A
WINTER IN A FRENCH CHATEAU.
YOU who write to Captain Blank, Nth Brigade, H.Q., B.E.F.. France, can you picture your gallant correspondent's lodging ? If the Censorship and the G.R.O.'s have been faithfully observed, you assuredly can not—correctly. It remains just a vague abstraction—" Nth Brigade, H.Q." Is the Brigade " in" or "out," forward or back ? Is it in the "ups" or the " downs " of its variegated existence ? Is it wallowing in the comparative luxury of the Back Area, or enduring the bleak discomforts of an active Battle-Front ? To regimental soldiers of all ranks, to be sure, Brigade H.Q. seems ever, and naturally, a haven of cultured ease, a very oasis of comfort and security in a wicked and uneasy world where everlasting, all-pervading mud and the capricious activity of hostile snipers, bombers, machine-gunners, miners, gas-projectors, raiders, trench-mortar men, and artillery not infrequently conspire to make life a precarious burden, to be borne lightly—or not at all. At " the Brigade," one hears, are dry floors, warmth, light, and hot meals consumed with glorious regularity. There, also, are commodious rabbit-wire bunks where the favoured Olympians may (and do) sleep cosily for nine hours at a stretch, most nights of the week. As for danger, once safe back from the line, what have they to fear beyond an occasional long-range shell or an odd, infrequent bomb from the air ? Such and such-like are the privileges of the worshipful " Red Hats." That there are certain conditions and responsibilities attached is a fact sometimes gracefully conceded. But Brigade H.Q. can be even more than an oasis in a squalid and unhealthful desert. Sometimes, as now, it is a Palace in a Park.
We have lately removed from the stuffy security and cramped inconvenience of a deep Boche-built dug-out, to the spacious elegance of a fine old chateau, far behind the lines, where we inhabit echoing suites of bleak saloons—a very labyrinth of down-at-heel magnificence. Yes, we have certainly risen in the world, having quitted our free quarters in the ci-decant Hindenburg Line, to become the paying-guests of a Marquis of the Aneien Regime. True, for the moment, he is a Quartermaster-Sergeant in the French Army, but he is our landlord-host none the less, through the kind offices of a great new firm of Continental house-agents called "The Government." This 'time they have certainly done us handsomely. There is no date upon the house, but, from its
general character and the fashion of its embellishments, it was almost certainly built about 1700 by the third Marquis—the elegant courtier-soldier whose portrait hangs in the blue saloon. And right nobly did he build in the grandiose manner of his time, when coronets and high descent might be easketed in the voluptuous splendours of a small Versailles, yet gaily suffer a mean village of decayed mud kennels to cringe about the gates—and be not at all ashamed. It is this Dives-and-Lazarus juxtaposition of polished elegance with the (then) surrounding squalor that is all too apt to spoil one's pleasure in such châteaux and quite wrongly prejudice one's true appreciation of their architectural and decorative merit. However, soaked through as we may be with liberal views as to the Rights of Man, Liberty, Fraternity, Equality, and so forth, we may now whole-beartedly and justly admire the masterpieces that a vanished heartlessness and injustice produced, or at least made possible. For the village at the gates is now prosperous and seemly enough, whilst there has been little indeed of luxury up in the faded château these many years, little even of reasonable oomfort, and of convenience none at all. But dignity, elegance, and a haunting mellow charm will pervade and abide with the great house for so long as it survives.
Let us make a brief tour of the place, traversing its noble carriage court, glancing in at a few of its many rooms, then, passing out on the further side, see where a wide terrace overlooks a park and garden planned in the formal manner of Lenetre. At the head of the broad, straight village street that a double row of tall, pleached limes disguises as a lordly avenue, a sumptuous wrought-iron gateway, heroically proportioned, stands between gigantic piers. Crowning the gate is a great canopy of iron where prancing beasts support, and seem exultingly to display, a jolly riot of heraldry, pikes, halberds, firelocks, banners, kettledrums, and such-like martial trophies, the whole being topped by a large and confident coronet, a good deal awry and out of repair. Flanking the gates, tall iron railings follow the sweep of the moat, meeting and connecting the low, but wide-flung, château wings. A round grass-plat holds the middle of the court, set round with white stone obelisks from which great chains depend in flat festoons. Beyond is seen the exquisite proportions and rhythmic balance of the main facade, the nice adjustment of its light and shade, the delicate refinement of its wide Ionic portico, the telling splash of interest and of movement in its sculptured pediment. A time-toned roof of little green-grey slates, a brave array of tall brick chimneys, purple, chrome, rose-pink—these are in perfect harmony both of line and colour with the rest, making the whole inexpressibly satisfying to a seeing eye. Against the hard bright lustre of the snow, the mellow brickwork of the house glows softly, hospitably, warm ; though the tiers of high uncur- tained windows give to the place an air a little bleak. A broad flight of shallow steps leads to the arched glazed doors beneath the portico.
Passing within, you enter an oval cabinet of green and gold, the prettiest, daintiest, draughtiest little room imaginable. For, like most French houses, this is incredibly thin—two fine facades, a single string of draughty passage, rooms tucked end-to-end between. The oval cabinet has tall glazed doors to either front, whilst on its shorter axis two pairs of folding doors lead right and left to suites of long saloons. The great sash windows ranged down both their sides and double doors set at either end make them unimaginably chill, and effectively defy the best attempts to warm them. But they are gracious, pleasantly proportioned rooms, with their tall grey panels, their darkly glinting lustres that depend by faded crimson rococo ropes, from ceilings of plaster or painted sky and clouds. And if we find more elegance than comfort in our splendid lodging, whose fault is that ? Have we not sternly impressed a house, designed expressly for jolly summer trifling, into our alien service as a winter quarters ? Usually the chief interest is focussed in the fireplace, a mockery as a means to warmth, but a fine occasion, none the less, for an architectural jolly. A Baroque mantelpiece of rosy marble frames a deep hearth with great armorial fireback and huge bronze dogs, where you may burn a wagon-load of beech-logs on a winter's day and yet not thaw the rime upon the windows. Above is a festive super- structure of trophies, done in grey and gold, or a gilt-framed mirror with pediment and swags, or perhaps a picture of a Fite Champeire—bluish-green in tone, in the style of Boucher or his like. Well-designed and exactly appropriate fittings and details, fine floors of chequered marble or oaken parquet, give to these rooms a grateful air of real aesthetic unity, of architectural sufficiency. The very want of furniture and hangings, and all such incidental garnishings, serves but to emphasize the intrinsic merit of the rooms themselves. They are " Finished," they are " Distinguished." But it was in the grand staircase that the
great French architects and their craftsmen most dazzlingly outshone all others, and glorified a mere necessary contrivance into a very marvel of elegant aspiration. Thus even here, in this provincial château of a lesser noble, we have a tortuous marble stair, ascending by graceful sweeps beneath a sculptured dome, and fenced about by a wrought-iron grille of such fluent fancy and lively workmanship that Tijou himself might have put his name to it without cause for blushing.
But now pass out through the garden door and down the terrace steps, across the snow to where an ice-bound fountain forms the centre of the formal plan. In the midst of the great stone-lipped basin a blowsy though engaging Cupid bestrides a sporting dolphin, and in happier seasons shoots up a silver shaft of water from his golden bow. Enclosing the fountain, and having the mid-pavilion of the west facade for centre, a wide-flung arc of hornbeam, neatly pleached, forms a tall screen. Against this dusky background old garden statues of grey weathered stone gleam palely in the winter sun. Crowding behind the tall pleached hedge are troops of stately trees, and through this ordered forest pass seven radial glades—the centre one a wide and grassy avenue, the lesser three on either hand but high and bosky tunnels through which one sees the distant hills, dimly, through blue haze.
Such are our Palace and our Park. In leaving, wish them both " long life and more prosperity." For—who shall say ?—fine houses of like quality and size may never more be built. We must needs acknowledge, though we may not welcome, a new and poorer world, where democracy calls a less romantic tune and the man of property must obediently pay the piper—as a gentleman should—to the best of his diminishing ability. It is the people's turn. Good luck to them 1 The chateau awaits the
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