CHEVERNY, BEAUREGARD, AND CHAUMONT
From Chambord and its overpowering massiveness one makes his way to
Chaumont, on the banks of the Loire below Blois, by easy stages across
the plain of the Sologne.
One leaves the precincts of Chambord by the back entrance, as one might
call it, through six kilometres of forest road, like that by which one
enters, and soon passes the little townlet of Bracieux.
One gets glimpses of more or less modern residential chateaux once and
again off the main road, but no remarkably interesting structures of any
sort are met with until one reaches Cheverny. Just before Cheverny one
passes Cour-Cheverny, with a curious old church and a quaint-looking
little inn beside it.
[Illustration: _Chateau de Cheverny_]
Cheverny itself is, however, the real attraction, two kilometres away.
Here the chateau is opened by its private owners from April to
October of each year, and, while not such a grand establishment as many
of its contemporaries round about, it is in every way a perfect
residential edifice of the seventeenth century, when the flowery and
ornate Renaissance had given way to something more severely classical,
and, truth to tell, far less pleasing in an artistic sense.
Cheverny belongs to-day to the Marquis de Vibraye, one of those undying
titles of the French nobility which thrive even in republican France and
uphold the best traditions of the _noblesse_ of other days.
The chateau was built much later than most of the neighbouring chateaux,
in 1634, by the Comte de Cheverny, Philippe Hurault. It sits
green-swarded in the midst of a beautifully wooded park, and the great
avenue which faces the principal entrance extends for seven kilometres,
a distance not excelled, if equalled, by any private roadway elsewhere.
In its constructive features the chateau is more or less of rectangular
outlines. The pavilions at each corner have their openings _a la
imperiale_, with the domes, or lanterns, so customary during the height
of the style under Louis XIV. An architect, Boyer by name, who came from
Blois, where surely he had the opportunity of having been well
acquainted with a more beautiful style, was responsible for the design
of the edifice at Cheverny.
The interior decorations in Cordovan leather, the fine chimneypieces,
and the many elaborate historical pictures and wall paintings, by
Mosnier, Clouet, and Mignard, are all of the best of their period; while
the apartments themselves are exceedingly ample, notably the Appartement
du Roi, furnished as it was in the days of "Vert Galant," the Salle des
Gardes, the library and an elaborately traceried staircase. In the
chapel is an altar-table which came from the Eglise St. Calais, in the
chateau at Blois.
Just outside the gates is a remarkable crotchety old stone church, with
a dwindling, toppling spire. It is poor and impoverished when compared
with most French churches, and has a most astonishing timbered veranda,
with a straining, creaking roof running around its two unobstructed
walls. The open rafters are filled with all sorts of rubbish, and the
local fire brigade keeps its hose and ladders there. A most suitable old
rookery it is in which to start a first-class conflagration.
[Illustration: _Cheverny-sur-Loire_]
Within are a few funeral marbles of the Hurault family, and the daily
offices are conducted with a pomp most unexpected. Altogether it
forms, as to its fabric and its functions, as strong a contrast of
activity and decay as one is likely to see in a long journey.
The town itself is a sleepy, unprogressive place, where automobilists
may not even buy _essence a petrole_, and, though boasting--if the
indolent old town really does boast--a couple of thousand souls, one
still has to journey to Cour-Cheverny to send a telegraphic despatch or
buy a daily paper.
Between Cheverny and Blois is the Foret de Russy, which will awaken
memories of the boar-hunts of Francois I., which, along with art in all
its enlightening aspects, appears to have been one of the chief
pleasures of that monarch. Perhaps one ought to include also the love of
fair women, but with them he was not so constant.
On the road to Blois, also, one passes the Chateau de Beauregard; that
is, one usually passes it, but he shouldn't. It is built, practically,
within the forest, on the banks of the little river Beauvron. An iron
_grille_ gives entrance to a beautiful park, and within is the chateau,
its very name indicating the favour with which it was held by
its royal owner. It was in 1520 that Francois I. established it
as a _rendezvous de chasse_. Under his son, Henri II., it was
reconstructed, in part; entirely remodelled in the seventeenth century;
and "modernized"--whatever that may mean--in 1809, and again, more
lately, restored by the Duc de Dino. It belongs to-day to the Comte de
Cholet, who has tried his hand at "restoration" as well.
