XIII. BETZ
At the bottom of a valley,
There is a charming château
Whose adored mistress
Is its most beautiful ornament;
The charms of her countenance
And the virtues of her heart
Embellish nature
And spread happiness.
At the sound of her voice a limpid stream
Will take a happier course;
The most smiling verdure
Will enchant all eyes;
A scattered and dusky grove
Planted by her beautiful hands,
Will cover with its shade
Candor and beauty.
THIS song, which was set to the tune, Que ne suis-je la fougère, was written by Louis Joseph de Bourbon-Condé. The "adored mistress" was Marie Catherine de Brignole, Princess of Monaco. The "charming château" was that of Betz, celebrated at that period because of the beauty of its gardens laid out in the English fashion.
The château has disappeared; but the design of the park is not effaced; not all of the structures with which it was adorned by the caprice of the Princess of Monaco have perished. After a long period of neglect, the domain is today in safe hands: the remnants of the gardens of Betz are now safeguarded. Groves, ruins and temples here still evoke a memory of the imagination at once silly, incoherent and delightful, which satisfied men and especially women on the eve of the French Revolution.
Marie Christine de Brignole had married at eighteen a roué of forty, the former lover of her mother. The Parliament of Paris had divorced her from this brutal and jealous husband, and she had become the unconcealed mistress of Condé. Their relations were public. The Princess lived at Paris in a hotel in the Rue Saint Dominique, beside the Palais Bourbon. She reigned at Chantilly.
Condé was tender but faithless. He deceived his lady love, was desolated to see her unhappy, accused God of having given her too sensitive a heart and began over again. Still other cares troubled the Princess of Monaco: however great may then have been the toleration of the world and the ease of morals, the children of the Prince could not resign themselves to dissimulate the disdain which they felt for La Madame. The Princess of Bourbon amused herself one day by composing a tableau in which she put on the stage her father-in-law and the Princess; these two, who played the two principal parts, perceived the wicked allusions of the author only when they perceived the embarrassment of the spectators; but a family scene occurred as soon as the curtain dropped. Then the public decided that the favorite was responsible for the quarrel which soon separated the Duke and the Duchess of Bourbon.... [25]
La Madame had the wisdom to perceive that the moment had come to make a strategic retreat, and to seek a shelter against hostilities which, in the end, might have become perilous. It was necessary for her to find a property which was at the right distance from Chantilly and from Paris, "neither too far nor too near," where she might be forgotten by the world, but where Condé could come to see her without difficulty. She chose Betz, near Crepy-en-Valois.
The lords of Levignen had early built a stronghold above the valley of Betz. Later another home had been constructed on an island formed by the Grivette, a tributary of the Ourcq. It was in this château, already rebuilt in the seventeenth century, that Madame de Monaco established herself. A donjon, the two great round towers which flanked the wings of the principal block, the waters which bathed the feet of the walls, gave the house an almost feudal aspect. But the interior was decorated in the taste of the day, wainscoted with delicate panels, oramented with charming furniture, paintings and precious objects of art. The buildings and the adornment of the park cost more than four millions.
The Princess of Monaco passed at Betz the happiest years of her life. She guided the labors of her architects, her sculptors and her gardeners. She played at farming. Her sons, from whom her husband had formerly separated her, came to make long visits with her. Condé, wiser with age, redoubled his tenderness. When he was obliged to travel, either to Dijon to preside over the States or to the camp of Saint Omer to direct the maneuvers of the royal army, he wrote to her at length, and the refrain of his letters was: "Would that I were at Betz!" As soon as his service at court or with the army permitted it, he hastened to the Princess: he brought rare books and pictures to enrich the château; he interested himself in the works undertaken for his friend. He advised the workmen and gave his opinion upon the plans....
