The Drive Of
About An Hour, Beneath Constant Clumps Of Chestnuts,
Was Charming Enough To Have Been Taken For Itself;
And Indeed, When We Reached Chaumont, We Saw That
Our Reward Was To Be Simply The Usual Reward Of
Virtue, - The Consciousness Of Having Attempted The
Right.
The Chateau de Chaumont was inexorably
closed; so we learned from a talkative lodge-keeper,
who gave what grace she could to her refusal.
This
good woman's dilemma was almost touching; she
wished to reconcile two impossibles. The castle was
not to be visited, for the family of its master was
staying there; and yet she was loath to turn away a
party of which she was good enough to say that it had
a _grand genre;_ for, as she also remarked, she had her
living to earn. She tried to arrange a compromise,
one of the elements of which was that we should
descend from our carriage and trudge up a hill which
would bring us to a designated point, where, over the
paling of the garden, we might obtain an oblique and
surreptitious view of a small portion of the castle walls.
This suggestion led us to inquire (of each other) to
what degree of baseness it is allowed to an enlightened
lover of the picturesque to resort, in order to catch a
glimpse of a feudal chateau. One of our trio decided,
characteristically, against any form of derogation; so
she sat in the carriage and sketched some object that
was public property, while her two companions, who
were not so proud, trudged up a muddy ascent which
formed a kind of back-stairs. It is perhaps no more
than they deserved that they were disappointed. Chau-
mont is feudal, if you please; but the modern spirit is
in possession. It forms a vast clean-scraped mass,
with big round towers, ungarnished with a leaf of ivy
or a patch of moss, surrounded by gardens of moderate
extent (save where the muddy lane of which I speak
passes near it), and looking rather like an enormously
magnified villa. The great merit of Chaumont is its
position, which almost exactly resembles that of Am-
boise; it sweeps the river up and down, and seems to
look over half the province. This, however, was better
appreciated as, after coming down the hill and re-
entering the carriage, we drove across the long sus-
pension-bridge which crosses the Loire just beyond
the village, and over which we made our way to the
small station of Onzain, at the farther end, to take
the train back to Tours. Look back from the middle
of this bridge; the whole picture composes, as the
painters say. The towers, the pinnacles, the fair front
of the chateau, perched above its fringe of garden and
the rusty roofs of the village, and facing the afternoon
sky, which is reflected also in the great stream that
sweeps below, - all this makes a contribution to your
happiest memories of Touraine.
VII.
We never went to Chinon; it was a fatality. We
planned it a dozen times; but the weather interfered,
or the trains didn't suit, or one of the party was
fatigued with the adventures of'the day before. This
excursion was so much postponed that it was finally
postponed to everything. Besides, we had to go to
Chenonceaux, to Azay-le-Rideau, to Langeais, to Loches.
So I have not the memory of Chinon; I have only the
regret. But regret, as well as memory, has its visions;
especially when, like memory, it is assisted by photo-
graphs. The castle of Chinon in this form appears
to me as an enormous ruin, a mediaeval fortress, of
the extent almost of a city. It covers a hill above the
Vienne, and after being impregnable in its time is in-
destructible to-day. (I risk this phrase in the face of
the prosaic truth. Chinon, in the days when it was a
prize, more than once suflered capture, and at present
it is crumbling inch by inch. It is apparent, however,
I believe, that these inches encroach little upon acres
of masonry.) It was in the castle that Jeanne Darc ?????
had her first interview with Charles VII., and it is in
the town that Francois Rabelais is supposed to have
been born. To the castle, moreover, the lover of the
picturesque is earnestly recommended to direct his
steps. But one cannot do everything, and I would
rather have missed Chinon than Chenonceaux. For-
tunate exceedingly were the few hours that we passed
at this exquisite residence.
"In 1747," says Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in his
"Confessions," "we went to spend the autumn in Tou-
raine, at the Chateau, of Chenonceaux, a royal resi-
dence upon the Cher, built by Henry II. for Diana of
Poitiers, whose initials are still to be seen there, and
now in possession of M. Dupin, the farmer-general.
We amused ourselves greatly in this fine spot; the liv-
ing was of the best, and I became as fat as a monk.
We made a great deal of music, and acted comedies."
This is the only description that Rousseau gives
of one of the most romantic houses in France, and of
an episode that must have counted as one of the most
agreeable in his uncomfortable career. The eighteenth
century contented itself with general epithets; and
when Jean-Jacques has said that Chenonceaux was a
"beau lieu," he thinks himself absolved from further
characterization. We later sons of time have, both for
our pleasure and our pain, invented the fashion of
special terms, and I am afraid that even common
decency obliges me to pay some larger tribute than
this to the architectural gem of Touraine. Fortunately
I can discharge my debt with gratitude. In going
from Tours you leave the valley of the Loire and enter
that of the Cher, and at the end of about an hour you
see the turrets of the castle on your right, among the
trees, down in the meadows, beside the quiet little
river.
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