The history of this old chateau is thus seen to have been most varied,
and it is pretty sure to have lost a good deal of its original character
in the transforming process.
The interior is more attractive than is the exterior. There is a grand
gallery of portraits of historical celebrities, more than 350, executed
between 1617 and 1638 by Paul Ardier, Counsellor of State, who thus
combined the accomplishment of the artist with the sagacity of the
statesman.
The ceilings of the great rooms are mostly elaborate works in enamel and
carved oak, and there is a tiled floor (_carrelage_) in the portrait
gallery, in blue faience, representing an army in the order of battle,
which must have delighted the hearts of the youthful progeny who may
have been brought up within the walls of the chateau. This pavement is
moreover an excellent example of the craftsmanship of tile-making.
One gains admission to the chateau freely from the _concierge_, who in
due course expects her _pourboire_, and sees that she gets it. But what
would you, inquisitive traveller? You have come here to see the sights,
and Beauregard is well worth the price of admission, which is anything
you like to give, certainly not less than a franc.
One may return to Blois through the forest, or may continue his way down
the river to Chaumont on the left bank.
At Chaumont the Loire broadens to nearly double the width at Blois, its
pebbles and sandbars breaking the mirror-like surface into innumerable
pools and _etangs_. There is a bridge which connects Chaumont with the
railway at Onzain and the great national highway from Tours to Blois.
The bridge, however, is so hideous a thing that one had rather go miles
out of his way than accept its hospitality. It is simply one of those
unsympathetic wire-rope affairs with which the face of the globe is
being covered, as engineering skill progresses and the art instinct dies
out.
[Illustration: _Chaumont_]
The Chateau de Chaumont is charmingly situated, albeit it is not very
accessible to strangers after one gets there, as it is open to the
public only on Thursdays, from July to December. It is exactly what one
expects to find,--a fine riverside establishment of its epoch, and in
architectural style combining the well-recognized features of late
Gothic and the early Renaissance. It is not moss-grown or decrepit in
any way, which fact, considering its years, is perhaps remarkable.
The park of the chateau is only of moderate extent, but the structure
itself is, comparatively, of much larger proportions. The ideal view of
the structure is obtained from midway on that ungainly bridge which
spans the Loire at this point. Here, in the gold and purple of an autumn
evening, with the placid and far-reaching Loire, its pools and its bars
of sand and pebble before one, it is a scene which is as near idyllic as
one is likely to see.
The town itself is not attractive; one long, narrow lane-like street,
lined on each side by habitations neither imposing nor of a tumble-down
picturesqueness, borders the Loire. There is nothing very picturesque,
either, about the homes of the vineyard workers round about. Below and
above the town the great highroad runs flat and straight between Tours
and Blois on either side of the river, and automobilists and cyclists
now roll along where the state carriages of the court used to roll when
Francois Premier and his sons journeyed from one gay country house to
another.
It is to be inferred that the aspect of things at Chaumont has not
changed much since that day,--always saving that spider-net wire bridge.
The population of the town has doubtless grown somewhat, even though
small towns in France sometimes do not increase their population in
centuries; but the topographical aspect of the long-drawn-out village,
backed by green hills on one side and the Loire on the other, is much as
it always has been.
[Illustration: _Signature of Diane de Poitiers_]
The chateau at Chaumont had its origin as far back as the tenth century,
and its proprietors were successively local seigneurs, Counts of Blois,
the family of Amboise, and Diane de Poitiers, who received it from
Catherine in exchange for Chenonceaux. This was not a fair exchange, and
Diane was, to some extent, justified in her complaints.
Chaumont was for a time in the possession of Scipion Sardini, one of
the Italian partisans of the Medici, "whose arms bore _trois sardines
d'argent_," and who had married Isabelle de la Tour, "_la Demoiselle de
Limieul_" of unsavoury reputation.
