CHANTILLY
Chantilly, because of its royal associations, properly finds its place
in every traveller's French itinerary. Not only did Chantilly come to
its great glory through royal favour, but in later years the French
government has taken it under its wing, the chateau, the stables and the
vast park and forest, until the ensemble is to-day as much of a national
show place as Versailles or Saint Germain. It is here in the marble
halls, where once dwelt the Condes and the Montmorencys, that are held
each year the examinations of the French Academie des Beaux Arts. And
besides this it is a place of pilgrimage for thousands of tourists who,
as a class, for a couple of generations previously, never got farther
away from the capital than Saint Cloud.
Many charters of the tenth century make mention of the estates of
Chantilly, which at that time belonged to the Seigneurs of Senlis. The
chateau was an evolution from a block-house, or fortress, erected by
Catulus in Gallo-Roman times and four centuries later it remained
practically of the same rank. In the fourteenth century the chateau was
chiefly a vast fortress surrounded by a water defence in the form of an
enlarged moat by means of which it was able to resist the Bourguignons
and never actually fell until after the taking of Meaux by the English
king, Henry V.
[Illustration: CHANTILLY]
Jean II de Montmorency, by his marriage with Marguerite d'Orgemont, came
to be the possessor of the domain, their son, in turn, becoming the
heir. It was this son, Guillaume, who became one of the most brilliant
servitors of the monarchs Louis XI, Louis XII, and Francis I, and it was
through these friends at court that Chantilly first took on its regal
aspect.
In turn the celebrated Anne de Montmorency, Connetable de France, came
into the succession and finding the old fortress, albeit somewhat
enlarged and furbished up by his predecessor, less of a palatial
residence than he would have, separated the ancient chateau-fort from an
added structure by an ornamental moat, or canal, and laid out the
_pelouse_, _parterres_ and the alleys of greensward leading to the
forest which make one of the great charms of Chantilly to-day.
Here resided, as visitors to be sure, but for more or less extended
periods, and at various times, Charles V, Charles IX and Henri IV, each
of them guests of the hospitable and ambitious Montmorencys.
[Illustration: _Statue of Le Notre, Chantilly_]
Chantilly passed in 1632 to Charlotte, the sister of the last Marechal
de Montmorency, the wife of Henri II, Prince de Conde, the mother of the
Grand Conde, the Prince de Conti and the Duchesse de Longueville.
With the Grand Conde came the greatest fame, the apotheosis, of
Chantilly. This noble was so enamoured of this admirable residence that
he never left it from his thoughts and decorated it throughout in the
most lavish taste of his time, destroying at this epoch the chateau of
the moyen-age and the fortress. These were the days of gallant warriors
with a taste for pretty things in art, not mere bloodthirsty
slaughterers.
On the foundations of the older structures there now rose an admirable
pile (not that which one sees to-day, however), embellished by the
surroundings which were evolved from the brain of the landscape
gardener, Le Notre. The Revolution made way with this lavish structure
and with the exception of the Chatelet, or the Petit Chateau (designed
by Jean Bullant in 1560, and remodelled within by Mansart) the
present-day work is a creation of the Duc d'Aumale, the heir to the
Condes' name and fame, to whom the National Assembly gave back his
ancestral estates which had in the meantime come into the inventory of
royal belongings through the claims established by the might of the
Second Empire.
Back to the days of the Grand Conde one reads of an extended visit made
by Louis XIV to his principal courtier. It was at an expense of two
hundred thousand _ecus_ that the welcoming fete was accomplished. Madame
de Sevigne has recounted the event more graphically than any other
chronicler, and it would be presumption to review it here at length. The
incident of Vatel alone has become classic.
To the coterie of poets at Rambouillet must be added those of Chantilly;
their sojourn here added much of moment to the careers and reputations
of Boileau, Racine, Bourdaloue and Bossuet. It was the latter, who, in
the funeral oration which he delivered on the death of the Prince de
Conde, said:
"Here under his own roof one saw the Grand Conde as if he were at the
head of his armies, a noble always great, as well in action as in
repose. Here you have seen him surrounded by his friends in this
magnificent dwelling, in the shady alleys of the forest or beside the
purling waters of the brooks which are silent neither day nor night."
The Grand Conde died, however, at Fontainebleau. The heir, Henri-Jules
de Bourbon, did his share towards keeping up and embellishing the
property, and to him was due that charming wildwood retreat known as the
Parc de Sylvie.
