Royal Palaces and Parks of France Part 1

Royal Palaces and Parks of France.

by Milburg Francisco Mansfield.

Preface

"A thousand years ago, by the rim of a tiny spring, a monk who had avowed himself to the cult of Saint Saturnin, robed, cowled and sandalled, knelt down to say a prayer to his beloved patron saint.

Again he came, this time followed by more of his kind, and a wooden cross was planted by the side of the "Fontaine Belle Eau," by this time become a place of pious pilgrimage. After the monk came a king, the latter to hunt in the neighbouring forest."

It was this old account of fact, or legend, that led the author and ill.u.s.trator of this book to a full realization of the wealth of historic and romantic incidents connected with the French royal parks and palaces, incidents which the makers of guidebooks have pa.s.sed over in favour of the, presumably, more important, well authenticated facts of history which are often the bare recitals of political rises and falls and dull chronologies of building up and tearing down.

Much of the history of France was made in the great national forests and the royal country-houses of the kingdom, but usually it has been only the events of the capital which have been pa.s.sed in review. To a great extent this history was of the gallant, daring kind, often written in blood, the sword replacing the pen.

At times gayety reigned supreme, and at times it was sadness; but always the pageant was imposing.

The day of pageants has pa.s.sed, the day when lords and ladies moved through stately halls, when royal equipages hunted deer or boar on royal preserves, when gay cavalcades of solemn corteges thronged the great French highways to the uttermost frontiers and ofttimes beyond. Those days have pa.s.sed; but, to one who knows the real France, a ready-made setting is ever at hand if he would depart a little from the beaten paths worn smooth by railway and automobile tourists who follow only the lines of conventional travel.

France, even to-day, the city and the country alike, is the paradise of European monarchs on a holiday. One may be met at Biarritz on the sh.o.r.es of the Gascon gulf; another may be taking the waters at Aix or Vichy, shooting pigeons under the shadow of the Tete de Chien, or hunting at Rambouillet. This is modern France, the most cosmopolitan meeting place and playground of royalty in the world.

French royal parks and palaces, those of the kings and queens of mediaeval, as well as later, times, differ greatly from those of other lands. This is perhaps not so much in their degree of splendour and luxury as in the sentiment which attaches itself to them. In France there has ever been a spirit of gayety and spontaneity unknown elsewhere. It was this which inspired the construction and maintenance of such magnificent royal residences as the palaces of Saint Germain-en-Laye, Fontainebleau, Versailles, Compiegne, Rambouillet, etc., quite different from the motives which caused the erection of the Louvre, the Tuileries or the Palais Cardinal at Paris.

Nowhere else does there exist the equal of these inspired royal country-houses of France, and, when it comes to a consideration of their surrounding parks and gardens, or those royal hunting preserves in the vicinity of the Ile de France, or of those still further afield, at Rambouillet or in the Loire country, their superiority to similar domains beyond the frontiers is even more marked.

In plan this book is a series of itineraries, at least the chapters are arranged, to a great extent in a topographical sequence; and, if the scope is not as wide as all France, it is because of the prominence already given to the parks and palaces of Touraine and elsewhere in the old French provinces in other works in which the artist and author have collaborated. It is for this reason that so little consideration has been given to Chambord, Amboise or Chenonceaux, which were as truly royal as any of that magnificent group of suburban Paris palaces which begins with Conflans and ends with Marly and Versailles.

Going still further afield, there is in the Pyrenees that chateau, royal from all points of view, in which was born the gallant Henri of France and Navarre, but a consideration of that, too, has already been included in another volume.

The present survey includes the royal dwellings of the capital, those of the faubourgs and the outlying districts far enough from town to be recognized as in the country, and still others as remote as Rambouillet, Chantilly and Compiegne. All, however, were intimately connected with the life of the capital in the mediaeval and Renaissance days, and together form a cla.s.s distinct from any other monumental edifices which exist, or ever have existed, in France.

Mere historic fact has been subordinated as far as possible to a recital of such picturesque incidents of the life of contemporary times as the old writers have handed down to us, and a complete chronological review has in no manner been attempted.

Royal Palaces and Parks of France

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

The modern traveller sees something beyond mere facts. Historical material as identified with the life of some great architectural glory is something more than a mere repet.i.tion of chronologies; the sidelights and the co-related incidents, though indeed many of them may be but hearsay, are quite as interesting, quite as necessary, in fact, for the proper appreciation of a famous palace or chateau as long columns of dates, or an evolved genealogical tree which attempts to make plain that which could be better left unexplained. The glamour of history would be considerably dimmed if everything was explained, and a very seamy block of marble may be chiselled into a very acceptable statue if the workman but knows how to avoid the doubtful parts.