[Original]
Madame de Monaco renewed her youth in this "rural retreat," and the years passed without lessening the grace of her countenance, without thickening her slender waist, without slowing her light step. It is not an inhabitant of Betz who drew for us this portrait, it is Goethe, at Mayence, in 1792: "The Princess of Monaco, declared favorite of the Prince of Condé, and the ornament of Chantilly in its palmy days, appeared lively and charming. One could imagine nothing more gracious than this slender blondine, young, gay, and frivolous; not a man could have resisted her sallies. I observed her with entire freedom of mind and I was much surprised to meet the lively and joyous Philine, whom I had not expected to find there...." Philine was then fifty-three years old.
The great occupation of the Princess at Betz was to create a park in modern taste. She found in this her cares and her glory. The Due d'Har-court, former preceptor of the first son of Louis XVI, who had already distinguished himself by designing his park at La Colline near Caen, undertook to design the avenues, to form the vistas, to plan the buildings: in a certain sense he drew up the scenario of the garden. Hubert Robert made the plans of the temples and the ouins. The architect Le Gendre supervised the buildings. The site was adapted for the establishment of an English garden: on the two banks of the Grivette rose little wooded hills, and, thanks to the undulations of the landscape, sometimes gentle, sometimes brusque, it was there possible to mingle the "picturesque," the "poetic" and the "romantic." The thickets were pierced by sinuous paths; pines and perfumed exotics varied the verdure of the hornbeams and the beeches; the course of the river, which spread out into a marshy meadow, was confined within sodded banks. The forest was thinned to allow the eye to perceive the surrounding fields, and there were scattered in the valley and through the woods
Temples and tombs and rocks and caverns,
The lesson of history and that of romance.
Models were not lacking. Without speaking of the parks created in England by Kent and his disciples, there existed the admirable examples of Ermenonville, belonging to M. de Girardin, Limours, to the Countess de Brionne, Bel-Eil, to the Prince de Ligne, Maupertuis, to M. de Montesquiou, the Little Trianon and Bagatelle, Le Moulin-Joli of the engraver Watelet.... And at the same moment when Madame de Monaco was undertaking the construction of her garden, the financier Jean Joseph de La Bordé was completing, upon the advice of Robert and de Vernet, the construction of the admirable park of Méréville. The chatelaine of Betz conformed to the rules of the type.
[Original]
Possibly some day some one will write the history of these English gardens of the eighteenth century: no study would be more suitable to acquaint us with the contradictory sentiments and the confused thoughts which agitated society in the years which preceded 1789. The lectures of M. Jules Lemaître and the penetrating book of M. Lasserre upon Romanticism have recently drawn attention to the disorders caused in the French body politic by the poison of Rousseau. To illustrate such remarks, nothing would be better than the plans and the structures of the parks composed in France from 1770 to 1789. We would there behold a mingling of pedantry and sentimentality, the most refined taste united to the most silly feeling, adorable reminiscences of classical antiquity mingled with the first abortions of romantic bric-a-brac. We would especially distinguish there the laborious artifices and the childish conventions in which the pretended lovers of nature became entangled. And I do not insist upon the prodigious disaccord between ideas and manners: for this I will send you to the charming discourse which the Count de Larborde puts at the beginning of his Description des nouveaux jardins (1808), where he shows the foolish and joyous guests of the fashionable parks, laughing in "the valley of tombs," quarreling upon "the bench of friendship" and bringing to the country the tastes and the habits of the city: "while praising the pure air of the fields, they rose at two o'clock in the afternoon, they gambled until four o'clock in the morning, and while they grew tender over the simplicity of country manners, the women plastered themselves with rouge and beauty spots, and wore panniers...."
To tell the truth, the men of this period retained too much delicacy of mind not to feel the ridiculousness of the inventions in which they found their delight. But fashion was master. The theorists of "modern gardens" endeavored to make headway against the excesses of the irregular type. In his agreeable poem, Les Jardins, which contains so many ingenious lines, the worthy Abbé Delille lavished the most judicious counsels on his contemporaries and endeavored to hold the balance equal between Kent and Le Nôtre.