Louis-Henri de Bourbon, Minister of Louis XV at the commencement of his
reign, had gained a fabulous sum of money in the notorious "Law's Bank"
affair, and, with a profligate and prodigal taste in spending, lived a
life of the grandest of grand seigneurs at Chantilly, to which, as his
donation to its architectural importance, he contributed the famous
Ecuries, or stables. To show that he was _persona grata_ at court he
gave a great fete here for Louis XV and the Duchesse du Barry.
The last Prince de Conde but one before the Revolution built the Chateau
d'Enghien in the neighbourhood, and sought to people the Parc de Sylvie
with a rustic colony of thatched _maisonettes_ and install his
favourites therein in a weak imitation of what had been done in the
Petit Trianon. The note was manifestly a false one and did not endure,
not even is its echo plainly audible for all is hearsay to-day and no
very definite record of the circumstance exists.
Chantilly in later times has been a favourite abode with modern
monarchs. The King of Denmark, the Emperor Joseph II and the King of
Sweden were given hospitality here, and much money was spent for their
entertainment, and much red and green fire burned for their amusement
and that of their suites.
The Revolution's fell blow carried off the principal parts of the
Conde's admirable constructions and it is fortunate that the Petit
Chateau escaped the talons of the "Bande Noire." Immediately afterwards
the Chateau d'Enghien and the Ecuries were turned over to the uses of
the Minister of War, and the authorities of the Jardin des Plantes were
given permission to transplant and transport anything which pleased
their fancy among the exotics which had been set out by Le Notre in
Chantilly's famous _parterres_.
Under the imperial regime the Foret de Chantilly was given in fee simple
to Queen Hortense, though all was ultimately returned to the Conde heirs
after the Restoration. It was at this period that Chantilly received the
visit of Alexander, Emperor of Russia, and the historian's account of
that visit makes prominent the fact that during the periods of rain it
was necessary that an umbrella be carried over the imperial head as he
passed through the corridors of the palace from one apartment to
another.
The host of the emperor died here in 1818 and his son, spending perhaps
half of his time here, cared little for restoration and spent all his
waking hours hunting in the forest, returning to the Petit Chateau only
to eat and sleep.
The Duc de Bourbon added to the flanking wings of the Petit Chateau and
cleaned up the debris which was fast becoming moss-grown, weed
encumbered and altogether disgraceful. The moats were cleaned out of
their miasmatic growth and certain of the grass-carpeted _parterres_
resown and given a semblance of their former selves.
Some days after the Revolution of 1830 the Prince de Conde died in a
most dramatic fashion, and his son, the Duc d'Enghien, having been shot
at Vincennes under the Empire, he willed the Duc d'Aumale and his issue
his legal descendants forever.
Towards 1840 the Duc d'Aumale sought to reconstruct the splendours of
Chantilly, but a decree of January 22, 1852, banished the entire Orleans
family and interrupted the work when the property was sold to the
English bankers, Coutts and Company, for the good round sum of eleven
million francs, not by any means an extravagant price for this estate
of royal aspect and proportions. The National Assembly of 1872 did the
only thing it could do in justice to tradition--bought the property in
and decreed that it be restored to its legitimate proprietor.
It was as late as 1876 that the Duc d'Aumale undertook the restoration
of the Chatelet and the rebuilding of the new chateau which is seen
to-day. The latter is from the designs of Henri Daumet, member of the
Institut de France.
In general the structure of to-day occupies the site of the moyen-age
chateau but is of quite a different aspect.
The Duc d'Aumale made a present of the chateau and all that was
contained therein to the Institut de France. From a purely sordid point
of view it was a gift valued at something like thirty-five million
francs, not so great as many new-world public legacies of to-day, but in
certain respects of a great deal more artistic worth.
The mass is manifestly imposing, made up as it is, of four distinct
parts, the Eglise, dating from 1692, the Ecuries, the Chatelet--or Petit
Chateau, and the Chateau proper--the modern edifice.
Before the celebrated Ecuries is a green, velvety _pelouse_ which gives
an admirable approach. The architecture of the Ecuries is of a heavy
order and the sculptured decorations actually of little esthetic worth,
representing as they do hunting trophies and the like. Before the great
fountain one deciphers a graven plaque which reads as follows:
Louis Henri de Bourbon
Prince de Conde
Fut Construire Cette Ecurie
1701-1784.
Within the two wings may be stabled nearly two hundred horses. The Grand
Ecuries at Chantilly are assuredly one of the finest examples extant of
that luxuriant art of the eighteenth century French builder. Luxurious,
excessively ornate and overpowering it is, and, for that reason, open to
question. The work of the period knew not the discreet middle road. It
was of Chantilly that it was said that the live stock was better lodged
than its masters. The architect of this portion of the chateau was Jean
Aubert, one of the collaborators of Jules Hardouin Mansart.
