[Illustration: Chateau of the Comte and Comtesse de Durfort, at
Combourg]
The September morning was crystal-clear. The old fortifications at St.
Malo, violet in shadow, lay wrapped in sunlight as from the crest of
the hill we turned for a farewell glimpse of Dinard and the sea, before
turning eastward on our long proposed trip to some Brittany hospitals.
Our motor was packed in every corner with hospital supplies—tins of
ether, rolls of absorbent cotton, hundreds of compresses and bandages,
surgical supplies and instruments, cigars, cigarettes, chocolate,
hospital-shirts and slippers, sponges, socks—all we could think of,
capable of mending the broken bodies or healing the spirits of those
brave poilus we were to visit in various hospitals during the next few
days.
The motor looked top-heavy, with great hampers strapped on its roof,
as we (my husband, the singer and I) squeezed ourselves in between the
bulky supplies, but in these days of almost priceless tires and rare
gasoline one must manage with little personal pretentions to comfort.
The first place of call was the Chateau of Combourg. As we bowled along
roads now much in need of repair after three years of forced neglect,
we recalled something of its history.
The vast pile, buried in its own forests, was built, before the Norman
Conquest, of immense blocks of granite hewn from nearby quarries; its
five great towers, with deep slate roofs, ornamented with forged iron
"grilles" and weathervanes, its massive keep, its crenelated walls
and outlying bastions, have apparently withstood the vicissitudes
of centuries. Wars, revolution, fire, siege, storms, have left it
unharmed. As we approached, the castle loomed up above the surrounding
groves, looking much as it must have appeared to the Crusaders as they
left its doors for the Holy Land.
We rolled through a sordid village lying at its base, and soon stopped
before an iron gate in a high stone wall for the concierge to open, and
then a lovely scene met our eyes.
Great avenues of oaks and chestnuts stretched in all directions,
interspersed with long stretches of greensward and clumps of bushes. It
required slight imagination to see Robin Hood and his men, or catch a
glimpse of them fleeting through the sun-wrapped distance—or hear their
horns sounding in the forest.
The young chatelaine was awaiting us at the head of a great flight
of stone steps, "Tescalier d'honneur," large and broad enough for a
regiment to ascend. The drawbridge and moat, formerly occupying this
side, were removed by order of Cardinal Richelieu, who, fearing the
belligerent spirit of the Brittany nobles, and determined to destroy
their feudal privileges for all time, conceived the idea of turning
their castle-fortresses into harmless country-houses, and they,
themselves, into extravagant courtiers.
For two and one-half years these walls have sheltered wounded from the
battlefields of Picardie and Lorraine, nursed back to health by the
Comtesse who, as "infirmière Majeure," does all the dressing of wounds
herself—50 beds in all. She has three assistant nurses and a doctor,
but all the expense of this private hospital is borne by the Comte
and Comtesse de Durfort. No small item, when everything has doubled
in price, and hospital supplies, as well as food, are necessarily
difficult to obtain. The question of lighting and heating alone is a
hard one. No coal to be found anywhere, so trees are sacrificed in the
Park. Candles and kerosene lamps being the only way of lighting, these
immense halls must be gloomy and depressing enough in the long dark
afternoons of winter, with the wind howling around the towers and the
rain lashing the casements.
[Illustration: Interior of Castle—The Chatelaine and a Few of the
Wounded]
[Illustration: Group in Front of Castle]
The great dining-room and salons (in feudal times the "Salle des
Gardes") have been turned into dormitories, white cots stand in rows
beneath the painted beams of the ceilings; frescoed knights, bishops
and ladies gaze down from the lofty walls on the broken soldiers of
today; hooded chimneys of stone, heavily carved with armorial bearings,
still burn, in their black depths, logs from the neighboring forest.
Through cross-barred windows, cut in eighteen feet of masonry, one
catches glimpses of white and blue skies, of seas of verdant leaves, of
sunlight glinting on yellow lichen roofs far below. A pale blue smoke
drifts upward, the voices of children, the clang of forge, the lowing
of cattle in the market place, sound faintly through the autumn air,
and gazing downwards from this elevation, one realizes vaguely how
great was the distance, socially and morally, separating in the middle
ages the serf from his overlord!
After a most excellent luncheon of chicken "en casserole," venison,
fresh vegetables and salads, a pastry and some fine Burgundy (all
furnished by the estate, except the wine), the host and hostess, the
singer, my husband and I, climbed around the upper turrets, gazed
down through the "Machiacoli" whence boiling oil was hurled on the
besieger in the Dark Ages, scrambled through low stone arches, up
corkscrew-stairs to the bedroom of the famous Comte de Chateaubriand,
great-uncle of the present owner, and from whom she inherited the
property. Here he spent his lonely childhood, full of dreams and fears;
in one of his books, complaining of the bats circling and flapping
outside his window, in the moonlight, around this white-washed room
high up in this silent tower! What a dreary abode for an imaginative
boy!
Down the turning staircase, where an ancestral ghost with a wooden leg
and accompanied by a spectral cat "walks" before any disaster comes to
the family, we came to the Poet's Library, a circular room, lined from
floor to ceiling with books, as well as many unbound manuscripts. A
ladder on runners can be pushed around to reach the higher rows. Here
are many family relics; a comfortable oak armchair and table before the
open fireplace, where Chateaubriand wrote many of his world-renowned
books.
On returning to one of the salons, we found some thirty-five wounded
awaiting the little concert we had arranged for them. Some village
notables, the mayor, the cure, the postmaster and a few elderly
neighbors, were amongst them.
The singer, Miss Marion Gregory, of New York, confided to me afterwards
that she was so overcome, facing those poor wounded fellows, especially
the blind with their sightless eyes turned towards her, that her voice
seemed to die in her throat; but the singer was new to all the pain and
sorrow, having only just come from "'God's Country." She said she had
faced many large audiences in America, but never with so many qualms.
The soldiers, however, ignoring this, sat in blissful attention,
enjoying every note of her lovely voice, and heartily applauding. The
postmaster then recited some stirring French poetry, then, rising, we
all sang the "Marseillaise." One poor blind boy, with tears streaming
down, said to me: "Oh, Madame, I am so sad, I have no longer eyes to
see to fight to avenge the wrongs of my beloved France."
A "gouter" served in the dining-hall made us all very cheerful.
Speeches were made, hands shaken, toasts drunk, in that excellent wine
of Champagne to "la Victoire," and to the intimacy of France and the
United States.
The Comte and his beautiful wife, surrounded by their "blessés,"
bade us farewell at the foot of the "escalier d'honneur;" the castle
behind them looming gray and forbidding against the evening sky. The
sun, gilding the crests of the chestnuts and oaks and glinting on the
tricolor, the Red Cross flag and the family banner hanging limply in
the lambent air, sent its flood of red over the little group.
As we waved goodbye, we felt how intimately the past and present
are related. How great traditions never die, but repeat themselves
in national life from generation to generation. The high caring for
the humble, the rich for the poor. How love of country wipes out all
distinctions of caste, making France what she is today, the world's
example of sacrifice, devotion and patriotism.
September, 1916.