Part 15

A curtain over a door is raised and we are in the bedchamber of Catherine de’Medici. Here the work of restoration is happy and sufficiently complete. Here is the bed of the ambitious Florentine, a bed with torso columns the carved top of which supports a royal crown. On one side is the Queen’s _prie-dieu_ with her Hours open; on the other is her toilette-table with her opiate boxes; the whole is framed in tapestries of high gloss which give to this chamber the sombre and somewhat sinister character that befits it. These curious tapestries were certainly made for Chaumont, since we see the Castle reproduced in one of their panels. We suppose that they date back to Charles d’Amboise who rebuilt Chaumont towards the end of the reign of Louis XI., or at least to his son, Marshal Chaumont, the friend and companion of Louis XII.

Catherine was in possession of Chaumont for nine years, from 1550 to 1559, that is to say, during almost the entire reign of her husband. This was the difficult and humiliating period of her life; that of her struggle with the Constable Montmorency and Diana of Poitiers. The curious _bahut_ that is admired in this chamber must have had many state secrets concealed in its innumerable drawers, including many plots, baffled or prepared, and many formidable projects. This chamber, in which Catherine nursed her troubles as a queen and an outraged woman, possessed one great advantage for her. She had at hand her two guides, her two customary consolations,--Astrology and Religion. By that door she could penetrate into the tower where she cast horoscopes in company with Ruggieri; by the other one she could enter directly into the chapel.

This pretty chapel forms a striking contrast with its neighbouring tower. Just in proportion as the chamber in the tower is deaf, cold and dumb, and admits a sinister light by its single window, pierced in a wall of more than three metres’ thickness, to the same degree is the chapel elegant, coquettish and smiling. Windows of bold contours pour a flood of rosy light upon the choir, tiled with white faïence sewn with blue crosses, producing a charming effect. Pretty bas-reliefs in oak upon a gold background form the base of the altar. A tall and fine oak chair, carved and emblazoned, which is said to have belonged to Georges d’Amboise, stands beside the sanctuary. A red cardinal’s hat, attached to the vault, hangs above this arm-chair.

This chapel terminates the edifice most happily. The apartments that precede it have seen many masters pass through; they recall many perfidies, struggles, and illustrious and unfortunate existences. After all this tumult of glorious or withered memories, our mind, like our eyes, finds grateful repose in the smiling and calm sanctuary. It reaches God by an insensible and natural law of contrast as the sole master who has not changed in this abode, the sole guest who has never left behind him anything but good memories and consolation.

The Castle of Chaumont, as it has come down to us, is a building of the Fifteenth Century. It was erected by Charles Amboise on the ruins of a more ancient fortress razed by order of Louis XI. and which itself had been built about 1159 on the remains of a strong castle destroyed by Thibault V., Count of Blois and Champagne. The first and most ancient of these constructions had been built about 908 by Eudes I., Count of Blois, the eldest son of the celebrated Thibault the Trickster.

WINDSOR CASTLE

THE MARQUIS OF LORNE

From out the dimness of England’s ancient story, Windsor and Winchester, and Camelot and Caerleon are raised aloft, lit with the light of the romance of Arthur. Warwick, Dover, and Belvoir, and Alnwick and Conway and Caernarvon, the tower of London and again Windsor, rise from the times of the Norman dominion. Edinburgh, Kenilworth, Penshurst, and Naworth; Carisbrooke, and again Windsor, remain in our sight to recall most forcibly the period when “our loyal passion for our temperate kings” began to make these castle-landmarks of our story scarcer in the land.

Through all the long review of points of time that challenge observation, Windsor stands the most enduring and the most majestic of the places around which gather the memories of all ages of England’s greatness.

In the valley of England’s famous river the Normans built two strong towers, that of London and that of Windsor. This stream nursed the cradle of Norman power, and saw the renewed birth of English liberty, when the stranger-barons, whose fathers subdued England, wrung from their king the great charter of the rights of the subject.

No wonder William found the hill a good place, for there is no fairer view in England. That from Richmond is not so extensive; and at Windsor he possessed besides, a grand forest country for his sports. His men could put off their chain-mail and pointed helmets with the straight face-guards, and give chase to the red deer, which then abounded all over the country, the hunters having no metal about them except the sharp, plain Norman spur on their heels, and the iron on the tips of their arrows.

