TOURAINE: THE GARDEN SPOT OF FRANCE
"C'est une grande dame, une princesse altiere,
Chacun de ses chateaux, marque du sceau royal,
Lui fait une toilette en dentelle de pierre
Et son splendide fleuve un miroir de cristal."
It is difficult to write appreciatively of Touraine without echoing the
words of some one who has gone before, and it is likely that those who
come after will find the task no easier.
Truly, as a seventeenth-century geographer has said: "Here is the most
delicious and the most agreeable province of the kingdom. It has been
named the garden of France because of the softness of its climate, the
affability of its people, and the ease of its life."
The poets who have sung the praises of Touraine are many, Ronsard, Remy
Belleau, Du Bellay, and for prose authors we have at the head, Rabelais,
La Fontaine, Balzac, and Alfred de Vigny. Merely to enumerate them all
would be impossible, but they furnish a fund of quotable material for
the traveller when he is writing home, and are equally useful to the
maker of guide-books.
One false note on Touraine, only, has ever rung out in the world of
literature, and that was from Stendahl, who said: "_La Belle Touraine
n'existe pas!_" The pages of Alfred de Vigny and Balzac answer this
emphatically, and to the contrary, and every returning traveller
apparently sides with them and not with Stendahl.
How can one not love its prairies, gently sloping to the caressing
Loire, its rolling hills and dainty ravines? The broad blue Loire is
always vague and tranquil here, at least one seems always to see it so,
but the beauty of Touraine is, after all, a quiet beauty which must be
seen to be appreciated, and lived with to be loved.
It is a land of most singular attractions, neither too hot nor too cold,
too dry nor too damp, with a sufficiency of rain, and an abundance of
sunshine. Its market-gardens are prolific in their product, its orchards
overflowing with plenitude, and its vineyards generous in their harvest.
Touraine is truly the region where one may read history without books,
with the very pages of nature punctuated and adorned with the marvels of
the French Renaissance. Louis XI. gave the first impetus to the alliance
of the great domestic edifice--which we have come to distinguish as the
residential chateau--with the throne, and the idea was amplified by
Charles VIII. and glorified by Francois Premier.
In the brilliant, if dissolute, times of the early sixteenth century
Francois Premier and his court travelled down through this same Touraine
to Loches and to Amboise, where Francois's late gaoler, Charles Quint,
was to be received and entertained. It was after Francois had returned
from his involuntary exile in Spain, and while he was still in residence
at the Louvre, that the plans for the journey were made. To the Duchesse
d'Etampes Francois said,--the duchess who was already more than a rival
of both Diane and the Comtesse de Chateaubriant,--"I must tear myself
away from you to-morrow. I shall await my brother Charles at Amboise on
the Loire."
"Shall you not revenge yourself upon him, for his cruel treatment of
you?" said the wily favourite of the time. "If he, like a fool, comes
to Touraine, will you not make him revoke the treaty of Madrid or shut
him up in one of Louis XI.'s oubliettes?"
"I will persuade him, if possible," said Francois, "but I shall never
force him."
In due time Francois did receive his brother king at Amboise and it was
amid great ceremony and splendour. His guest could not, or would not,
mount steps, so that great inclined plane, up which a state coach and
its horses might go, was built. Probably there was a good reason for the
emperor's peculiarity, for that worthy or unworthy monarch finally died
of gout in the monastery of San Juste.
The meeting here at Amboise was a grand and ceremonious affair and the
Spanish monarch soon came to recognize a possible enemy in the royal
favourite, Anne de Pisselieu. The emperor's eyes, however, melted with
admiration, and he told her that only in France could one see such a
perfection of elegance and beauty, with the result that--as is popularly
adduced--the susceptible, ambitious, and unfaithful duchess betrayed
Francois more than once in the affairs attendant upon the subsequent
wars between France, England, and Spain.
From Touraine, in the sixteenth century, spread that influence which
left its impress even on the capital of the kingdom itself, not only in
respect to architectural art, but in manners and customs as well.
