Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 20, August 1877

by Various

"'These are the wine-vaults,' said M. Gambeau, endeavoring to throw light into the black recesses of the crypts on either hand.

"Perry stepped aside and struck one of the casks with his stick, when, stumbling over the skid on the floor, he brought the whole pile of tierces tumbling down in a heap of mould, rust and dirt. Escaping from the smudge and smell of dead wood, we went up a few steps to another level in the foundations, and came into the kitchens of the 'new house.' The main kitchen is a vaulted chamber, divided by rows of pillars, the ceiling being perhaps twenty feet in the clear, and the area of the entire floor thirty feet by fifty. At either end are stone platforms, something like a blacksmith's forge, only much larger, and over these smoke-hoods are suspended, connected with the cavernous chimneys. At each corner of these hearths are iron cranes hung with chains, and between two of these cranes the intendant pointed out an indescribable mass of something supposed to be a stag roasted whole—not at present a very toothsome-looking morsel. Dozens of pots and kettles hang from the chains, and scores of pans and ovens stand in rows underneath. Thickly scattered over the floor near these fireplaces are the bones of game and poultry, probably dragged there by rats, though we did not encounter rat or mouse or any living thing within the walls, and our friend tells us there has been no form of life in the château during his memory.

"The ascent from the kitchens is by an inclined plane, a broad roadway, up which the mammoth triumphs of last-century culinary skill were hauled on trucks, several of which vehicles stand near the foot of the way. The banquet-hall occupies nearly one-half the entire first floor of the 'new house.' We entered this magnificent apartment at the lower end from a dark lobby, and it seemed ablaze with light and color, though we presently noticed that only the ceiling and upper half of the room were illuminated, the floor and furniture being in shadow and covered with dust. On one side are six large windows opening on the terrace, the lower sashes overgrown with vines and blocked up with accumulated rubbish, while the upper panes are comparatively clean and clear. The ceiling is divided into panels by heavy carved and gilded mouldings, the panels painted with mythological designs in the style of the seventeenth century. The early morning sun lit up these splendors, making the white and gold and thousand bright tints shine like the array of Solomon, while from the height of our heads to the tiles under foot the entire area was covered with one monotonous coating of dark-gray dust.

"The other side of the room is nearly filled by the great fireplace and two doors, united in one design of carved woodwork extending to the ceiling. At the upper end are also two doors, and between these a raised dais overhung by a canopy of purple Utrecht velvet. Two tables extend the whole length of the hall, while on the dais is a smaller table, with but six chairs. Two of these chairs are very rich and curious, and stand in the centre facing the room—evidently seats of honor. They are of ebony, wrought in the most intricate and bewildering patterns, while each convolution and entanglement is followed and almost covered by a running vine of inlaid gold wire.

"The other seats about the room are mostly tabourets, covered with Cordova leather, embossed in gold and colors and tooled by hand in free arabesque designs. Two long tables extend through the room, and a smaller one occupies the dais: these tables are literally 'boards'—heavy planks jointed together resting on solid, richly-carved trestles, all black with age. They are apparently covered with a full service for a grand banquet, and the intendant said they had never been disturbed since they were prepared for a marriage-feast on the day when the château was deserted.

"Perry's quick eye first rested on a large piece of quaint and uncouth form in the centre of the dais-table, which he at once said must be the masterpiece of the collection. Imagine my surprise and disappointment on wiping off some of the dirt to find it nothing but coarse crockery, somewhat resembling queensware, ornamented with blue enameled figures such as decorate old preserve-jars at home. I said it looked to me like a foot-bath, but Perry insisted on examining it, and, removing the cover, found the bottom was a silver plate with this inscription: 'Presented by His Most Christian Majesty, Louis XIV., king of France and Navarre, to his devoted vassal and servitor, Melun du Guesclin, Sieur de Courance, Dec. 25, 1714.' Perry declared he recognized it as a veritable piece of that rare faïence made by Pierre Clerissy for the Grand Monarch when he coined all his plate to pay the army in Flanders. The king subsequently gave most of the set to Villars and his officers after the Peace of Utrecht. Perry has seen almost every collection in Europe, and he says there are not fifty pieces of this ware in existence.

"For my part, I was more interested in the zephyr-glasses I found on this table of the early Venetian manufacture, delicate and graceful as the flacons of Fairyland. There are imitations of this exquisite glass now made, but there were none a hundred years ago, and these are unquestionably genuine. A remarkable chalice also attracted our notice, and we decided it to be either the bridal or the christening-cup of the Courance family. It is a mass of solid silver, about fourteen inches high, on a base of ebony and pearl: it is wrought out of block silver in the Genoese method, and is designed in deep panels divided by wreathed columns: these panels are covered with inscriptions, seemingly of names and dates, most of them illegible—'Robillard Puyraveau du Guesclin, 1602,' being the earliest we could make out. We found several varieties, or, as Perry says, 'classes,' of porcelain—beautiful plates of Sèvres, painted in the most charming designs by masters to us unknown—and of the different sorts of this ware there must be several hundred pieces, each a gem of price to-day.

"Of course we flew from one thing to another, and did not wait upon any order of our going about, nor did we examine a tenth part of the treasures on the tables: but it strikes me now that the wealth in silver alone there must be simply enormous. The intendant could tell us nothing positive, and everything is so black and encrusted with dust that we could not see with certainty: but it is probable that what appears to be family plate, literally covering these tables, is the Courance heirloom silver. Much of it is very old, as shown by the antique designs and the marks of wear. Near the centre of one of the long tables we cleared up eighteen or twenty beautiful pieces of the Italian school established in Paris under the patronage of Francis I., and on the dais-table a full set, the exquisite work of the Antwerp smiths, dated 1598.

"We had no means for brushing off the pictures, and M. Gambeau was not in the least inclined to help us, being not at all pleased with our disturbing the dust of ages so freely. However, the walls are in a good state, and we could see very well that between the windows they are decorated by Boucher with the elaborate and formal panels of Paris in his time. At the lower end of the room is a very large and magnificent fruit- and flower-piece by Jan van Huysum of Amsterdam. On each side of the dais are grand entrances from the main hall of the 'new house,' but the floor is broken up at this end of the salon, probably by rats, and rather than risk a fall we returned by the kitchen passage.

"Crossing under the grand stairway, we tumbled through a wood-closet into the drawing-room, a splendid apartment on the first floor of the 'new house,' corresponding to the banquet-salon, only that the side wall, instead of having windows, is penetrated by three wide arches opening into a suite of state apartments extending through the old château. The most noticeable things in these rooms are the hangings, arranged apparently in chronological series, beginning with the quaint and curious needlework covering the bare stone walls of the red tower, and continuing in regular order through the several rooms, to the masterpieces of Lebrun and Mignard. Some of them have fallen, and lie in mouldering heaps on the floor, but most of them are still in place, and in none of the royal palaces I have visited is the progress of the art of tapestry so fully illustrated as here. We could have spent the day with delight in comparing the different specimens, but our half-suffocated guide protested so decidedly against our dust-raising that we had to desist long before we wanted to. The furniture of these rooms is also arranged in historic order, but of course the succession is not so marked as in the case of the tapestries; still, between the rude black wooden settles of the earliest period and the gilded and brocaded fauteuils of the Louis Quatorze salon the contrast is sufficiently striking. The splendors of the great drawing-room are still fresh: the white enamel is brilliant, the ormolu untarnished, and the rich upholstery gorgeous as when first received from Paris. A good American 'spring cleaning' would put this, and indeed most of the apartments, in condition for immediate occupancy.