Now the distant smoke of the mightiest city in the world can be descried on the horizon. In those days so rarely was smoke visible, that signals were transmitted by kindling fires at market-places, and the clear air knew not the fumes that make the white river-fogs dark-yellow in colour, and stifling to breathe. The chequered appearance of the nearer landscape, divided by hedgerow and field to the north and east, is modern; but to the south and west the woods of oak must present much their appearance of the olden days. No engineer has altered the river, or been able even to abate its occasional winter floods, which turn the banks above Windsor into a shallow lake. The further landscape is still what it was. It is still a wooded land. There are no sterile patches, no ugly intervals, no naked tracts of sand or earth. All is green, and better than in the early days in this--that the cheerfulness of peace is on it, and the “stately homes” are more frequent, and the villages need no rampart, but expand in security, and, it must be added, often with a system of architecture to which distance alone can lend enchantment.

[Illustration: WINDSOR CASTLE, ENGLAND.]

The Castle was very strong. These keeps were built so that there was no chance of a surprise. Massive gates placed in security beyond deep ditches were let into the walls, well defended by battlement and flanking towers. Drawbridges and portcullises might be forced, but there the enemy only found himself at the beginning of his work.

Narrow passages led to other defences, and the keep itself was reached by a stair so narrow that one man only could enter at a time.

The walls of the lowest story showed only tiny shot- or loopholes. The second story showed more of these, but so narrow that no torch could be thrown in. The third story had windows so high in the wall that arrows or bolts shot from below could only hit the arch of the opening, to fall back harmless.

The top stories were filled with weapons that could throw darts, stones, and heavy balls, so assailants could not easily take a Norman keep.

The Normans had taste as well as strength, and gradually the whole neighbourhood was made more beautiful. During reign after reign the kings showered favours on their finest possession.

Around the Keep arose a Central Ward--that is the space outside was enclosed with towers and walls and gardens. Then lower down the ridge another king built a church, and beyond it again other great towers, as the town arose, under the Castle’s shelter and protection. This part was again flanked and made strong, and called the Lower Ward. The church was dedicated first to St. Edmond, and then to St. George.

But on the other side of the Keep the monarchs built themselves something in the way of lodging far better than the small rooms of the Keep, for a wide range of palace apartments existed there before even the days of the Tudors. These were extended and improved from the days of Queen Elizabeth to the days of Queen Victoria. These buildings formed the Upper Ward.

The effect of this mass of buildings, dominated by the Round Tower, is very fine, and no better example exists of the feudal fortress. Whether seen from the river, with the red-roofed houses of the town clustered below the great white walls, or from the park, where Windsor rises like an enchanted castle above the wide greensward, which is varied with the groves of ancient oak and beech, there is nothing to compare with it.

All who speak the English tongue may be equally proud of the palace strength of their great forefathers.

Chambers built over castle gateways were often used as prisons for those whose lot was not to be made too hard. For the unfortunates who were to be severely dealt with, a far more horrible prison was provided in the shape of a dungeon with a narrow orifice above, through which the victim was let down with cords into a vault, having often no windows. Places like this must have soon become foul and fatal to the captives.

At Windsor there is a very fair prison above the gateway, through which you must pass before entering the great stair that climbs the mound of the Keep. Although the windows are narrow they give light enough, and on the walls are the names of the men who here, in their durance vile, amused themselves by writing their name or making their mark by scratches on the stone. Sometimes they added a little tracing of their arms.

These small rooms are among the few which remain exactly as they existed in the Middle Ages. In other apartments there has been much alteration. Most of the ceilings of Verrio are gone, the ancient tapestries have been removed, the heavy ornamentation of the times of the Georges, and almost all the still ponderous yet better decorations of Jacobean times, have disappeared.

But the towers which held celebrated prisoners of State are yet pointed out. The two most notable are just under the hill on which the great round Keep is built. One of these has been raised high, and a very narrow stair communicates with each of its little rooms. Here King John of France had many a long hour in which to repent of his bad generalship at Poitiers, where the young Black Prince took him prisoner. Here he was brought after that ride through the streets of London, which must have been to him so humiliating, although he was shown much courtesy by his captor.

