BY THE BANKS OF THE SEINE
On the highroad to Saint Germain one passes innumerable historic
monuments which suggest the generous part that many minor chateaux
played in the court life of the capital of old.
To-day, Maisons, La Muette and Bagatelle are mere names which serve the
tram lines for roof signs and scarcely one in a thousand strangers gives
them a thought.
The famous Bois de Boulogne and its immediate environment have for
centuries formed a delicious verdant framing for a species of French
country-house which could not have existed within the fortifications.
These luxurious, bijou dwellings, some of them, at least, the caprices
of kings, others the property of the new nobility, and still others of
mere plebeian kings of finance, are in a class quite by themselves.
Perhaps the most famous of these is the celebrated Bagatelle, within the
confines of the Bois itself. The Chateau de Bagatelle was built in a
month, thus meriting its name, by the Comte d'Artois, the future
Charles X, as a result of a wager with Marie Antoinette. On its facade
it originally bore the inscription: "_Parva sed apta_"--"small but
convenient."
[Illustration]
Bagatelle occupied a corner of the royal domain and, after its
completion, was sold to the Marquise de Monconseil, in 1747, who gave to
this princely suburban residence a dignity worthy of its origin. Then
came La Pompadour on the scene, the _petite bourgeoise_ who, by the
nobility acquired by the donning of a court costume and marriage with
the Sieur Normand d'Etioles, usurped the right to sit beside duchesses
and be presented to the queen, if not as an equal, at least as the
_maitresse_ of her spouse, the king.
There is a legend about a meeting between La Pompadour and the king at
Bagatelle, a meeting in which she established herself so firmly in the
graces of the monarch that on the morrow she formed a part of the
entourage at Versailles.
After having come into the possession of the heirs of Sir Richard
Wallace, Bagatelle finally became the property of the State.
It is in the Chateau de Bagatelle that is to be installed the "Musee de
la Parole"--"The Museum of Speech." The French, innovators ever, plan
that Bagatelle shall become a sort of conservatory of the human voice,
and here will be classed methodically the cylinders and disks which have
recorded the spoken words of all sorts and conditions of men.
In this Musee de la Parole will be kept phonographic records of all
current dialects in France, the argot of the Parisian lower classes,
etc., etc.
Up to the present the evolution of the speech of man has ever been an
enigma. No one knows to-day how Homer or Virgil pronounced their words,
and Racine and Corneille, though of a time less remote, have left no
tangible record of their speech. Monsieur Got of the Comedie Francaise
believes that Louis XIV pronounced "_Moi_," "_le Roi_" as "_Moue_" "_le
Roue_"; and thus he pronounced it in a speech which has been recorded in
wax and is to form a part of the collection at Bagatelle.
The Polo Grounds of Bagatelle, between the chateau and the Seine as it
swirls around the Ile de la Folie, are to-day better known than this
dainty little Paris palace; but Bagatelle will some day come to its own
again.
Neuilly bounds the Bois de Boulogne on the north, and has little of a
royal appearance to-day, save its straight, broad streets.
There is a royal incident connected with the Pont de Neuilly which
should not be forgotten. It came about in connection with the return of
Henri IV from Saint Germain in company with the queen and the Duc de
Vendome. They were in a great coach drawn by four horses which insisted
on drinking from the river in spite of the efforts of the coachman to
prevent them.
The carriage was overturned and the royal party barely escaped being
drowned. One of the aids who accompanied them recounted the fact that
the impromptu bath had cured the king's toothache which he had acquired
over a rather hasty meal just before leaving the palace. "Had I
witnessed the adventure," said the Marquis de Verneuil, "I should have
proposed the toast: 'Le Roi Boit!" As a result of this incident a new
bridge was constructed, though it was afterwards replaced by the present
stone structure over which a ceaseless traffic rushes in and out of
Paris to-day. It was this present bridge over which Louis XV was the
first to pass on September 22, 1772.