The characteristics of Chantilly, take it as a whole, the chateau, the
park and the forest, are chiefly theatrical, but with an all-abiding
regard for the proprieties, for beyond a certain heaviness of
architectural style in parts of the chateau everything is of the finely
focussed relative order of which the French architect and landscape
gardener have for ages been past masters.
The real French garden is here to be seen almost at its best, its
squares and ovals of grassy green apportioned off from the mass by
gravelled walks and ornamented waters. The "_tapis d'orient_" effect, so
frequently quoted by the French in writing of such works, is hardly
excelled elsewhere.
All this shocked the mid-eighteenth century English traveller, but it
was because he did not, perhaps could not, understand. Rigby, "the
Norwich alderman" as the French rather contemptuously referred to this
fine old English gentleman, said frankly of Chantilly: "All this has
cost dear and produced a result far from pleasing." He would have been
better pleased doubtless with a privet or box hedge and an imitation
plaster rockery, things which have never agreed with French taste, but
which were the rule in pretentious English gardens of the same period.
Rigby must indeed have been a "_grincheau_," as the French called him,
for this same up-country gentleman said of Versailles: "Lovely
surrounding country but palace and park badly designed." Versailles is
not that, whatever else its faults may be.
Chantilly is more than a palace, it is a museum of nature, a hermitage
of art and of history. The fantasy of its _tourelles_, its _lucarnes_
and its _pignons_ are something one may hardly see elsewhere in such
profusion, and the fact that they are modern is forgotten in the
impression of the general silhouette.
The adventurer who first built a donjon on the Rocher de Chantilly
little knew with what seigneurial splendour the site was ultimately to
be graced. From a bare outpost it was transformed, as if by magic, into
a Renaissance palace of a supreme beauty. The Duc d'Aumale said in his
"Acte de Donation de Chantilly": "It stands complete and varied, a
monument of French art in all its branches, a history of the best epochs
of our glory."
Among all the palatial riches neighbouring upon Paris, not forgetting
Versailles, Compiegne, Fontainebleau, Pierrefonds and Rambouillet,
Chantilly, by the remarkable splendour of its surroundings, its
situation and the artistic treasures which it possesses, is in a class
by itself. It is a class more clearly defined by the historic souvenirs
which surround it than any other contemporary structure of this part of
France.
Its corridors and gravelled walks and the long alleys of the park and
forest may not take on the fete-like aspect which they knew in the
eighteenth century, but they are not solitary like those of
Fontainebleau and Rambouillet, nor noisily overrun like those of
Versailles or Saint Germain.
The ornamental waters which surround the Chateau de Chantilly are of a
grand and nearly unique beauty. It is a question if they are not finer
than the waters of Versailles, indeed they preceded them and may even
have inspired them.
The Chatelet, the chateau proper and the chapel form a group quite
distinct from the Ecuries. The Cour d'Honneur is really splendid and one
hardly realizes the juxtaposition of modernity. The pavilion attributed
to Jean Bullant, the western facade, the ancient Petit Chateau, the
Grand Vestibule, the Grand Escalier and the Gallerie des Cerfs and a
dozen other apartments are of a rare and imposing beauty, though losing
somewhat their distinctive aspect by reason of the _objets de musee_
distributed about their walls and floors.
One of the landscape gems of Chantilly is the _Pelouse_, a vast
esplanade of greensward now forming, in part, the celebrated race track
of Chantilly. Sport ever formed a part of the outdoor program at
Chantilly, but that of to-day is just a bit more horsey than that of
old, a good deal less picturesque and assuredly more vulgarly banal as
to its _cachet_ than the hunts, the tourneys and courses of the romantic
age.
[Illustration: _Chateau de Chantilly_]
Thousands come to Chantilly to wager their coin on scrubs and dark
horses ridden by third-rate "warned-off" jockeys from other lands, but
probably not ten in ten thousand of the lookers on at the Grand Prix du
Jockey Club in May ever make the occasion of the spring meeting an
opportunity for visiting the fine old historic monument of the Condes.
The "Races" of Chantilly may be given a further word in that they are an
outgrowth of a foundation by the Duc d'Orleans in 1832. The track forms
a circuit of two thousand metres, and occupies quite the best half of
the Pelouse, closed in on one side by the thick-grown Foret de Chantilly
and flanked, in part, on the other by the historic Ecuries, with the
Tribune, or grand stand, just to the south.