It was the opposite tower across the Upper Ward, with better accommodations that Henry V. of England assigned to the use of the young King of Scotland, who had been illegally captured during a time of truce. Young James of Scotland’s uncle, the old Duke of Albany, was not supposed to be particularly sorry to have his sovereign and nephew kept in England, for it gave Albany all power in Scotland. So at Windsor James remained for nearly twenty years, becoming expert in literature and in knightly exercises.

The English were kind to him, and it was from this building of his captivity, now called Edward the Third’s Tower, that he saw his future Queen, a daughter of the House of Beaufort, walking in the garden at the base of the Keep.

His long residence in England was beneficial to James in many ways, and when he was at last allowed to return to his northern kingdom, he entered it the most accomplished knight of his time. He was much beloved by the English, with whom he managed, when on the throne, to keep on fair terms. His reign was illustrious, and worthy of a better close than that of the tragic assassination by which it was ended.

We need not think of all the terrible things that have happened at Windsor Castle--of prisoners dying by inches in dark dungeons; of men mutilated for treason, like the Earl of Eu; of the rare attacks the Castle has been called to endure; of the ruin wrought in glorious chapel and halls by Cromwell’s soldiery. For Windsor has chiefly been associated with the brighter and more cheery events of the national life.

Here, more often than in any other royal home, were the joy-bells rung for the births and marriages of our princes; although here, too, the funeral knell has also been often heard; for it is the tomb, as it is the dwelling-place, of the monarchs of England.

The most daring and most romantic of the Constables of the Round Tower, the fiery Prince Rupert, made his rooms beautiful with pictures, with tapestry, and with ornament. At once an artist and a warrior, such as few countries have produced, he lived to see the palace a prey to the spoiler.

Earlier as well as later days are recalled by the buildings below, which are now devoted to the library. They overlook the Thames and England’s great school of Eton. From their windows one gazes across the river far below, on the roofs and towers of the college founded by Henry VI.

Between the groups of houses and the thickly-scattered trees one may catch glimpses of bands of boys in the distance playing football or cricket, or rowing on the Thames. The poet Gray, looking on the same cheerful scene, wrote gloomily, “Alas! regardless of their doom, the little victims play.” Well, they are fortunate victims, and the men who have been at school there would gladly live over again the years they spent at Eton.

It was in this part of the Castle that Queen Elizabeth lived and moved and had her imperious being. It was in a little chamber in a turret here that Queen Anne received the despatch from Marlborough wishing her joy on the victory of Blenheim. He wrote on a scrap of paper from the field, “Your Majesty’s troops have had a great victory, and Marshall Tallard is in my coach.” He had, with Prince Eugene, achieved one of the most fruitful successes of that reign of victories.

The old look of a fortress has given way to that of the palace, fearing no foeman; and long may this be so! But the Castle could be made strong against everything save long-range artillery. The walls could contain a large force, and its underground apartments have the solidity of bomb-proof. Sentries pace its ramparts, and a regiment of guards is also at hand.

Nor is it dependent for water on river or outside supply. Not long ago a room in the Round Tower was complained of as always cold. The floor was taken up, and there lay a vast circular stone with great iron rings. By these it was lifted, and a deep, carefully-constructed Norman well was discovered, going down to the level of the Thames itself.

The interior of the group of rooms extending from the north side of the Norman Gate to the angle at which the red-coated porters await visitors, now devoted to a fine library, is not always shown. But for those who have leave, a most interesting collection of medals, illuminated manuscripts, ancient buildings, and Oriental miniatures, is displayed. Handsome Elizabethan chimney-pieces, on one of which the great Queen herself is represented, warm the north wall. The windows on the other, embayed in presses full of well-arranged literature, look out towards that far-off church, the spire of which is easily recognised through glass, where Gray wrote his immortal _Elegy_. One little room is that in which Queen Anne was sitting when Marlborough’s despatch announcing the victory of Blenheim was brought to her.

Where the library ends is the first of a set of splendid apartments, used only by the public and the greatest sovereigns. Paintings by Zuccarelli, who, at his best, is always most pleasing, are hung over cabinets containing very beautiful porcelain. Onwards, on the north side, room after room can be most profitably examined, for the pictures are of particular interest, either on account of their history or their art. Formerly the Sovereign’s family lived in this part of the Castle. Now they live on the southern side of the Upper Ward, where dwelt in other days the great officers of state.

