VII
Poor little old town ofSt.Clodoald! In later years I spent an afternoon hunting up its distant remembrances. Alas, but it was like looking at some worn-out engraving, some faded dun picture once known in all its brilliancy.
stone feature in garden
Obliterated was the dainty white stone Palace; scene of the revelries and the bright-coloured elegancies of the Regent; favourite retreat of Marie Antoinette; theatre of the “Dix-huit Brumaire” drama; early home ofl’Aiglon! The Château deSt.Cloud, the summer residence of the last Napoleon, had been burned by the Prussians—even as they burned the bulk of the town—in 1870.[1]
Many a time, when, not so many years ago, we could read daily the shameless slander, the wilful calumnies, of the German press on the subject of the “barbarity” of our soldiers during the South African wars, has my mind flown back to the picture of charred and jagged ruins standing against the rise of the hillwhich once met my eyes when I looked for the quiet, happy prospect I had known.
THE OLD PARK OFST.CLOUD
The town, when I last saw it, and its ancient church had been rebuilt; but the Palace was a dismal ruin; and the park seemed scald and deserted. Gone also, worst luck of all, theLanterne de Diogène—the quaint tower at the river-side opening of the main alley, built in the pleasure-loving days ofLouis-le-Bien-Aimé. ‹It was called amirador: I believe a structure of that kind is now known as “gazebo”—deplorable word!› From the top of it a magnificent panorama of distant Paris could be descried.
The neighbourhood ofla Lanternewas the great trysting place of nurses and guardsmen, and the playing ground of children. On that day of back-dreaming exploration, I had been looking forward, with a kind of tenderness, to gazing once more on its bizarre shape. There is a well-knownronde, dating it would seem from the Middle Ages:
“La Tour, prends garde—La Tour, prends garde—De te laisser abattre!”
“La Tour, prends garde—La Tour, prends garde—De te laisser abattre!”
“La Tour, prends garde—La Tour, prends garde—De te laisser abattre!”
“La Tour, prends garde—
La Tour, prends garde—
De te laisser abattre!”
which is sung by the Gallic infant, in a game somewhat cognate to our: “Here we go round the Mulberry Bush!” It used to be danced under the shadow of this tower; and, in a child’s way, I had always instinctively associated the unnamed stronghold of the ballad with this peaceful erection.
Alas for the dear oldTour, it was destined to be laid low, after all, in spite of our eager warning! The terrace on which it was built was seized as the emplacement of a battery of heavy Krupps, for the bombardment of theobstinate capital yonder away. TheLanterne de Diogène, in its white stone and clear outline against the trees, offered too distinct a mark to the answering gunners to be tolerated. It had to be levelled. It was never rebuilt. I could find nothing appertaining to it but the grass bordered slabs of its foundations....
tower rising from trees
Lost, too, to me was the particular alley redolent of the memory of bothReinetteandTremble; no doubt absorbed in some of the metalled motor roads that now traverse the park.
TheGrande Cascade, however, which Lepautre, by order of Louis XIV, devised for the glorification of the Duke of Orleans’ future home, was still there. Its tiers of white stone steps over which the water, onGrandes Eauxdays, used to pour down, foaming yet disciplined, in symmetric balustered channels, between ranks of allegoric statues standing like guards and lacqueys upon a royal stairway—still descend, framed by huge umbrageous elms, from the middle height of the hill to the wide marblebassinon the river level. How fully the great garden designers of theRoy Soleilunderstood the life-giving virtue of moving waters in their grandiose if freezing conception of the formal landscape! Here, in the midst of the nature-made beauty of the old Park—where there had been forests, more or less wild, ever since Gaulish days—these architectural waters have a startling effect; incongruous no doubt, but the artificiality of the stone-work has been mellowed by two centuriesand more of summer suns and winter frosts. And these monumental streams are beyond compare more beautiful than their prototypes of Versailles and the copies erected in other Continental residences in imitation of theGrand Règnemanner. This Lepautre was a man of fine power, in the style of his age. But he had also the servile fawning mind of that age. Soon after the triumph of theSt.Cloud Park, he could find it in him to die in three days of jaundiced envy because some other design of his had been passed over by the King’s eye in favour of one by Mansard! Yea, to die of heart-burning, even as that greater man, Jean Racine, who, some years later, gave up the ghost in despair over a harsh remark passed by his royal master in a fit of temper; even as Vatel, themaître d’hotel, who fell upon his sword, and put an end to a life dishonoured by the failure of the fish at the celebrated Chantilly banquet!