Many tourists arrive at Chantilly by auto, stop brusquely before the
Grande Grille, rush through the galleries of the chateau, do "_cent
pas_" in the park, give a cursory glance at the stables and are off; but
more, many more, with slower steps and saner minds, drink in the charms
which are offered on all sides and consider the time well spent even if
they have paid "Boulevard Prices" at the Restaurant du Grand Conde for
their _dejeuner_.
It has been said that a museum is a reunion of _objets d'art_ brought
about by a methodical grouping, either chronologically or categorically.
The Duc d'Aumale's Musee de Chantilly is more an expression of personal
taste. He collected what he wished and he arranged his collections as
suited his fancy.
The famous Musee de Chantilly, which is the lodestone which draws most
folk thither, so admirably housed, was a gift of the Duc d'Aumale who,
for the glory of his ancestors, and the admiration of the world, to say
nothing of his own personal satisfaction, here gathered together an
eclectic collection of curious and artistic treasures, certainly not the
least interesting or valuable among the great public collections in
France. The effect produced is sometimes startling, a Messonier is cheek
by jowl with a Baron Gros, a Decamps _vis a vis_ to a Veronese, and a
Lancret is bolstered on either hand by a Poussin and a Nattier. Amid all
this disorder there is, however, an undeniable, inexplicable charm.
There are three distinct apartments worth, more than all the others, the
glance of the hurried visitor to the Musee Conde at Chantilly. In the
first, the Santuario, is the Livre d'Heures of Etienne Chevalier, by
Jean Fouquet, considered as the most important relic of primitive French
art extant.
The Cabinet des Gemmes comes second, and here is the celebrated "Diamant
Rose," called the Grand Conde.
Finally there is the Galerie de Psyche, with forty-four coloured glass
windows, executed for the Connetable de Montmorency in 1541-1542.
The great collection of historical and artistic treasures stowed away
within the walls of Chantilly the Duc d'Aumale selected himself in order
to associate his own name with the glorious memory of the Condes, who
were so intimately connected with the chateau.
The Duc sought to recover such of the former furnishings of the chateau
as had been dissipated during the Revolution whenever they could be
heard of and could be had at public or private sale.
In this connection a word on Chantilly lace may not be found inapropos.
The Chantilly lace of to-day, it is well to recall, is a mechanically
produced article of commerce, turned out by the running mile from
Nottingham, England, though in the days when Chantilly's porcelains
rivalled those of Sevres it was purely a local product. One may well
argue therefore that the bulk of the Chantilly lace sold in the shops of
Chantilly to-day is not on a par with the admirable examples to be seen
in the glass cases of the museum.
A wooded alley leading to the great park runs between the main edifice
and the Chateau d'Enghien, a gentle incline descending again to the
sunken gardens in a monumental stairway of easy slope, the whole a
quintessence of much that is best of the art of the landscape gardener
of the time.
To the left extends the vast Jardin Anglais--a veritable French Jardin
Anglais. Let not one overlook the distinction: On conventional lines it
is pretty, dainty and pleasing, but the species lacks the dignified
formality of the Italian garden or the ingenious arrangement of the
French. Its curves and ovals and circles are annoying after the _lignes
droites_ and the right angles and the _broderies_ of the French variety.
The Foret de Chantilly covers two thousand four hundred and forty-nine
hectares and extends from the Bois de Herivaux on one side to the Foret
de Senlis on the other. The _rendezvous-de-chasse_ was, in the old days,
and is to-day on rare occasions, at the Rond Point, to which a dozen
magnificent forest roads lead from all directions, that from the town
being paved with Belgian blocks, the dread of automobilists, but
delightful to ride over in muddy weather. The Route de Connetable, so
called, is well-nigh ideal of its kind. It launches forth opposite the
chateau and at its entrance are two flanking stone lions. It is of a
soft soil suitable for horseback riding, but entirely unsuited for
wheeled traffic of any kind.
Another of the great forest roads leads to the Chateau de la Reine
Blanche, a diminutive edifice in the pointed style, with a pair of
svelte towers coiffed candle-snuffer fashion. Tradition, and very
ancient and somewhat dubious tradition, attributes the edifice as having
belonged to Blanche de Navarre, the wife of Philippe de Valois. Again it
is thought to have been a sort of royal attachment to the Abbaye de
Royaumont, built near by, by Saint Louis. This quaintly charming manor
of minute dimensions was a tangible, habitable abode in 1333, but for
generations after appears to have fallen into desuetude. A mill grew up
on the site, and again the walls of a chateau obliterated the more
mundane, work-a-day mill. The Duc de Bourbon restored the whole place in
1826 that it might serve him and his noble friends as a hunting-lodge.