose will console us for the verses of Cérutti:
"Women love to be deceived, perhaps that they may sometimes avenge
themselves for it. Occupy yourselves with them in your gardens. Manage,
stroll with, amuse this charming sex; let the walks be well beaten, that
they may not dampen their pretty feet, and let irregular, narrow, shaded
paths, odoriferous of roses, jasmines, orange blossoms, violets and
honeysuckles, coax these ladies to the bath or to repose, where they
find their fancy work, their knitting, their filet and especially their
black writing desk where sand or something else is always lacking, but
which contains the secrets unknown to lovers and husbands, and which,
placed upon their knees, is useful to them in writing lies with a crow's
plume."
With this pleasing picture, let us leave the gardens of Betz.
*****
I continued to read the _Coup d'oil sur les Jardins_ of the Prince de
Ligne, whence are extracted the pretty things which I have just quoted,
and I wish to reproduce the ending of this work, which is the whole
philosophy of the English garden.
"Happy, finally, if I have been able to succeed (the Prince de Ligne
did not content himself with writing about gardens; he had transformed
a part of the park of Bel-Oeil in the new fashion), if, in embellishing
nature, or rather in approaching her, let us rather say in making her
felt, I could give taste for her! From our gardens, as I have announced,
she would lead us elsewhere; our minds would no longer have recourse
to other powers than her; our purer hearts would be the most precious
temples that could be dedicated to her. Our souls would be warmed by
her merit, truth would return to dwell among us. Justice would quit the
heavens, and, a hundred times more happy than in Olympus, the gods would
pray men to receive them among themselves."
In the midst of their philosophical and rural amusements, while they
"embellished" the woods of Betz and purified their hearts by tasting
nature, the Princess of Monaco and the Prince of Condé doubtless spoke
similar words.
Nevertheless the omniscient gods remain in Olympus: they knew Cérutti
and foresaw the morrow.
It is just this which gives a singular melancholy to the gardens which
were laid out in France on the eve of the Revolution, a true melancholy,
a profound melancholy, no longer the light and voluptuous melancholy
with which the romantic "friends of nature" pleased themselves. It was
scarcely five years after the Princess of Monaco had finished designing
and ornamenting her gardens when it was necessary for her to abandon
everything to follow Condé and partake with him the perils, the
sufferings and the mortifications of emigration, to face the privations
of the fife of the camp and the humiliations of defeat, to flee, always
to flee across Europe before the victorious Revolution, and to learn at
each stage of the bloody death of a relative or a friend. Such memories
kill the smile awakened by the childishness of the structures scattered
through the gardens of Betz; they communicate a touching grace to the
allegories of the Temple of Friendship; they envelop the entire park
with a touching sadness. [28]
XIV. CHANTILLY
I--THE HOUSE OF SYLVIE
|THE most charming part of the gardens of Chantilly lies behind the
Chateau d'Enghien and is called the Park of Sylvie, in memory of Marie
Félice Orsini, the wife of Henri II de Montmorency, the "Sylvie"
of Théophile. On the site of the little house where the Duchess had
received and sheltered the proscribed poet, the great Condé built a
pavilion, and pierced the neighboring woods with "superb alleys"; his
son, Henri Jules, added to it the amusement of a labyrinth.
[Illustration: 0351]
The park and the house of Sylvie have been reconstructed in our day at
the order of the Duc d'Aumale. Overarching avenues lead to the pavilion,
which we perceive through a curtain of verdure as soon as we pass the
gate of honor of the chateau. Behind the little structure, an elegant
trellis encloses regular parterres, and the picture thus composed almost
reproduced the picture of the house of Sylvie as it is shown to us by an
engraving of Pérelle.