the Bourbons has remained the master of Chambord. Between this exiled
master and this deserted castle there is an intimate and sad relation
which will touch the most unsympathetic heart. Each stone that falls
in the grass-grown court without a human ear to take note of the
noise,--is it not the parallel of an obliterated memory, a hope that
is ever weakening? In the absence of this master, who, doubtless, will
never return, the old _château_ falls into the shadow and silence which
belong to fallen majesty. It awaits in this grave and slightly morose
sorrow those great vicissitudes, which are imposed on stones, as on
men, that the Future has in store.
_Let Résidences royales de la Loire_ (Paris, 1863).
THE TEMPLES OF NIKKO.
PIERRE LOTI.
He who has not beheld Nikko, has no right to make use of the word
_splendour_.
_Japanese Proverb._
In the heart of the large island of Niphon and in a mountainous and
wooded region, fifty leagues from Yokohama, is hidden that marvel of
marvels--the necropolis of the Japanese Emperors.
There, on the declivity of the Holy Mountain of Nikko, under cover of a
dense forest and in the midst of cascades whose roar among the shadows
of the cedars never ceases, is a series of enchanting temples, made of
bronze and lacquer with roofs of gold, which look as if a magic ring
must have called them into existence among the ferns and mosses and
the green dampness, over-arched by dark branches and surrounded by the
wildness and grandeur of Nature.
Within these temples there is an inconceivable magnificence, a
fairy-like splendour. Nobody is about, except a few guardian bonzes who
chant hymns, and several white-robed priestesses who perform the sacred
dances whilst waving their fans. Every now and then the slow vibrations
of an enormous bronze gong, or the dull, heavy blows on a monstrous
prayer-drum are heard in the deep and echoing forest. At other times
there are certain sounds which really seem to be a part of the silence
and solitude, the chirp of the grasshoppers, the cry of the falcons in
the air, the chatter of the monkeys in the branches, and the monotonous
fall of the cascades.
All this dazzling gold in the mystery of the forest makes these
sepulchres unique. This is the Mecca of Japan; this is the heart, as
yet inviolate, of this country which is now gradually sinking in the
great Occidental current, but which has had a magnificent Past. Those
were strange mystics and very rare artists who, three or four hundred
years ago, realized all this magnificence in the depths of the woods
and for their dead....
We stop before the first temple. It stands a little off to itself in
a kind of glade. You approach it by a garden with raised terraces; a
garden with grottos, fountains, and dwarf-trees with violet, yellow, or
reddish foliage.
The vast temple is entirely red, and blood-red; an enormous black and
gold roof, turned up at the corners, seems to crush it with its weight.
From it comes a kind of religious music, soft and slow, interrupted
from time to time by a heavy and horrible blow.
It is wide open, open so that its entire façade with columns is
visible; but the interior is hidden by an immense white _velum_. The
_velum_ is of silk, only ornamented in its entire white length by three
or four large, black, heraldic roses, which are very simple, but I
cannot describe their exquisite distinction, and behind this first and
half-lifted hanging, the light bamboo blinds are let down to the ground.
[Illustration: THE TEMPLES OF NIKKO.]
We walk up several granite steps, and, to permit my entrance, my
guide pushes aside a corner of the Veil: the sanctuary appears.
Within everything is in black lacquer and gold lacquer, with the
gold predominating. Above the complicated cornice and golden frieze
there springs a ceiling in compartments, in worked lacquer of black
and gold. Behind the colonnade at the back, the remote part, where,
doubtless, the gods are kept, is hidden by long curtains of black and
gold brocade, hanging in stiff folds from the ceiling to the floor.
Upon white mats on the floor large golden vases are standing, filled
with great bunches of golden lotuses as tall as trees. And finally from
the ceiling, like the bodies of large dead serpents or monstrous boas,
hang a quantity of astonishing caterpillars of silk, as large as a
human arm, blue, yellow, orange, brownish-red, and black, or strangely
variegated like the throats of certain birds of those islands.