The Chateau de Neuilly was a favourite suburban residence of Louis
Philippe. It was here that a delegation came to offer him the crown,
and, after he had become king, he was pleased to still inhabit it and
actually spent considerable sums upon its maintenance. When the
Revolution of 1848 broke out, the sovereign took refuge at Neuilly and,
when besieged by the multitude, took flight in the night of February 26
and left his chateau in the hands of a band of ruffians who pillaged it
from cellar to garret, finally setting it on fire. It burned like a pile
of brushwood, and it is said that more than a hundred drunken desperados
perished when its walls fell in. This was the tragic end of the Chateau
de Neuilly.
By a decree of the president of the later Republic the Orleans princes
were obliged to sell all their French properties and the park of the
Chateau de Neuilly was cut up into morsels and lots were sold to all
comers. Thus was born that delightful Paris suburb, with the broad,
shady avenues and comfortable houses, with which one is familiar to-day.
The aristocratic Parc de Neuilly, with Saint James, is the only tract
near Paris where one finds such lovely gardens and such fresh, shady
avenues.
Another quarter of Neuilly possesses a history worthy of being
recounted. The district known as Saint James derived its name from a
great suburban property which in 1775 belonged to Baudart de Saint
James. He created a property almost royal in its appointments, its
gardens having acquired an extraordinary renown. When he became a
bankrupt a throng of persons visited the property not so much with a
view to purchase as out of curiosity. A writer of the time says of this
Lucullus that he was the envy of all Paris. He died soon after his ruin,
from chagrin, and in apparent poverty, which seemingly established his
good faith with his creditors. Under the First Empire the domain was
bought by, or for, the Princesse Borghese, who here gave many brilliant
fetes at which the emperor himself frequently assisted. On the occasion
of the marriage of Napoleon to Marie Louise a series of fetes took place
here which evoked the especially expressed encomiums of the emperor.
In 1815 Wellington made it his headquarters and here had his first
conference with Blucher. Upon Wellington quitting Saint James the
property was pillaged by the Iron Duke's own troops and actually
demolished by the picks and axes of the soldiery.
Near the Passy entrance of the Bois is La Muette, a relic of a royal
hunting-lodge which took its name from the royal pack of hounds
(_meute_) which was formerly kept here.
The Chateau de la Muette was the caprice of Francois I, who, when he
came to Paris, wished to have his pleasures near at hand, and, being the
chief partisan of the hunt among French monarchs, built La Muette for
this purpose.
The Chateau de la Muette is thus classed as one of the royal dwellings
of France though hardly ever is it mentioned in the annals of to-day.
Rebuilt by Charles IX, from his father's more modest shooting box, La
Muette became the centre of the court of Marguerite de Navarre, the
first wife of Henri IV; after which it served as the habitation of the
dauphin, who became Louis XIII.
During the regency, Philippe d'Orleans took possession of the chateau
until the enthronement of Louis XV. The latter here established a little
court within a court, best described by the French as: "_ses plaisirs
prives_." It was this monarch who rebuilt, or at least restored, the
chateau, and brought it to the state in which one sees it to-day.
In 1783 Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and the court took up a brief
residence here to assist at the aerostatic experiences of De Rosier, and
in 1787, ceasing to be a royal residence, La Muette was offered for sale
after first having been stripped of its precious wainscotings, its
marbles and the artistic curiosities of all sorts with which it had been
decorated. The chateau itself now became the property of Sebastian
Erard, who bought it for the modest price of two hundred and sixty
thousand francs.
Somewhat farther from Paris, crossing the peninsula formed by the first
of the great bends of the Seine below the capital, is Chatou which has a
royal reminder in its Pavilion Henri IV, or Pavillon Gabrielle, which
the gallant, love-making monarch built for Gabrielle d'Estrees. Formerly
it was surrounded by a vast park and must have been almost ideal, but
to-day it is surrounded by stucco, doll-house villas, and unappealing
apartments, until only a Gothic portal, jutting from a row of dull house
fronts, suggests the once cosy little retreat of the lovely Gabrielle.
The height of Louveciennes, above Bougival, closes the neck of the
peninsula and from it a vast panorama of the silvery Seine and its
_coteaux_ stretches out from the towers of Notre Dame on one hand to the
dense forest of Saint Germain on the other.