Yes, the old cascade, at least, was still there, that once had filled the five-year-old’s imagination with a sense of the supreme in earthly grandeur. TheJet Géant, also; that spouting jet that reaches a height of ... but no, why cramp the stupendous into figures? Figures are finite things. The shaft of hissing water, in those days of confident wondering, reached the limit of the conceivable before it fell down again, in its thundering showers, through the iridescent bow, thearc-en-ciel, that could always be looked for when the sun shone on it at the sinking hour. But, alas, for the middle-aged visitor who sought for a taste again, however transient, of the noisy joyousness, the brilliance, the colour, locked up in memory’s casket!... Thecidevantroyal park—nowPropriété Nationale, and duly stamped, wherever room can be found for it, with the priggish and lying motto:Liberté, Egalité, Fraternitéwas dull and drab and neglected: silent and morose. TheGrand Monarque’sextravagances in stone seemed positively shamefaced. The whole place—this artificial park within the ancient woods—had the melancholy of things outworn and disowned.
FIRELIGHT PICTURES
Yet here, in my armchair by the firelight, up on the side of our dear Surrey hill, I can still picture sharply to myself the summer life ofSt.Cloud as it was in the careless precarious days of the Second Empire.
children outdoors
The Empress Eugénie, then a young wife, and one of the most beautiful women of Europe, lived at theChâteau. And the Park, though thrown open to the people, was kept trim with jealous care. Roads generously sanded, lawns watered and mown with systematic care, parterres ever bright with flowers, all was marvellously different then from the present day shabbiness.
I seem to see again, even with almost a lifetime’s experience intervening, the vivid scene impressed on the observant and eager eyes of the child. The gay-hued crowds of ladies in all the then elegance of scuttle bonnets and crinolines; the bevies of children, of everyclass, but all joyous and noisy; the bands of marching youths, buzzing the popular airs of the year on the euphoniousMirliton; the siege of every “kiosk” where the wafers hot from the mould, or the cool lemonade, were dispensed; the swans, stately but voracious, being fed upon the great pond; the bright coloured beribbonednourricessquatting with the nurslings on the circular benches within sound of themusique militaire, and the inevitable giant beardedsapeurin flirtatious attendance; the quite too beautiful officers with tight waists, waxed moustaches and swaying gold epaulets—what not?
Before the great gates, solemnly walking to and fro, or standing picturesquely sentinel, there never wanted a party of veteran grenadiers in their towering brass-fronted bearskins and white cross-belts to produce the desired “Old Guard” effect. Or it might be heavy-moustached troopers,Guides, with sweeping plumes over the hugecolback; with pelisses of fur and eagle-embroidered sabretaches, copying, on their side, the grim appearance of Napoleon’s ‹the real one’s› body guard.
The whole place, indeed, was pervaded with the “immense” uniforms of those pretorians: those long service professional soldiers for whose showy maintenance the Imperial Government stinted an otherwise dwindling national army—disastrous army, destined, despite its gallantry, to be so soon decimated, swept away, by the legions ofdas Volk in Waffenwielded with the ruthless mastery of German generalship!
FORGOTTEN BRILLIANCIES
For such as have only known France since the strictly utilitarian days that followed the greatdébâcle; days when the notion that any kind of smartness is incompatiblewith “republican efficiency seems to have become an obsession” it is difficult to realize the gilded magnificence of theGarde Impériale. Still less, perhaps, in these anti-militarist times, the idolatry of the people for itsbeaux militaires. Of a truth, on a sunny day, they brightened the park walks almost as much as the Geraniums in the great stone urns, or the forbidden golden fruit in the orange tubs!
The authorities were sedulous, especially in such places asSt.Cloud, to keep the pleasant side—the pride, the pomp and circumstance—of soldiering in evidence. The happy little town was awakened in the morning, was apprised of noon and again of sundown, by the incredibly joyous “sonneries” of theLanciers de l’Impératrice, whose trumpeters specially gathered from far and wide, could sound all tuckets and points of war in an admirable harmony of high overtones blended with the noble, grave sounds of the ordinary calls.... Entrancing music to the little boy, in the glycine-clad house of therue du Château, who would start awake, hearken, and then turn round and go to sleep again in great content. The drums of thegarde montante, headed by the olympiantambour-major, sedulously tossing and twirling his cane, daily rattled the window panes as in great pomp it ascended the hill, palace-wards. It never failed to draw the same crowd to the same doorsteps. Estaffettes clattered hourly along the narrow paved streets, on their way to and from Paris; glittering, clinking, full of official importance, and with an eagerness no doubt wholly uncalled for by any existing necessity.
All that colour and bustle and pleasant make-believe of strength and “tradition,” was typical of all one has sincelearned to associate with that Empire on the high road to ruin. But it had its attractive side for those who had not found it out; and, seen through the prism of distance, a picturesqueness that modern France, so systematically democratized, is scarce like to know again.