Some bonzes are singing in one corner, seated in a circle around a
prayer-drum, large enough to hold them all....
We go out by the back door, which leads into the most curious garden
in the world: it is a square filled with shadows shut in by the forest
cedars and high walls, which are red like the sanctuary; in the centre
rises a very large bronze obelisk flanked with four little ones, and
crowned with a pyramid of golden leaves and golden bells;--you would
say that in this country bronze and gold cost nothing, they are used in
such profusion, everywhere, just as we use the mean materials of stone
and plaster.--All along this blood-red wall which forms the back of the
temple, in order to animate this melancholy garden, at about the height
of a man there is a level row of little wooden gods, of all forms and
colours, which are gazing at the obelisk; some blue, others yellow,
others green; some have the shape of a man, others of an elephant:
a company of dwarfs, extraordinarily comical, but which express no
merriment.
In order to reach the other temples, we again walk through the damp and
shadowy woods along the avenues of cedars, which ascend and descend and
intersect in various ways, and really constitute the streets of this
city of the dead.
We walk on pathways of fine sand, strewn with these little brown
needles which drop from the cedars. Always in terraces, they are
bordered with balustrades and pillars of granite covered with the most
delicious moss; you would say all the hand-rails have been garnished
with a beautiful green velvet, and at each side of the sanded pathway
invariably flow little fresh and limpid brooks, which join their
crystal notes to those of the distant torrents and cascades.
At a height of one hundred, or two hundred metres, we arrive at the
entrance of something which seems to indicate magnificence: above us on
the mountain in the medley of branches, walls taper upward, while roofs
of lacquer and bronze, with their population of monsters, are perched
everywhere, shining with gold.
Before this entrance there is a kind of open square, a narrow glade,
where a little sunlight falls. And here in its luminous rays two
bonzes in ceremonial costume pass across the dark background: one, in
a long robe of violet silk with a surplice of orange silk; the other,
in a robe of pearl-grey with a sky-blue surplice; each wears a high
and rigid head-dress of black lacquer, which is seldom worn now.
(These were the only human beings whom we met on the way, during our
pilgrimage.) They are probably going to perform some religious office,
and, passing before the sumptuous entrance, they make profound bows.
This temple before which we are now standing is that of the deified
soul of the Emperor Yeyaz (Sixteenth Century), and, perhaps, the most
marvellous of all the buildings of Nikko.
You ascend by a series of doors and enclosures, which become more and
more beautiful as you get higher and nearer the sanctuary, where the
soul of this dead Emperor dwells....
At the door of the Palace of the Splendour of the Orient we stop to
take off our shoes according to custom. Gold is everywhere, resplendent
gold.
An indescribable ornamentation has been chosen for this threshold; on
the enormous posts are a kind of wavy clouds, or ocean-billows, in the
centre of which here and there appear the tentacles of medusæ, the ends
of paws, the claws of crabs, the ends of long caterpillars, flat and
scaly,--all kinds of horrible fragments, imitated in colossal size with
a striking fidelity, and making you think that the beasts to which they
belong must be hidden there within the walls ready to enfold you and
tear your flesh. This splendour has mysteriously hostile undercurrents;
we feel that it has many a surprise and menace. Above our heads the
lintels are, however, ornamented with large, exquisite flowers in
bronze, or gold: roses, peonies, wistaria, and spring branches of
full-blown cherry-blossoms; but, still higher, horrible faces with
fixed death’s-head grimaces lean toward us; terrible things of all
shapes hang by their golden wings from the golden beams of the roof; we
perceive in the air rows of mouths split open with atrocious laughter,
and rows of eyes half-closed in an unquiet sleep.
An old priest, aroused by the noise of our footsteps on the gravel in
the silence of the court, appears before us on the bronze threshold. In
order to examine the permit which I present to him, he puts a pair of
round spectacles on his nose, which make him look like an owl.
My papers are in order. A bow, and he steps aside to let me enter.
It is gloomy inside this palace, with that mysterious semi-twilight
which the Spirits delight in. The impressions felt on entering are
grandeur and repose.