The original Chateau de Louveciennes was the property of Madame la
Princesse de Conti, but popular interest lies entirely with the Pavilion
du Barry, built by the architect Ledoux under the orders of Louis XV.
Du Barry, having received the chateau as a gift from the king, sought to
decorate it and reembellish it anew. Through the ministrations of a
certain Drouais, Fragonard was commissioned to decorate a special
pavilion outside the chateau proper, destined for the "_collations du
Roi_."
The subject chosen was the "Progres de l'Amour dans le Coeur des
Jeunes Filles." Just where these panels are to-day no one seems to know,
but sooner or later they will doubtless be discovered.
Fragonard's famous "Escalade," or "Rendezvous," the first of the series
of five proposed panels, depicted the passion of Louis XV for du Barry.
The shepherdess had the form and features of that none too scrupulous
feminine beauty, and the "_berger gallant_" was manifestly a portrait of
the king.
Perhaps these decorations at Louveciennes were elaborations of these
smaller canvases. It seems quite probable.
Sheltered snugly against the banked-up Forest of Saint Germain, on the
banks of the Seine, is Maisons-Laffitte. Maisons is scarcely ever
mentioned by Parisians save as they comment on the sporting columns of
the newspapers, for horse-racing now gives its distinction to the
neighbourhood, and the old Chateau de Maisons (with its later suffix of
Laffitte) is all but forgotten.
Francois Mansart built the first Chateau de Maisons on a magnificent
scale for Rene de Longueil, the Superintendent of Finance. In a later
century it made a most effectual appeal to another financier, Laffitte,
the banker, who parcelled out the park and stripped the chateau.
For a century, though, the chateau belonged to the family of its
founder, and in 1658 the surrounding lands were made into a Marquisate.
In 1671, on the day of the death of Philippe, Duc d'Anjou, Maisons may
be said to have become royal for the court there took up its residence.
Later, the Marquis de Soyecourt became the owner and Voltaire stayed
here for a time; in fact he nearly died here from an attack of smallpox.
In 1778 the property was acquired by the Comte d'Artois and the royal
family of the time were frequent guests. The king, the queen and each
of the princes all had their special apartments, and if Louis XVI had
not been too busy with other projects, more ambitious ones, there is
little doubt but that he would have given Maisons an eclat which during
all of its career it had just missed. At the Revolution it was sold as
National Property and the proceeds turned into public coffers.
With the Empire the chateau became more royalist than ever. Marechal
Lannes became its proprietor, then the Marechal de Montebello, who here
received Napoleon on many occasions. With the invasion of 1815 the
village was devastated, but the chateau escaped, owing to its having
been made the headquarters of the invading allies. After this, in 1818,
the banker Laffitte came into possession. He exercised a great
hospitality and lived the life of an opulent bourgeois, but he destroyed
most of the outbuildings and the stables built by Mansart, and cut up
the great expanse of park which originally consisted of five hundred
hectares. His ideas were purely commercial, not the least esthetic.
The scheme of decoration within, as without, is distinctly unique. Doric
pilasters and columns support massive cornices and round-cornered
ceilings, with here and there antique motives and even Napoleonic
eagles as decorative features. To-day all the apartments are deserted
and sad. The finest, from all points of view, is that of the
Salle-a-Manger, though indeed some of the motives are but plaster
reproductions of the originals. The chimney-piece, however, is left, a
pure bijou, a model of grace, more like a pagan altar than a
comparatively modern mantel. The oratory is in the pure style of the
Empire, and the stairway, lighted up by a curiously arranged
dome-lantern, gives a most startling effect to the entrance vestibule.
In general the design of Maisons is gracious, not at all outre, though
undeniably grandiose; too much so for a structure covering so small an
area. The Cour d'Honneur gives it its chief exterior distinction and the
two pavilions have a certain grace of charm, when considered separately,
which the ensemble somewhat lacks. The surroundings, had they not been
ruthlessly cut up into building lots for over-ambitious Paris
shopkeepers, would have added greatly to the present appearance of the
property. As it is, the near-by race-course absorbed the orchard, the
_pelouse_ and many of the garden plots.