Whatever may be the real value of the Renaissance as an artistic
expression, the discussion of it shall have no place here, beyond the
qualifying statement that what we have come to know as the French
Renaissance--which undeniably grew up from a transplanted Italian
germ--proved highly tempting to the mediaeval builder for all manner of
edifices, whereas it were better if it had been confined to civic and
domestic establishments and left the church pure in its full-blown
Gothic forms.
Curiously enough, here in Touraine, this is just what did happen. The
Renaissance influence crept into church-building here and there--and it
is but a short step from the "_gothique rayonnant_" to what are
recognized as well-defined Renaissance features; but it is more
particularly in respect to the great chateaux, and even smaller
dwellings, that the superimposed Italian details were used. A notable
illustration of this is seen in the Cathedral of St. Gatien at Tours. It
is very beautiful and has some admirable Gothic features, but there are
occasional constructive details, as well as those for decorative effect
alone, which are decidedly not good Gothic; but, as they are, likewise,
not Renaissance, they hence cannot be laid to its door, but rather to
the architect's eccentricity.
In the smaller wayside churches, such as one sees at Cormery, at
Cheverny, and at Cour-Cheverny, there is scarcely a sign of Renaissance,
while their neighbouring chateaux are nothing else, both in construction
and in decoration.
The Chateau de Langeais is, for the most part, excellent Gothic, and so
is the church near by. Loches has distinct and pure Gothic details both
in its church and its chateau, quite apart from the Hotel de Ville and
that portion of the chateau now used as the Sous-Prefecture, which are
manifestly Renaissance; hence here in Touraine steps were apparently
taken to keep the style strictly non-ecclesiastical.
A glance of the eye at the topography of this fair province stamps it at
once as something quite different from any other traversed by the Loire.
Two of the great "routes nationales" cross it, the one via Orleans,
leading to Nantes, and the other via Chartres, going to Bordeaux. It is
crossed and recrossed by innumerable "routes secondaires,"
"departementales," "vicinales" and "particulieres," second to none of
their respective classes in other countries, for assuredly the roads of
France are the best in the world. Many of these great ways of
communication replaced the ancient Roman roads, which were the pioneers
of the magnificent roadways of the France of to-day.
Almost invariably Touraine is flat or rolling, its highest elevation
above the sea being but a hundred and forty-six metres, scarce four
hundred and fifty feet, a fact which accounts also for the gentle flow
of the Loire through these parts.
All the fruits of the southland are found here, the olive alone
excepted. Mortality, it is said, and proved by figures, is lower than in
any other part of France, and for this reason many dwellers in the large
cities, if they may not all have a mediaeval chateau, have at least a
villa, far away from "the madding crowd," and yet within four hours'
travel of the capital itself.
[Illustration: THE LOIRE IN TOURAINE]
Touraine, properly speaking, has no natural frontiers, as it is not
enclosed by rivers or mountains. It is, however, divided by the Loire
into two distinct regions, the Meridionale and the Septentrionale; but
the dress, the physiognomy, the language, and the predilections of
the people are everywhere the same, though the two sections differ
somewhat in temperament. In the south, the Tourangeau is timid and
obliging, but more or less engrossed in his affairs; in the north, he is
proud, egotistical, and a little arrogant, but, above all, he likes his
ease and comfort, something after the manner of "mynheer" of Holland.
These are the characteristics which are enumerated by Stanislas
Bellanger of Tours, in "La Touraine Ancienne et Moderne," and they are
traceable to-day, in every particular, to one who knows well the
by-paths of the region.
Formerly the peasant was, in his own words, "_sous la main de M. le
comte_," but, with the coming of the eighteenth century, all this was
changed, and the conditions which, in England, succeeded feudalism, are
unknown in Touraine, as indeed throughout France.