The walls are of gold and the ceiling is of gold, supported on columns
of gold. A vague, trembling light, illuminating as if from beneath,
enters through the very much grated and very low windows; the dark,
undetermined depths are full of the gleamings of precious things.
Yellow gold, red gold, green gold; gold that is vital, or tarnished;
gold that is brilliant, or lustreless; here and there on the friezes
and on the exquisite capitals of the columns, a little vermilion, and a
little emerald green; very little, nothing but a thin thread of colour,
just enough to relieve the wing of a bird and the petal of a lotus, a
peony, or a rose. Despite so much richness nothing is overcharged; such
taste has been displayed in the arrangement of the thousands of diverse
forms and such harmony in the extremely complicated designs, that the
effect of the whole is simple and reposeful.
Neither human figures nor idols have a part in this sanctuary of
Shintoism. Nothing stands upon the altars but large vases of gold
filled with natural flowers in sheaves, or gigantic flowers of gold.
No idols, but a multitude of beasts, flying or crawling, familiar or
chimerical, pursue each other upon the walls, and fly away from the
friezes and ceiling in all attitudes of fury and struggle, of terror
and flight. Here, a flock of swans hurry away in swift flight the
whole length of the golden cornice; in other places are butterflies
with tortoises; large and hideous insects among the flowers, or
many death-combats between fantastic beasts of the sea, medusæ with
big eyes, and imaginary fishes. On the ceiling innumerable dragons
bristle and coil. The windows, cut out in multiple trefoils, in a form
never before seen and which give little light, seem only a pretext
for displaying all kinds of marvellous piercings: trellises of gold
entwined with golden leaves, among which golden birds are sporting; all
of this seems accumulated at pleasure and permits the least possible
light to enter into the deep golden shadows of the temple. The only
really simple objects are the columns of a fine golden lacquer ending
with capitals of a very sober design, forming a slight calix of the
lotus, like those of certain ancient Egyptian palaces.
We could spend days in admiring separately each panel, each pillar,
each minute detail; the least little piece of the ceiling, or the walls
would be a treasure for a museum. And so many rare and extravagant
objects have succeeded in making the whole a composition of large
quiet lines; many living forms, many distorted bodies, many ruffled
wings, stiff claws, open mouths, and squinting eyes have succeeded
in producing a calm, an absolute calm, by force of an inexplicable
harmony, twilight, and silence.
I believe, moreover, that here is the quintessence of Japanese Art, of
which the specimens brought to our collections of Europe cannot give
the true impression. And we are struck by feeling that this Art, so
foreign to us, proceeds from an origin so different; nothing here is
derived, ever so remotely, from what we call antiquities--Greek, Latin,
or Arabian--which always influence, even if we are not aware of it,
our native ideas regarding ornamental form. Here the least design, the
smallest line,--everything--is as profoundly strange as if it had come
from a neighbouring planet which had never held communication with our
side of the world.
The entire back of the temple, where it is almost night, is occupied
by great doors of black lacquer and gold lacquer, with bolts of carved
gold, shutting in a very sacred place which they refuse to show me.
They tell me, moreover, that there is nothing in these closets; but
that they are the places where the deified souls of the heroes love to
dwell; the priests only open them on certain occasions to place in them
poems in their honour, or prayers wisely written on rice-paper.
The two lateral wings on each side of the large golden sanctuary are
entirely of _marqueterie_, in prodigious mosaics composed of the most
precious woods left in their natural colour. The representations are
animals and plants: on the walls are light leaves in relief, bamboo,
grasses of extreme delicacy, gold convolvulus falling in clusters of
flowers, birds of resplendent plumage, peacocks and pheasants with
spread tails. There is no painting here, no gold-work; the whole effect
is sombre, the general tone that of dead wood; but each leaf of each
branch is composed of a different piece; and also each feather of
each bird is shaded in such a way as to almost produce the effect of
changing colours on the throats and wings.