The "_Demoiselle de Limieul_" was related, too, to Catherine, and was
celebrated in the gallantries of the time in no enviable fashion. She
was a member of that band of demoiselles whose business it was--by one
fascination or another--to worm political secrets from the nobles of the
court. One horrible scandal connected the unfortunate lady with the
Prince de Conde, but it need not be repeated here. The Huguenots
ridiculed it in those memorable verses beginning thus:
"Puella illa nobilis
Quae erat tam amabilis."
After the reign of Sardini and of his direct successors, the house of
Bullion, Chaumont passed through many hands. Madame de Stael arrived at
the chateau in the early years of the nineteenth century, when she had
received the order to separate herself from Paris, "by at least forty
leagues." She had made the circle of the outlying towns, hovering about
Paris as a moth about a candle-flame; Rouen, Auxerre, Blois, Saumur, all
had entertained her, but now she came to establish herself in this
Loire citadel. As the story goes, journeying from Saumur to Tours, by
post-chaise, on the opposite side of the river, she saw the imposing
mass of Chaumont rising high above the river-bed, and by her good graces
and winning ways installed herself in the affections of the then
proprietor, M. Leray, and continued her residence "and made her court
here for many years."
Chaumont is to-day the property of the Princesse de Broglie, who has
sought to restore it, where needful, even to reestablishing the ancient
fosse or moat. This last, perhaps, is not needful; still, a moated
chateau, or even a moated grange has a fascination for the sentimentally
inclined.
At the drawbridge, as one enters Chaumont to-day, one sees the graven
initials of Louis XII. and Anne de Bretagne, the arms of Georges
d'Amboise, surmounted by his cardinal's hat, and those of Charles de
Chaumont, as well as other cabalistic signs: one a representation of a
mountain (apparently) with a crater-like summit from which flames are
breaking forth, while hovering about, back to back, are two C's: [IMAGE
OF TWO JOINED LETTER 'C' POSITIONED LIKE THIS: )(]. The Renaissance
artists greatly affected the rebus, and this perhaps has some reference
to the etymology of the name Chaumont, which has been variously given
as coming from _Chaud Mont_, _Calvus Mont_, and _Chauve Mont_.
Georges d'Amboise, the first of the name, was born at Chaumont in 1460,
the eighth son of a family of seventeen children. It was a far cry, as
distances went in those days, from the shores of the shallow, limpid
Loire to those of the forceful, turgent Seine at Rouen, where in the
great Cathedral of Notre Dame, this first Georges of Amboise, having
become an archbishop and a cardinal, was laid to rest beneath that
magnificent canopied tomb before which visitors to the Norman capital
stand in wonder. The mausoleum bears this epitaph, which in some small
measure describes the activities of the man.
"Pastor eram cleri, populi pater; aurea sese
Lilia subdebant, quercus et ipsa mihi.
"Martuus en jaceo, morte extinguunter honores,
Et virtus, mortis nescia, mort viret."
His was not by any means a life of placidity and optimism, and he had
the air and reputation of doing things. There is a saying, still current
in Touraine: "_Laissez faire a Georges._"
The second of the same name, also an Archbishop of Rouen and a
cardinal, succeeded his uncle in the see. He also is buried beneath the
same canopy as his predecessor at Rouen.
The main portal of the chateau leads to a fine quadrilateral court with
an open gallery overlooking the Loire, which must have been a
magnificent playground for the nobility of a former day. The interior
embellishments are fine, some of the more noteworthy features being a
grand staircase of the style of Louis XII.; the Salle des Gardes, with a
painted ceiling showing the arms of Chaumont and Amboise; the Salle du
Conseil, with some fine tapestries and a remarkable tiled floor,
depicting scenes of the chase; the Chambre de Catherine de Medici (she
possessed Chaumont for nine years), containing some of the gifts
presented to her upon her wedding with Henri II.; and the curious
Chambre de Ruggieri, the astrologer whom Catherine brought from her
Italian home, and who was always near her, and kept her supplied with
charms and omens, good and bad, and also her poisons.
Ruggieri's observatory was above his apartment. It was at Chaumont that
the astrologer overstepped himself, and would have used his magic
against Charles IX. He did go so far as to make an image and inflict
certain indignities upon it, with the belief that the same would befall
the monarch himself. Ruggieri went to the galleys for this, but the
scheming Catherine soon had him out again, and at work with his poisons
and philtres.