The two great divisions which nature had made of Touraine were further
cut up into five _petits pays_; les Varennes, le Veron, la Champeigne,
la Brenne, and les Gatines; names which exist on some maps to-day, but
which have lost, in a great measure, their former distinction.
There is a good deal to be said in favour of the physical and moral
characteristics of the inhabitants of Touraine. Just as the descendants
of the Phoceans, the original settlers of Marseilles, differ from the
natives of other parts of France, so, too, do the Tourangeaux differ
from the inhabitants of other provinces. The people of Touraine are a
mixture of Romans, Visigoths, Saracens, Alains, Normans and Bretons,
Anglais and Gaulois; but all have gradually been influenced by local
conditions, so that the native of Touraine has become a distinct variety
all by himself. The deliciousness of the "garden of France" has altered
him so that he stands to-day as more distinctly French than the citizen
of Paris itself.
Touraine, too, has the reputation of being that part of France where is
spoken the purest French. This, perhaps, is as true of the Blaisois, for
the local bookseller at Blois will tell one with the most dulcet and
understandable enunciation that it is at Blois that one hears the best
accent. At any rate, it is something found within a charmed circle, of
perhaps a hundred miles in diameter, that does not find its exact
counterpart elsewhere. As Seville stands for the Spanish tongue,
Florence for the Italian, and Dresden for the German, so Tours stands
for the French.
The history of the Loire in Touraine, as is the case at Le Puy, at
Nevers, at Sancerre, or at Orleans, is abundant and vivid, and the
monuments which line its banks are numerous and varied, from the
fortress-chateau of Amboise to the Cathedral of St. Gatien at Tours with
its magnificent bejewelled facade. The ruined towers of the castle of
Cinq-Mars, with its still more ancient Roman "pile," and the feudal
chateaux of the countryside are all eloquent, even to-day, in their
appeal to all lovers of history and romance.
There are some verses, little known, in praise of the Loire, as it comes
through Touraine, written by Houdon des Landes, who lived near Tours in
the eighteenth century. The following selection expresses their quality
well and is certainly worthy to rank with the best that Balzac wrote in
praise of his beloved Touraine.
"La Loire enorgueillit ses antiques cites,
Et courounne ses bords de coteaux enchantes;
Dans ses vallons heureux, sur ses rives aimees,
Les pres ont deploye leurs robes parfumees;
Le saule humide et souple y lance ses rameaux.
Ses coteaux sont peuples, et le rocher docile
A l'homme qui le creuse offre un champetre asile.
De notre vieille Gaule, o fleuve paternel!
Fleuve des doux climats! la Valliere et Sorel
Sur tes bords fortunes naquirent, et la gloire
A l'une dut l'amour, a l'autre la victoire."
Again and again Balzac's words echo in one's ears from his "Scene de la
Vie de Province." The following quotations are typical of the whole:
"The softness of the air, the beauty of the climate, all tend to a
certain ease of existence and simplicity of manner which encourages an
appreciation of the arts."
"Touraine is a land to foster the ambition of a Napoleon and the
sentiment of a Byron."
Another writer, A. Beaufort, a publicist of the nineteenth century,
wrote:
"The Tourangeaux resemble the good Adam in the garden of Eden. They
drink, they eat, they sleep and dream, and care not what their neighbour
may be doing."
Touraine was indeed, at one time, a veritable Eden, though guarded by
fortresses, _hallebardes_, and arquebuses, but not the less an Eden for
all that. In addition it was a land where, in the middle ages, the
seigneurs made history, almost without a parallel in France or
elsewhere.
Touraine, truly enough, was the centre of the old French monarchy in
the perfection of its pomp and state; but it is also true that Touraine
knew little of the serious affairs of kings, though some all-important
results came from events happening within its borders.
Paris was the law-making centre in the sixteenth century, and Touraine
knew only the domestic life and pleasures of royalty. Etiquette, form,
and ceremony were all relaxed, or at least greatly modified, and the
court spent in the country what it had levied in the capital.