And at last, at last, behind all this magnificence, the most sacred
place which they show me last, the most strange of all strange places,
is the little mortuary court which surrounds the tomb. It is hollowed
out of a mountain between whose rocky walls water is dripping: the
lichens and moss have made a damp carpet here and the tall, surrounding
cedars throw their dark shadows over it. There is an enclosure of
bronze, shut by a bronze door which is inscribed across its centre
with an inscription in gold,--not in the Japanese language, but in
Sanscrit to give more mystery; a massive, lugubrious, inexorable door,
extraordinary beyond all expression, and which is the ideal door for a
sepulchre. In the centre of this enclosure is a kind of round turret
also in bronze having the form of a pagoda-bell, of a kneeling beast,
of I don’t know what unknown and disturbing thing, and surmounted by a
great astonishing heraldic flower: here, under this singular object,
rests the body of the little yellow _bonhomme_, once the Emperor Yeyaz,
for whom all this pomp has been displayed....
A little breeze agitates the branches of the cedars this morning and
there falls a shower of these little dry, brown needles, a little brown
rain on the greyish lichens, on the green velvet moss, and upon the
sinister bronze objects. The voice of the cascades is heard in the
distance like perpetual sacred music. An impression of nothingness and
supreme peace reigns in this final court, to which so much splendour
leads.
In another quarter of the forest the temple of the deified soul of
Yemidzou is of an almost equal magnificence. It is approached by a
similar series of steps, little carved and gilded light-towers, doors
of bronze and enclosures of lacquer; but the plan of the whole is a
little less regular, because the mountain is more broken....
A solemn hour on the Holy Mountain is at night-fall, when they close
the temples. It is even more lugubrious at this autumnal season, when
the twilight brings sad thoughts. With heavy, rumbling sounds which
linger long in the sonorous forest, the great panels of lacquer and
bronze are rolled on their grooves to shut in the magnificent buildings
which have been open all day, although visited by nobody. A cold and
damp shiver passes through the black forest. For fear of fire, which
might consume these marvels, not a single light is allowed in this
village of Spirits, where certainly darkness falls sooner and remains
longer than anywhere else; no lamp has ever shone upon these treasures,
which have thus slept in darkness in the very heart of Japan for many
centuries; and the cascades increase their music while the silence of
night enshrouds the forest so rich in enchantment.
_Japoneries d’automne_ (15th ed., Paris, 1889).
THE PALACE OF HOLYROOD.
DAVID MASSON.
Just after the middle of August, 1561, as we learn from contemporary
records, there was a _haar_ of unusual intensity and continuance over
Edinburgh and all the vicinity. It began on Sunday the 17th, and it
lasted with slight intermissions, till Thursday the 21st. “Besides the
surfett weat and corruptioun of the air,” writes Knox, then living
in Edinburgh, “the myst was so thick and dark that skairse mycht any
man espy ane other the length of two pair of butts.” It was the more
unfortunate because it was precisely in those days of miserable fog and
drizzle that Mary, Queen of Scots, on her return to Scotland after her
thirteen years of residence and education in France, had to form her
first real acquaintance with her native shores and the capital of her
realm.
[Illustration: THE PALACE OF HOLYROOD.]
She had left Calais for the homeward voyage on Thursday the 14th
of August, with a retinue of about one hundred and twenty persons,
French and Scottish, embarked in two French state galleys, attended
by several transports. They were a goodly company, with rich and
splendid baggage. The Queen’s two most important uncles, indeed,--the
great Francis de Lorraine, Duke of Guise, and his brother, Charles de
Lorraine, the Cardinal,--were not on board. They, with the Duchess
of Guise and other senior lords and ladies of the French Court, had
bidden Mary farewell at Calais, after having accompanied her thither
from Paris, and after the Cardinal had in vain tried to persuade her
not to take her costly collection of pearls and other jewels with
her, but to leave them in his keeping till it should be seen how she
might fare among her Scottish subjects. But on board the Queen’s
own galley were three others of her Guise or Lorraine uncles,--the
Duc d’Aumale, the Grand Prior, and the Marquis d’Elbeuf,--with M.