Finally there is the Chambre de Diane de Poitiers, Catherine's more than
successful rival, with a bed (modern, it is said) and a series of
sixteenth-century tapestries, with various other pieces of contemporary
furniture. A portrait of Diane which decorates the apartment is supposed
to be one of the three authentic portraits of the fair huntress. The
chapel has a fine tiled pavement and some excellent glass.
Chaumont is eighteen kilometres from Blois and the same distance from
Amboise. It has not the splendour of Chambord, but it has a greater
antiquity, and an incomparably finer situation, which displays its
coiffed towers and their _machicoulis_ and cornices in a manner not
otherwise possible. It is one of those picture chateaux which tell a
silent story quite independent of guide-book or historical narrative.
It was M. Donatien Le Ray de Chaumont, the superintendent of the forests
of Berry and the Blaisois, under Louis XVI., who gave hospitality to
Benjamin Franklin, and turned over to the first American ambassador to
France the occupancy of his house at Passy, where Franklin lived for
nine consecutive years.
Of this same M. de Chaumont Americans cannot have too high a regard, for
his timely and judicious hospitality has associated his name, only less
permanently than Franklin's, with the early fortunes of the American
republic.
Besides his other offices, M. de Chaumont was the intendant of the Hotel
des Invalides, at Paris, holding confidential relations with the
ministry of the young king, and was in the immediate enjoyment of a
fortune which amounted to two and a half million of francs, besides
owning, in addition to Chaumont on the Loire, another chateau in the
Blaisois. This chateau he afterward tendered to John Adams, who declined
the offer in a letter, written at Passy-sur-Seine, February 25, 1779, in
the following words: "... To a mind as much addicted to retirement as
mine, the situation you propose would be delicious indeed, provided my
country were at peace and my family with me; but, separated from my
family and with a heart bleeding with the wounds of its country, I
should be the most miserable being on earth...."
The potteries, which now form the stables of the chateau at Chaumont,
are somewhat reminiscent of Franklin. M. de Chaumont had established a
pottery here, where he had found a clay which had encouraged him to hope
that he could compete with the English manufacturers of the time. Here
the Italian Nini, who was invited to Chaumont, made medallions much
sought for by collectors, among others one of Franklin, which was so
much admired as a work of art, and became so much in demand that in
later years replicas were made and are well known to amateurs.
The family of Le Ray de Chaumont were extensively known in America,
where they became large landholders in New York State in the early
nineteenth century, and the head of the family seems to have been an
amiable and popular landlord. The towns of Rayville and Chaumont in New
York State still perpetuate his name.
The two male members of the family secured American wives; Le Ray
himself married a Miss Coxe, and their son a Miss Jahel, both of New
York.
From an anonymous letter to the New York _Evening Post_ of November 19,
1885, one quotes the following:
"It was in Blois that I first rummaged among these shops, whose
attractions are almost a rival to those of the castle, though this is
certainly one of the most interesting in France. The traveller will
remember the long flight of stone steps which climbs the steep hill in
the centre of the town. Near the foot of this hill there is a
well-furnished book-shop; its windows display old editions and rich
bindings, and tempt one to enter and inquire for antiquities. Here I
found a quantity of old notarial documents and diplomas of college or
university, all more or less recently cleared out from some town hall,
or unearthed from neighbouring castle, and sold by a careless owner, as
no longer valuable to him. This was the case with most of the parchments
I found at Blois; they had been acquired within a few years from the
castle of Madon, and from a former proprietor of the neighbouring castle
of Chaumont (the _calvus mons_ of mediaeval time), and most of them
pertained to the affairs of the _seigneurie de Chaumont_. Contracts,
executions, sales of vineyards and houses, legal decisions, _actes de
vente_, loans on mortgages, the marriage contract of a M. Lubin,--these
were the chief documents that I found and purchased."
The traveller may not expect to come upon duplicates of these treasures
again, but the incident only points to the fact that much documentary
history still lies more or less deeply buried.