An itinerary that follows not only the ridges, but occasionally plunges down into the hollows and turns up or down such crossroads as may have chanced to look inviting, is perhaps more interesting than one laid out on conventional lines. A shadowy something, which for a better name may be called sentiment, if given full play encourages these side-steps, and since they are generally found fruitful, and often not too fatiguing, the procedure should be given every encouragement.

Not all the interesting royal palaces and chateaux of France are those with the best known names. Not all front on Paris streets and quays, no more than the best glimpses of ancient or modern France are to be had from the benches of a sight-seeing automobile.

Versailles, and even Fontainebleau, are too frequently considered as but the end of a half-day pilgrimage for the tripper. It were better that one should approach them more slowly, and by easy stages, and leave them less hurriedly. As for those architectural monuments of kings, which were tuned in a minor key, they, at all events, need to be hunted down on the spot, the enthusiast being forearmed with such sc.r.a.ps of historic fact as he can gather beforehand, otherwise he will see nothing at Conflans, Marly or Bourg-la-Reine which will suggest that royalty ever had the slightest concern therewith.

Dealing first with Paris it is evident it is there that the pilgrim to French shrines must make his most profound obeisance. This applies as well to palaces as to churches. In all cases one goes back into the past to make a start, and old Paris, what there is left of it, is still old Paris, though one has to leave the grand boulevards to find this out.

Colberts and Haussmanns do not live to-day, or if they do they have become so "practical" that a drainage ca.n.a.l or an overhead or underground railway is more of a civic improvement than the laying out of a public park, like the gardens of the Tuileries, or the building and embellishment of a public edifice--at least with due regard for the best traditions. When the monarchs of old called in men of taste and culture instead of "business men" they builded in the most agreeable fas.h.i.+on. We have not improved things with our "systems" and our committees of "_hommes d'affaires_."

It is the fas.h.i.+on to-day to decry the cavaliers and the wearers of "love-locks," but they had a pretty taste in art and an eye for artistic surroundings, those old fellows of the sword and cloak; a much more pretty taste than their descendants, the steam-heat and running-water partisans of to-day. Louis XV and Empire drawing and dining-rooms are everywhere advertised as the attractions of the great palace hotels, and some of them are very good copies of their predecessors, though one cannot help but feel that the clientele as a whole is more insistent on telephones in the bedrooms and auto-taxis always on tap than with regard to the sentiment of good taste and good cheer which is to be evoked by eating even a hurried meal in a room which reproduces some historically famous Salle des Gardes or the Chambre of the OEil de Boeuf of the Louvre, if, indeed, most of the hungry folk know what their surroundings are supposed to represent.

Any chronicle which attempts to set down a record of the comings and goings of French monarchs is saved from being a mere dull chronology of dates and resume of facts by its obligatory references to the architects and builders who made possible the splendid settings amid which these picturesque rulers pa.s.sed their lives.

The castle builders of France, the garden designers, the architects, decorators and craftsmen of all ranks produced not a medley, but a coherent, cohesive whole, which stands apart from, and far ahead of, most of the contemporary work of its kind in other lands. Castles and keeps were of one sort in England and Scotland, of still another along the Rhine, and if the Renaissance palaces and chateaux first came into being in Italy it is certain they never grew to the flowering luxuriance there that they did in France.

Thus does France establish itself as leader in new movements once again.

It was so in the olden time with the arts of the architect, the landscape gardener and the painter; it is so to-day with respect to such mundane, less sentimental things as automobiles and aeroplanes.

Another chapter, in a story long since started, is a repet.i.tion, or review, of the outdoor life of the French monarchs and their followers.

Not only did Frenchmen of Gothic and Renaissance times have a taste for travelling far afield, pursuing the arts of peace or war as their conscience or conditions dictated; but they loved, too, the open country and the open road at home; they loved also _la cha.s.se_, as they did tournaments, _fetes-champetres_ and outdoor spectacles of all kinds. Add these stage settings to the splendid costuming and the flamboyant architectural accessories of Renaissance times in France and we have what is a.s.suredly not to be found in other lands, a spectacular and imposing pageant of mediaeval and Renaissance life and manners which is superlative from all points of view.

This is perhaps hard, sometimes, to reconcile with the French att.i.tude towards outdoor life to-day, when _la cha.s.se_ means the hunting of tame foxes (a sport which has been imported from across the channel), "_sport_" means a prize fight, and a garden party or a _fete-champetre_ a mere gossiping rendezvous over a cup of badly made tea. In the France of the olden time they did things differently--and better.

Not all French history was made, or written, within palace walls; much of it came into being in the open air, like the two famous meetings by the Bida.s.soa, Napoleon's first sight of Marie Louise on the highroad leading out from Senlis, or his making the Pope a prisoner at the Croix de Saint Heram, in the Forest of Fontainebleau.

It is this change of scene that makes French history so appealing to those who might otherwise let it remain in shut-up and dry-as-dust books on library shelves.

The French monarchs of old were indeed great travellers, and it is by virtue of the fact that affairs of state were often promulgated and consummated _en voyage_ that a royal stamp came to be acquired by many a chateau or country-house which to-day would hardly otherwise be considered as of royal rank.

Throughout France, notably in the neighbourhood of Paris, are certain chateaux--palaces only by lack of name--of the n.o.bility where royalties were often as much at home as under their own royal standards. One cannot attempt to confine the limits where these chateaux are to be found, for they actually covered the length and breadth of France.

Journeying afield in those romantic times was probably as comfortably accomplished, by monarchs at least, as it is to-day. What was lacking was speed, but they lodged at night under roofs as hospitable as those of the white and gold caravanserai (and some more humble) which perforce come to be temporary abiding places of royalties _en tour_ to-day. The writer has seen the Dowager Queen of Italy lunching at a neighbouring table at a roadside _trattoria_ in Piedmont which would have no cla.s.s distinction whatever as compared with the average suburban road-house across the Atlantic. At Biarritz, too, the automobiling monarch, Alphonse XIII, has been known to take "tea" on the terrace of the great tourist-peopled hotel in company with mere be-goggled commoners. _Le temps va!_ Were monarchs so democratic in the olden time, one wonders.

The court chronicles of all ages, and all ranks, have proved a gold mine for the makers of books of all sorts and conditions. Not only court chroniclers but pamphleteers, even troubadours and players, have contributed much to the records of the life of mediaeval France. All history was not made by political intrigue or presumption; a good deal of it was born of the gentler pa.s.sions, and a chap-book maker would put often into print many accounts which the recorder of mere history did not dare use. History is often enough sorry stuff when it comes to human interest, and it needs editing only too often.

Courtiers and the fas.h.i.+onable world of France, ever since the days of the poetry-making and ballad-singing Francis and Marguerite, and before, for that matter, made of literature--at least the written and spoken chronicle of some sort--a diversion and an accomplishment. Royal or official patronage given these mediaeval story-tellers did not always produce the truest tales. Then, as now, writer folk were wont to exaggerate, but most of their work made interesting reading.

These courtiers of the itching pen did not often write for money. Royal favour, or that of some fair lady, or ladies, was their chief return in many more cases than those for which their accounts were settled by mere dross. It is in the work of such chroniclers as these that one finds a fund of unrepeated historic lore.

The dramatists came on the scene with their plots ready-made (and have been coming ever since, if one recalls the large number of French costume plays of recent years), and whether they introduced errors of fact, or not, there was usually so much truth about their work that the very historians more than once were obliged to have recourse to the productions of their colleagues. The dramatists' early days in France, as in England, were their golden days. The mere literary man, or chronicler, was often flayed alive, but the dramatist, even though he dished up the foibles of a king, and without any dressing at that, was feted and made as much of as a record piano player of to-day.

One hears a lot about the deathbed scribblers in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but there was not much of that sort of thing in France. No one here penned bitter jibes and lascivious verses merely to keep out of jail, as did Nash and Marlowe in England.

In short, one must give due credit to the court chroniclers and ballad-singers of France as being something more than mere pilfering, blackmailing hacks.

All the French court and its followers in the sixteenth century shouted epigrams and affected being greater poets than they really were. It was a good sign, and it left its impress on French literature. Following in the footsteps of Francis I and the two Marguerites n.o.bles vied with each other in their efforts to produce some epoch-making work of poesy or prose, and while they did not often publish for profit they were glad enough to see themselves in print. Then there were also the professional men of letters, as distinct from the courtiers with literary ambitions, the churchmen and courtly attaches of all ranks with the literary bee humming in their bonnets. They, too, left behind them an imposing record, which has been very useful to others coming after who were concerned with getting a local colour of a brand which should look natural.

It is with such guiding lights as are suggested by the foregoing resume that one seeks his clues for the repicturing of the circ.u.mstances under which French royal palaces were erected, as well as for the truthful repet.i.tion of the ceremonies and functions of the times, for the court life of old, whether in city palace or country chateau, was a very different thing from that of the Republican regime of to-day.

Not only were the royal Paris dwellings, from the earliest times, of a profound luxuriance of design and execution, but the private hotels, the palaces, one may well say, of the n.o.bility were of the same superlative order, and kings and queens alike did not disdain to lodge therein on such occasions as suited their convenience. The suggestive comparison is made because of the close liens with which royalty and the higher n.o.bility were bound.

It is sufficient to recall, among others of this cla.s.s, the celebrated Hotel de Beauvais which will ill.u.s.trate the reference. Not only was this magnificent town house of palatial dimensions, but it was the envy of the monarchs themselves, because of its refined elegance of construction. This edifice exists to-day, in part, at No. 68 Rue Francois Miron, and the visitor may judge for himself as to its former elegance.