Damville, son of the Constable of France, and a number of French
gentlemen of lower rank, among whom one notes especially young Pierre
de Bourdeilles, better known afterwards in literary history as Sieur
de Brantôme, and a sprightly and poetic youth from Dauphiné, named
Chastelard, one of the attendants of M. Damville. With these were
mixed the Scottish contingent of the Queen’s train, her four famous
“Marys” included,--Mary Fleming, Mary Livingstone, Mary Seton, and Mary
Beaton. They had been her playfellows and little maids of honour long
ago in her Scottish childhood; they had accompanied her when she went
abroad, and had lived with her ever since in France; and they were now
returning with her, Scoto-Frenchwomen like herself, and all of about
her own age, to share her new fortunes.
It is to Brantôme that we owe what account we have of the voyage from
Calais. He tells us how the Queen could hardly tear herself away from
her beloved France, but kept gazing at the French coast hour after
hour so long as it was in sight, shedding tears with every look, and
exclaiming again and again, “Adieu, ma chère France! Je ne vous verray
jamais plus!”...
It was in the afternoon of Wednesday, the 20th of August, that there
was a procession on horseback of the Queen, her French retinue, and
the gathered Scottish lords and councillors, through the two miles of
road which led from Leith to Holyrood. On the way the Queen was met by
a deputation of the Edinburgh craftsmen and their apprentices, craving
her royal pardon for the ringleaders in a recent riot, in which the
Tolbooth had been broken open and the Magistrates insulted and defied.
This act of grace accorded as a matter of course, the Queen was that
evening in her hall of Holyrood, the most popular of sovereigns for the
moment, her uncles and other chiefs of her escort with her, and the
rest dispersed throughout the apartments, while outside, in spite of
the fog, there were bonfires of joy in the streets and up the slopes
of Arthur’s Seat, and a crowd of cheering loiterers moved about in the
space between the palace-gate and the foot of the Canongate. Imparting
some regulation to the proceedings of this crowd, for a while at least,
was a special company of the most “honest” of the townsmen, “with
instruments of musick and with musicians,” admitted within the gate,
and tendering the Queen their salutations, instrumental and vocal,
under her chamber window. “The melody, as she alledged, lyked her
weill, and she willed the same to be continewed some nightis after.”
This is Knox’s account; but Brantôme tells a different story. After
noting the wretchedness of the hackneys provided for the procession
from Leith to Holyrood, and the poorness of their harnessings and
trappings, the sight of which, he says, made the Queen weep, he goes
on to mention the evening serenade under the windows of Holyrood,
as the very completion of the day’s disagreeables. The Abbey itself,
he admits, was a fine enough building; but, just as the Queen had
supped and wanted to go to sleep, “there came under her window five
or six hundred rascals of the town to serenade her with vile fiddles
and rebecks, such as they do not lack in that country, setting
themselves to sing psalms, and singing so ill and in such bad accord
that there could be nothing worse. Ah! what music, and what a lullaby
for the night!” Whether Knox’s account of the Queen’s impressions of
the serenade or Brantôme’s is to be accepted, there can be no doubt
that the matter and intention of the performance were religious. Our
authentic picture, therefore, of Queen Mary’s first night in Holyrood
after her return from France is that of the Palace lit up from within,
the dreary fog still persistent outside, the bonfires on Arthur’s Seat
and other vantage-grounds flickering through the fog, and the portion
of the wet crowd nearest the Palace singing Protestant psalms for the
Queen’s delectation to an accompaniment of violins.
Next day, Thursday the 21st, this memorable Edinburgh _haar_ of August
1561 came to an end. Arthur’s Seat and the other heights and ranges
of the park round Holyrood wore, we may suppose, their freshest
verdure; and Edinburgh, dripping no longer, shone forth, we may hope,
in her sunniest beauty. The Queen could then become more particularly
acquainted with the Palace in which she had come to reside, and with
the nearer aspects of the town to which the Palace was attached, and
into which she had yet to make her formal entry.