In his Essai sur les jardins, the modest Watelet, the creator of Le Moulin-Joli, recalled to good taste the constructors of park buildings, and pronounced it ill that one should build a mausoleum to the memory of a favorite hound (an allusion to a grotto in the gardens of Stowe which Lord Granville Temple had consecrated to the memory of Signor Fido, an Italian greyhound); unluckily, he judged that a perfect, simple and "natural" structure for a park would be the true monastery of Héloïse, and he imagined the inscription which it would have been necessary to carve "upon a myrtle"—if the climate 'permitted it—in order to move young lady visitors.... Morel, the landscape architect of Ermenonville, did not like fictitious constructions which assemble in a single locality, all centuries and all nations. But, on the other hand, Carmontelle, the designer of the fantastic constructions of Mousseaux, found that Morel's conceptions were deplorable: and neither of them was wrong. Horace Walpole, in his Essay on Gardens, praised the English gardens, but made fun of the abuse of buildings, of which hermitages seemed to him particularly inappropriate: "It is ridiculous," said he, "to go to a corner of a garden to be melancholy," and he deplored that the hypothesis of irregularity should have brought people to a love for the crooked. Baron de Tschoudy, author of the article Bosquet, in the supplement to the Encyclopédie, wrote in regard to tombs, inevitable accessories of all English gardens: "A somber object may not be displeasing in a landscape by Salvator; it is too far from the truth to sadden us; but what is its excuse? Do we go walking to be melancholy? Indeed, I would like much better to raise the tendrils of the ivy from the base of an overturned column, to read a touching inscription! How my heart would expand at the sight of a humble cabin, filled by happy people of my own kind, who would gayly spade their little enclosure and whose flocks would gambol about it! With what ecstasy would I listen to their songs in the silence of a beautiful evening! For is there anything more sweet than songs caused by happiness which one has given?"
But all this did not discourage the proprietors of English parks from building hermitages, tombs, Gothic chapels, Tartar kiosks and Chinese bridges.... In rambling through the gardens of Betz we will meet these structures and many others.
The design of the alleys at Betz has remained almost the same as it was in the eighteenth century. But, as the park has in the meantime belonged to owners who were little interested in preserving its former appearance, some of the woods have been cut, and places which were formerly bare are today grown up to copses. Rows of poplars which were assuredly not foreseen by the landscape gardeners of the Princess of Monaco grow on the banks of the Grivette. Many views have thus been modified and many vistas no longer exist. In addition, some of the old buildings have been destroyed, while only remnants remain of others. Fortunately, to guide us in our ramble and permit us to reconstruct the places as they were in the time of the Princess of Monaco, we possess a very complete description of the gardens. It was drawn up in verse by Cérutti and published January 1, 1792, under this title: Les jardins de Betz, poème accompagné de notes instructives sur les travaux champêtres, sur les arts, les lois, les révolutions, la noblesse, le clergé, etc...; fait en 1785 par M. Cérutti et publié en 1792 par M..., éditeur du "Bréviaire philosophique du feu roi de Prusse." This work, although in verse, and deplorable verse, contains a sufficiently exact list of the buildings of Betz, and the copious commentary in prose which accompanies the "poem" is sufficiently amusing.... But it will perhaps not be useless, before accepting Cérutti as a guide, to briefly recall his life and his writings.
There exists a peremptory and delightful letter of the Marquise de Créqui about him: "The administrator Cérutti has just finished his rhetoric: he promised well, twenty years ago. He has not made a step forward during this time. We see, as a matter of fact, beginnings which will become only miscarriages. In short, his verses have appeared prosaic to me and his prose profusely ornamented poverty. Do not be astonished at his ecstasy in regard to the century: he owes all to it." Here is the very man: the medal is sharply coined.
Born in Piedmont, Cérutti had entered the Company of Jesus. He taught at first with success in a college at Lyons. In other times, he would have remained the good college regent which he was at the beginning of his life and, as he possessed a certain brilliancy, he would have composed Latin verses in the manner of Father Rapin. Perhaps he would even have succeeded in the pulpit, for he had a fine bearing, an amiable countenance, a pleasing voice, measured gestures and brilliancy of mind. But he was gifted at the same time with exalted sensibility, and the century in which he lived seemed to promise everything to sensible men capable of exhaling all their sensibility in prose and verse. Cérutti declaimed and rhymed during the whole of his life.
