If A Certain Springing Lightness Is The Charac-
Teristic Of Chenonceaux, If It Bears In Every Line The
Aspect Of
A place of recreation, - a place intended for
delicate, chosen pleasures, - nothing can confirm this
expression better than the strange,
Unexpected move-
ment with which, from behind, it carries itself across
the river. The earlier building stands in the water;
it had inherited the foundations of the mill destroyed
by Thomas Bohier. The first step, therefore, had been
taken upon solid piles of masonry; and the ingenious
Catherine - she was a _raffinee_ - simply proceeded to
take the others. She continued the piles to the op-
posite bank of the Cher, and over them she threw a
long, straight gallery of two stories. This part of the
chateau, which looks simply like a house built upon a
bridge and occupying its entire length, is of course
the great curiosity of Chenonceaux. It forms on each
floor a charming corridor, which, within, is illuminated
from either side by the flickering river-light. The
architecture of these galleries, seen from without, is
less elegant than that of the main building, but the
aspect of the whole thing is delightful. I have spoken
of Chenonceaux as a "villa," using the word ad-
visedly, for the place is neither a castle nor a palace.
It is a very exceptional villa, but it has the villa-
quality, - the look of being intended for life in com-
mon. This look is not at all contradicted by the wing
across the Cher, which only suggests intimate pleasures,
as the French say, - walks in pairs, on rainy days;
games and dances on autumn nights; together with as
much as may be of moonlighted dialogue (or silence)
in the course, of evenings more genial still, in the well-
marked recesses of windows.
It is safe to say that such things took place there
in the last century, during the kindly reign of Mon-
sieur and Madame Dupin. This period presents itself
as the happiest in the annals of Chenonceaux. I know
not what festive train the great Diana may have led,
and my imagination, I am afraid, is only feebly kindled
by the records of the luxurious pastimes organized on
the banks of the Cher by the terrible daughter of the
Medici, whose appreciation of the good things of life
was perfectly consistent with a failure to perceive why
others should live to enjoy, them. The best society
that ever assembled there was collected at Chenon-
ceaux during the middle of the eighteenth century.
This was surely, in France at least, the age of good
society, the period when it was well for appreciative
people to have been born. Such people should of
course have belonged to the fortunate few, and not to
the miserable many; for the prime condition of a
society being good is that it be not too large. The
sixty years that preceded the French Revolution were
the golden age of fireside talk and of those pleasures
which proceed from the presence of women in whom
the social art is both instinctive and acquired. The
women of that period were, above all, good company;
the fact is attested by a thousand documents. Chenon-
ceaux offered a perfect setting to free conversation;
and infinite joyous discourse must have mingled with
the liquid murmur of the Cher. Claude Dupin was
not only a great man of business, but a man of honor
and a patron of knowledge; and his wife was gracious,
clever, and wise. They had acquired this famous pro-
perty by purchase (from one of the Bourbons; for
Chenonceaux, for two centuries after the death of
Catherine de' Medici, remained constantly in princely
hands), and it was transmitted to their son, Dupin de
Francueil, grandfather of Madame George Sand. This
lady, in her Correspondence, lately published, describes
a visit that she paid, more than thirty years ago, to
those members of her family who were still in posses-
sion. The owner of Chenonceaux to-day is the daughter
of an Englishman naturalized in France. But I have
wandered far from my story, which is simply a sketch
of the surface of the place. Seen obliquely, from either
side, in combination with its bridge and gallery, the
chateau is singular and fantastic, a striking example
of a wilful and capricious conception. Unfortunately,
all caprices are not so graceful and successful, and I
grudge the honor of this one to the false and blood-
polluted Catherine. (To be exact, I believe the arches
of the bridge were laid by the elderly Diana. It was
Catherine, however, who completed the monument.)
Within, the house has been, as usual, restored. The
staircases and ceilings, in all the old royal residences
of this part of France, are the parts that have suffered
least; many of them have still much of the life of the
old time about them. Some of the chambers of Che-
nonceaux, however, encumbered as they are with mo-
dern detail, derive a sufficiently haunted and suggestive
look from the deep setting of their beautiful windows,
which thickens the shadows and makes dark, corners.
There is a charming little Gothic chapel, with its apse
hanging over the water, fastened to the left flank of
the house. Some of the upper balconies, which look
along the outer face of the gallery, and either up or
down the river, are delightful protected nooks. We
walked through the lower gallery to the other bank of
the Cher; this fine apartment appeared to be for the
moment a purgatory of ancient furniture. It terminates
rather abruptly; it simply stops, with a blank wall.
There ought, of course, to have been a pavilion here,
though I prefer very much the old defect to any mo-
dern remedy. The wall is not so blank, however, but
that it contains a door which opens on a rusty draw-
bridge. This drawbridge traverses the small gap which
divides the end of the gallery from the bank of the
stream.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 17 of 75
Words from 16342 to 17344
of 75796