THE PALACE OF URBINO

JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS

The sunset was almost spent, and a four days’ moon hung above the Western Apennines, when we took our first view of the palace. It is a fancy-thralling work of wonder seen in that dim twilight; like some castle reared by Atlante’s magic for imprisonment of Ruggiero, or palace sought in fairy-land by Astolf winding his enchanted horn. Where shall we find its like, combining, as it does, the buttressed battlemented bulk of mediæval strongholds with the airy balconies, suspended gardens, and fantastic turrets of Italian pleasure-houses? This unique blending of the feudal past with the Renaissance spirit of the time when it was built, connects it with the art of Ariosto--or more exactly with Boiardo’s epic. Duke Federigo planned his palace at Urbino just at the moment when the Count of Scandiano had begun to chaunt his lays of Roland in the Castle of Ferrara. Chivalry, transmuted by the Italian genius into something fanciful and quaint, survived as a frail work of art. The man-at-arms of the Condottieri still glittered in gilded hauberks. Their helmets waved with plumes and bizarre crests. Their surcoats blazed with heraldries; their velvet caps with medals bearing legendary emblems. The pomp and circumstance of feudal war had not yet yielded to the cannon of the Gascon or the Switzer’s pike. The fatal age of foreign invasions had not begun for Italy. Within a few years Charles VIII.’s holiday excursion would reveal the internal rottenness and weakness of her rival states, and the peninsula for half a century to come would be drenched in the blood of Frenchmen, Germans, Spaniards, fighting for her cities as their prey. But now Lorenzo de’Medici was still alive. The famous policy which bears his name held Italy suspended for a golden time in false tranquillity and independence. The princes who shared his culture and his love of art were gradually passing into modern noblemen, abandoning the savage feuds and passions of more virile centuries, yielding to luxury and scholarly enjoyments. The castles were becoming courts, and despotisms won by force were settling into dynasties.

[Illustration: THE PALACE OF URBINO, ITALY.]

It was just at this epoch that Duke Federigo built his castle at Urbino. One of the ablest and wealthiest Condottieri of his time, one of the best instructed and humanest of Italian princes, he combined in himself the qualities which mark that period of transition. And these he impressed upon his dwelling-house, which looks backward to the mediæval fortalice and forward to the modern palace. This makes it the just embodiment in architecture of Italian romance, the perfect analogue of the “_Orlando Innamorato_.” By comparing it with the castle of the Estes at Ferrara and the Palazzo del Te of the Gonzagas at Mantua, we place it in its right position between mediæval and Renaissance Italy, between the age when principalities arose upon the ruins of commercial independence and the age when they became dynastic under Spain.

The exigencies of the ground at his disposal forced Federigo to give the building an irregular outline. The fine façade, with its embayed _loggie_ and flanking turrets, is placed too close upon the city ramparts for its due effect. We are obliged to cross the deep ravine which separates it from a lower quarter of the town, and take our station near the Oratory of S. Giovanni Battista, before we can appreciate the beauty of its design, or the boldness of the group it forms with the cathedral dome and tower and square masses of numerous outbuildings. Yet this peculiar position of the palace, though baffling to a close observer of its details, is one of singular advantage to its inhabitants. Set on the verge of Urbino’s towering eminence, it fronts a wave-tossed sea of vales and mountain summits towards the rising and the setting sun. There is nothing but illimitable air between the terraces and loggias of the Duchess’s apartments and the spreading pyramid of Monte Catria.

A nobler scene is nowhere swept from palace windows than this, which Castiglione touched in a memorable passage at the end of his _Cortegiano_. To one who in our day visits Urbino, it is singular how the slight indications of this sketch, as in some silhouette, bring back the antique life, and link the present with the past--a hint, perhaps, for reticence in our descriptions. The gentlemen and ladies of the court had spent a summer night in long debate on love, rising to the height of mystical Platonic rapture on the lips of Bembo, when one of them exclaimed, “The day has broken!” “He pointed to the light which was beginning to enter by the fissures of the windows. Whereupon we flung the casements wide upon that side of the palace which looks towards the high peak of Monte Catria, and saw that a fair dawn of rosy hue was born already in the eastern skies, and all the stars had vanished except the sweet regent of the heaven of Venus, who holds the border-lands of day and night; and from her sphere it seemed as though a gentle wind were breathing, filling the air with eager freshness, and waking among the numerous woods upon the neighbouring hills the sweet-toned symphonies of joyous birds.”