While he was still professor at Lyons he had sent an essay on the duel to the Feast of Flora and another essay to the Academy of Dijon on this subject: "Why have modern republics acquired less splendor than the ancient republics?" Some people ascribed the dissertation of the Jesuit to Rousseau: it was the dawn of his glory. Then, to defend his company, Cérutti composed an Apologie de l'institut des Jésuites. This work brought him the favor of the Dauphin: he came to court. The poor man became smitten with a beautiful lady who was cruel to him and he fell into the deepest melancholy. He emerged from it only to compose verses on charlatanism or chess, and to give his opinion on public affairs in short pamphlets. He was very friendly to new ideas: but, at need, he put his muse to the service of his noble protectresses. One of his works acquired a certain reputation: it was an interminable apologue, The Eagle and the Owl, "a fable written for a young prince whom one dared to blame for his love for science and letters." Grimm, though he was very indulgent to Cérutti, made a remark in regard to this fable which is not lacking in subtlety or truth: "There is no sovereign philosopher, there is no celebrated man of letters, who has not received a tribute of distinguished homage from M. Cérutti. Let us congratulate philosophy on seeing the apologist of the Jesuits become today the panegyrist of the wise men of the century, praise the progress of illumination and counsel the kings to take as confessors only their conscience, good works, or some philosophic poet. All this is perhaps not so far from a Jesuit as one might imagine... When the Revolution broke out, despite his poor health and the deafness with which he was afflicted, Cérutti, who, in accordance with the strong expression of the Marquise de Créqui, owed everything to the century, wished to pay his debt to it. He multiplied his pamphlets and booklets, collaborated in the discourses of Mirabeau, and it was he who pronounced the funeral oration of the orator in the church of Saint Eustache. He was elected a member of the Legislative Assembly, edited a little newspaper, La Feuille villageoise, whose purpose was to spread the spirit of the Revolution in the country districts, and died in 1792. If he had lived a few months longer, the guillotine would doubtless have interrupted the ingenuous dream of this unfrocked Jesuit, maker of alexandrines."
What led Cérutti to describe the gardens of Betz? I despaired of discovering what circumstances might have placed him in the household of the Princess of Monaco, until I noticed, scattered through his poem, some verses which had been engraved in the Temple of Friendship at Betz. So Cérutti had been charged with composing the mottoes and the inscriptions indispensable to every English garden. Such a task was well suited to his poetic talent: it seemed to agree less well with his philosophical convictions. But the philosopher required the poet, in accomplishing his task, to tell the truth to the clergy as well as to the nobility. Thus Cérutti's conscience was appeased. Madame de Monaco, doubtless, was less satisfied. This perhaps explains why the poem was not published until 1792; the nation had then confiscated the chateau and the beautiful gardens, and the princess was living a life of exile at Mayence, where, for her glory, a better poet than Cérutti sketched her charming portrait in five lines.
Let us follow the sinuous ways which lead across the park to the different "scenes" invented for the amusement of the Princess of Monaco. The author of the poem, Les jardins de Betz, Cérutti, will revive for us the buildings which are gone. He is a prosy guide, somewhat of a ninny. But his heavy diatribes on priests, nobles and kings make the description of these childish fancies almost tragic. Behind the canvas so pleasingly covered by Hubert Robert, we might almost believe we could hear the heavy tramp of the stage hands preparing for the change of scene.
The chateau which was inhabited by the Princess of Monaco stood on an island in the Grivette, quite near the village of Betz. Its towers were reflected in the river, on which floated white swans. Baskets of flowers ornamented the banks. Farther up, the Grivette formed another isle, embellished with exotic shrubs and an oriental kiosk. A Chinese bridge joined it to the park, and little junks were moored to the margin. Pekin gave this kiosk and Nankin these light boats.