Curiously enough, the monarchs were omnipotent and influential here,
though immediately they quartered themselves in Paris their powers waned
considerably; indeed, they seemed to lose their influence upon ministers
and vassals alike.
Louis XIII., it is true, tried to believe that Paris was France,--like
the Anglo-Saxon tourists who descend upon it in such great numbers
to-day,--and built Versailles; but there was never much real glory about
its cold and pompous walls.
The fortunes of the old chateaux of Touraine have been most varied.
Chambord is vast and bare, elegant and pompous; Blois, just across the
border, is a tourist sight of the first rank whose salamanders and
porcupines have been well cared for by the paternal French government.
Chaumont, Chenonceaux, Langeais, Azay-le-Rideau, and half a dozen others
are still inhabited, and are gay with the life of twentieth-century
luxury; Amboise is a possession of the Orleans family; Loches is, in
part, given over to the uses of a sous-prefecture; and Chinon's chateaux
are but half-demolished ruins. Besides these there are numerous smaller
residential chateaux of the nobility scattered here and there in the
Loire watershed.
There have been writers who have sought to commiserate with "the poor
peasant of Touraine," as they have been pleased to think of him, and
have deplored the fact that his sole possession was a small piece of
ground which he and his household cultivated, and that he lived in a
little whitewashed house, built with his own hands, or those of his
ancestors. Though the peasant of Touraine, as well as of other parts of
the countryside, works for an absurdly small sum, and for considerably
less than his brother nearer Paris, he sells his produce at the nearest
market-town for a fair price, and preserves a spirit of independence
which is as valuable as are some of the things which are thrust upon him
in some other lands under the guise of benevolent charity, really
patronage of a most demeaning and un-moral sort. At night the Touraine
peasant returns to his own hearthstone conscious that he is a man like
all of his fellows, and is not a mere atom ground between the upper and
nether millstones of the landlord and the squire. He cooks his
"_bouillie_" over three small sticks and retires to rest with the fond
hope that on the next market-day following the prices of eggs, chickens,
cauliflowers, or tomatoes may be higher. He is the stuff that successful
citizens are made of, and is not to be pitied in the least, even though
it is only the hundredth man of his community who ever does rise to more
wealth than a mere competency.
Touraine, rightly enough, has been called the garden of France, but it
is more than that, much more; it is a warm, soft land where all products
of the soil take on almost a subtropical luxuriance. Besides the great
valley of the Loire, there are the valleys of the tributaries which run
into it, in Touraine and the immediate neighbourhood, all of which are
fertile as only a river-bottom can be. It is true that there are
numerous formerly arid and sandy plateaux, quite unlike the abundant
plains of La Beauce, though to-day, by care and skill, they have been
made to rival the rest of the region in productiveness.
The Departement d'Indre et Loire is the richest agricultural region in
all France so far as the variety and abundance of its product goes,
rivalling in every way the opulence of the Burgundian hillsides. Above
all, Touraine stands at the head of the vine-culture of all the Loire
valley, the _territoire vinicole_ lapping over into Anjou, where are
produced the celebrated _vins blancs_ of Saumur.
The vineyard workers of Touraine, in the neighbourhood of Loches, have
clung closely to ancient customs, almost, one may say, to the
destruction of the industry, though of late new methods have set in,
and, since the blight now some years gone by, a new prosperity has come.
The day worker, who cares for the vines and superintends the picking of
the grapes by the womenfolk and the children, works for two francs fifty
centimes per day; but he invariably carries with him to the scene of his
labours a couple of cutlets from a young and juicy _brebis_, or even a
_poulet roti_, so one may judge from this that his pay is ample for his
needs in this land of plenty.
[Illustration: _The Vintage in Touraine_]
In the morning he takes his bowl of soup and a cup of white wine, and of
course huge hunks of bread, and finally coffee, and on each Sunday he
has his _roti a la maison_. All this demonstrates the fact that the
French peasant is more of a meat eater in these parts than he is
commonly thought to be.
Touraine has no peculiar beauties to offer the visitor; there is nothing
_outre_ about it to interest one; but, rather, it wins by sheer charm
alone, or perhaps a combination of charms and excellencies makes it so
truly a delectable land.
The Tourangeaux themselves will tell you, when speaking of Rabelais and
Balzac, that it is the land of "_haute graisse, feconde et
spirituelle_." It is all this, and, besides its spirituelle components,
it will supply some very real and substantial comforts. It is the Eden
of the gourmandiser of such delicacies as _truffes_, _rilettes_, and
above all, _pruneaux_, which you get in one form or another at nearly
every meal. Most of the good things of life await one here in abundance,
with kitchen-gardens and vineyards at every one's back door. Truly
Touraine is a land of good living.
Life runs its course in Touraine, "_facile et bonne_," without any
extremes of joy or sorrow, without chimerical desires or infinite
despair, and the agreeable sensations of life predominate,--the first
essential to real happiness.
Some one has said, and certainly not without reason, that every
Frenchman has a touch of Rabelais and of Voltaire in his make-up. This
is probably true, for France has never been swept by a wave of
puritanism such as has been manifest in most other countries, and _le
gros rire_ is still the national philosophy.
In a former day a hearty laugh, or at least an amused cynicism, diverted
the mind of the martyr from threatened torture and even violent death.
Brinvilliers laughed at those who were to torture her to death, and De
la Barre and Danton cracked jokes and improvised puns upon the very edge
of their untimely graves.
Touraine has the reputation of being a wonderfully productive field for
the book collector, though with books, like many other treasures of a
past time, the day has passed when one may "pick up" for two sous a MS.
worth as many thousands of francs; but still bargains are even now
found, and if one wants great calf-covered tomes, filled with fine old
engravings, bearing on the local history of the _pays_, he can generally
find them at all prices here in old Touraine.
There was a more or less apocryphal story told us and the landlady of
our inn concerning a find which a guest had come upon in a little
roadside hamlet at which he chanced to stop. He was one of those
omnipresent _commis voyageurs_ who thread the French provinces up and
down, as no other country in the world is "travelled" or "drummed." He
was the representative for a brandy shipper, one of those substantial
houses of the cognac region whose product is mostly sold only in France;
but this fact need not necessarily put the individual very far down in
the social scale. Indeed, he was a most amiable and cultivated person.
Our fellow traveller had come to a village where all the available
accommodations of the solitary inn were already engaged; therefore he
was obliged to put up with a room in the town, which the landlord hunted
out for him. Repairing to his room without any thought save that of
sleep, the traveller woke the next morning to find the sun streaming
through the opaqueness of a brilliantly coloured window. Not stained
glass here, surely, thought the stranger, for his lodging was a most
humble one. It proved to be not glass at all; merely four great vellum
leaves, taken from some ancient tome and stuck into the window-framing
where the glass ought to have been. Daylight was filtering dimly through
the rich colouring, and it took but a moment to become convinced that
the sheets were something rare and valuable. He learned that the pages
were from an old Latin MS., and that the occupant of the little dwelling
had used "_the paper_" in the place of the glass which had long since
disappeared. The vellum and its illuminations had stood the weather
well, though somewhat dimmed in comparison with the brilliancy of the
remaining folios, which were found below-stairs. There were in all some
eighty pages, which were purchased for a modest forty sous, and
everybody satisfied.
The volume had originally been found by the father of the old dame who
then had possession of it in an old chateau in revolutionary times.
Whether her honoured parent was a pillager or a protector did not come
out, but for all these years the possession of this fine work meant no
more to this Tourangelle than a supply of "paper" for stopping up broken
window-panes.
"She parted readily enough with the remaining leaves," said our
Frenchman, "but nothing would induce her to remove those which filled
the window." "No, we have no more glass, and these have answered quite
well for a long time now," she said. And such is the simplicity of the
French provincial, even to-day--_sometimes_.