Nothing more remains of the château, which was sold during the Revolution and was totally demolished in 1817. There also remains nothing more of these Chinese fancies, by which the landscape artists of the eighteenth century endeavored to recall the true origin of irregular gardens. The rotted planks of the Chinese bridge fell into the little river long ago.
In vain also would we seek some trace of the "Druid Temple." To erect this curious construction, this "little bosky oratory," there had been chosen for cutting young oaks of equal thickness and perfectly straight; they had been cut off at the same height and planted in a circle on an isolated mound; then this circular palisade was crowned by a wooden cupola, whence were suspended pine cones and tufts of sacred mistletoe. On beholding this spectacle Cérutti burst forth:
Who would believe it? This place so pure and peaceful
Was the cruel nest of superstition!
There formerly, frightening the shadows every evening,
The Druid, surrounded by a hundred funereal torches,
Strangled a mortal at the foot of Theutatès.
It is probable that the vision of human sacrifices obsessed neither the Princess of Monaco nor her friends, when they came to rest themselves in this sort of belvedere. But Cérutti is a philosopher; and from the Druids his indignation spreads to all theocracies—Hebrew, Scandinavian, Roman. The priests of Theutatès force him to think of the fagot fires of the Inquisition, of the crimes of monasticism and of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew.... So much so that he can no longer restrain himself and passes to other structures:
Cursing the incense bearer, I leave the fatal hill.
Not far from the Druid Temple rose the ruin of a "Feudal Tower." It still stands. Time has somewhat enlarged the breaches provided by Hubert Robert when he drew the plan. But the ivy has grown for more than a century and it has given an almost venerable aspect to this factitious ruin. Everything here is imagined to show the ravage of centuries: the battlements have crumbled; the interior is empty, and we still see the traces of the floors which separated the various stories; the stone fireplaces still remain attached to the walls. Over the lintel of a door, we may read in Gothic characters an inscription in the purest "old French" of the eighteenth century. Below the tower there are dungeons. We love to imagine the blonde princess for whom this romantic ruin had been erected, coming to sit at the foot of her tower, and, in order to put her thoughts in harmony with the melancholy of this legendary site, reading, in a nice little book published by Sieur Cazin, bookseller of Rheims, some chivalrous romance by M. de Mayer, for example Geneviève de Cornouailles et le Dameisel sans nom. Even for us, this imitation is not without charm; its picturesqueness is agreeable; then we surprise here the first awakening of the romantic imagination, the birth of the modern taste for the Middle Ages, and we regret a little the time when people amused themselves by fabricating entirely new ruins, without thinking of restoring and completing the true ruins, those which are the work of time.... As to Cérutti, the spectacle of this false donjon cannot distract him from his folly:
Oh, castles of the oppressors! Oh, insulting palaces!
Walls of tyranny, asylum of rapine,
May you henceforth exist only in ruins!
Instead of those barons who vexed the universe,
We see on the remains of your deserted donjons
Cruel wolves wander, together with hungry foxes:
Under different names, they are of the same race.
And he immediately adds a note of which I reproduce only these few lines: "I am very far from confounding modern castles with ancient ones, and the castellans of today with those of former times. The modern chateaux are not soiled with the blood of their vassals, but how many are still bathed in their tears!... The castellans of today are, however, distinguished for the most part by a reputation for humanity, philosophy, politeness. But let us plumb these shining exteriors. In these so human mortals, you will find... tyrants inflexible to their inferiors. Their philosophy is still less solid than their humanity.... As to this politeness so vaunted by them, it is in the final analysis nothing but the art of graduating and seasoning scorn, so that one does not perceive it and even enjoys it.... They seem to except you, to distinguish you from the common herd; but try to emerge from it, and they will thrust you back." The whole bit would be worth quoting. It is beautiful, this outpouring of venom on account of a garden pavilion!
In the midst of a thicket, in a place which was formerly open, a little pyramid stands on a high base. The inscription which it formerly bore in golden letters: