Part 25

The ridge on which the castle extends from north to south is long and narrow and of very irregular form. It was formerly entirely covered with buildings that surrounded the inner courtyard. The single main entrance originally consisted of three or four gateways constructed one behind another with intermediate spaces, on the north-east. The outermost of these, supplied with a high tower, stood close to the narrow and steep approach which is cut in the rock and leads to the top of the mount. This outermost tower, it is conjectured, overhung this steep path, so that in case of attack the foe might be more easily repelled. The innermost gateway, which led into the stronghold itself, is the only one now standing. Formerly it was furnished with a drawbridge which recently has been changed to a strong bridge of stone. Above the gateway, rises the so-called _Ritterhaus_ (knight-house) which retains evidences of having been much higher formerly than it now is. It probably formed the tower-gate which, in 1558, was partly demolished and brought into closer relations with the other buildings. The _Ritterhaus_ served as the dwelling of the knights whom the landgrave assembled about him for the defence of the castle: it is now the dwelling of the Castellan. The style of those buildings still standing shows that they belong to the Fifteenth Century, and only the lower part of the walls is of the date at which the castle was founded, at the end of the Eleventh or some time during the Twelfth Century. The relief carved on the wall over the gateway also belongs to the same date. Its meaning cannot be solved. Popularly, it is called the Jonah; but it represents a knight about to be devoured by a dragon. The coat-of-arms hanging at the knight’s neck appears to bear the imperial eagle. Another perhaps equally ancient relief, which is found on the west wall not far from the square tower, is also to be noted. It represents a man sitting on a lion and tearing its jaws apart: it refers to the fact that the landgrave Ludwig the Good once single-handed bound a lion that his father-in-law had sent to him, and that had escaped from its cage in the courtyard.

Through the door under the _Ritterhaus_, we enter the courtyard of the Wartburg, and see to the west one of the continuations of the _Ritterhaus_. Adjoining this to the south, are other buildings; among others, that containing Luther’s chamber. On the left, to the east, runs a long high wall from the _Ritterhaus_ to the chief building standing on that side. This wall is covered with a defence-way of very simple form resembling those still occasionally found in old city walls. The first chief building already mentioned on that side was formerly called the _Musshaus_ (house of ease and leisure). Between it and the above-mentioned wall at the end of the courtyard, was originally a high wall with a wide doorway, so that the whole rear part of the castle, the residence of the ruling family, was separated from the front part where the knights and attendants dwelt. According to ancient report, the _Musshaus_ was only a tall, plain block, though the interior was not devoid of luxury, and here the landgrave’s family dwelt.

Adjoining the south side of the _Musshaus_ was the _Landgravenhaus_ (landgrave-house), also called the great or high house, which was devoted to ceremonials in the days of the landgraves. It is a stately structure that originated perhaps in the time of Ludwig III. in the middle of the Twelfth Century. In Germany it stands alone as a princely private building of such dimensions that still preserves its original form in the Byzantine or Roman style of architecture. In these respects, there is no ancestral secular building that can compare with it abroad also. On the west, it is connected with the Minnesinger Hall which formerly formed the chief entrance to the above hall through broad windows, divided up into round arches by little columns, for the other three sides had no entrance. The columns rest upon a low sill, so that people can look between them into the hall; so that it is to be presumed that the passage thus formed was intended for spectators. The little columns are ornamented with delicate capitals and volutes. They have Attic bases. In the time of Friedrich I. this hall was adorned with mural paintings of battles and other memorable occurrences of the life of the period. Traces of these paintings were still visible at the beginning of the present century.

CHÂTEAU D’AMBOISE

JULES LOISELEUR

The Castle of Amboise is placed at the entrance of Touraine like the jealous sentinel guarding the entrance to the Garden of the Hesperides. It is not a palace like the castle of Blois, nor a villa of a royal mistress like Chenonceaux, nor a sort of immense convent full of mysterious cells like Chambord: it is a military place, a veritable fortress of the Middle Ages upon which is grafted a castle of the Fifteenth Century.

This formidable military position has been at all times the key of this beautiful province. When Cæsar marched against the Armoricans, there lodged here a Roman garrison. From the height of these impregnable rocks, the counts of Anjou, and later the Plantagenets, their descendants, these worthy sons of the Black Falcon restrained within their talons the slightest movements of Touraine, while they kept a jealous watch over the counts of Blois and Champagne, who possessed but a few leagues away the sombre fortress of Chaumont. Amboise and Chaumont were the two advanced sentinels of these two impregnable neighbours. These solid walls served under Charles VII. as the rampart for the monarchy menaced by the English invasion; they protected the Catholic royalty of Francis II. against the stroke of Renaudie; they have enclosed turn by turn the illustrious victims of royal ingratitude like the Marshall de Gié, powerful rebels like the princes of Vendôme, accomplices of Chalais, state prisoners like Fouquet and Lauzun, and the vanquished like Abd-el-Kader. When you interrogate these enormous towers, these menacing battlements, and these inaccessible walls, you draw from them no memories of joy, peace, or love; nothing but bloody deeds spring from them; nothing but memories of mourning are evoked.

Buildings have, even more than mankind, their own physiognomy upon which their history is reflected. History and physiognomy are here in perfect union. No romancer, even were he possessed with Melusine’s enchanted ring, would dare to place an intrigue of love behind these walls impressed with deep wounds of gun-shots, or, if he did so, it would doubtless be on account of that law of contrasts, so loved of Nature, that places the nests of the warbler in the mouths of deserted cannon.

[Illustration: CHÂTEAU D’AMBOISE, FRANCE.]

Stop upon this old bridge constructed by Hugues d’Amboise, one of the heroes of Tasso. From here you will take in the entire imposing and truly Roman view of the powerful citadel, from the Gate of the Lions, which opens upon the moat dug by Cæsar, as far as the two towers, now decapitated, of the ancient donjon above the trunks of which rises the slender spire of the Chapel of St. Hubert. Remove by imagination the narrow and common dwellings that encroach upon the old castle. Throw into the Loire the modern levee and quay that obstruct it here, and picture the noble river freely beating the base of the fortress. The great tower erected by Charles VIII. casts its shadow upon the Loire, on which opens a door that forms on this side the only entrance to the castle. Further back, and as if lost in the shadow of the immense tower, is the principal building of this habitation, the base of which dates from the counts of Amboise and whose five windows pierced at a considerable height on the side overlooking the Loire, although they are on the ground floor on the side of the court, seem like vigilant eyes upon the country. Then by mental effort throw down the terrace in front of these windows, the work of Louis-Philippe, who caused this façade to lose some of its crabbed countenance; close up the five rounded bay windows, also the work of the same King, which light the kitchens; in a word, leave nothing that juts out upon that straight and perpendicular façade except the balcony that overhangs the five casements of which we shall speak, and upon which open the large windows of the royal apartment. You will then have an approximate idea of what Amboise was in the time of Henri III., when Du Cerceau conceived the plan in 157–.

This balcony from which you look upon the Loire, is the work of Louis XII.: it is an historical monument. Nothing could be less complicated, nothing could be more formidable in its simplicity. It was upon this balcony that the chief ringleaders of the conspiracy against Amboise were hanged. The bodies, attached to these solid bars, hung in the open air; the stroke of a poignard cut the rope and they fell into the Loire: a means of burial as rapid as had been the judgment and the execution. Such is the Castle of Amboise seen from the Loire.

The tunnel, the stairway, and even the vault are modern works, which in moulding this old castle to our ideas of comfort deprive it of its feudal character. It is by the southern tower that we must ascend if we wish to be deeply impressed by this character. In the time of Charles VIII., this tower was the only entrance for knights and litters, for the one on the north corresponding to it bathes its foot in the Loire, as we have said. It was through the southern tower that Charles V. entered when he crossed France in 1539. This solid and immovable work is certainly the largest construction of the kind in France. The thick masonry that forms the nucleus of it is in itself a respectable size. The stairway turns four times from the base to the summit around this hollowed-out centre, and reaches a height of more than 600 feet.

This stairway, or rather these steps in helix, rest upon an ogival vault. Carvings sustain the points from which the large arches spring and terminate the nerves of the little arches. These carvings present all kinds of little figures, some of which are fantastic, others grotesque, and others again indecent, for the artists of the late Gothic period were willing enough to execute the latter to please their patrons who enjoyed these grotesques and the laughter they caused far more than fine arabesques. Monks abound in these sculptures. This one holds his stomach in both hands, like a gastronome punished by his exploits; this one, suffering from a terrible toothache, makes a grimace like one possessed. Most of these figures have been mutilated with blows of the bayonet by the prisoners who for about fifteen years were shut up in this tower in 1815. Louis-Philippe began its restoration.

About one-third of the way up, a little stone step, pierced in the outer wall, leads to a kind of hollowed-out rostrum, where, if we may believe tradition, Louis XII. harangued the multitude, when an attack on the municipal franchise aroused the inhabitants of the town of Amboise, or Petit-Fort. Happy time! when revolutionary uprisings could be calmed by orations!

At the top of this tower you see the gigantic horns of a stag that formerly ornamented the base of the Chapel of Saint Hubert. This is more than ten feet high, and was made at the order of Charles VIII. with such art and truthfulness of imitation that allows the guide to show it to unsophisticated tourists for the natural horns of a full-grown and gigantic stag killed in some forest in the Brobdinagian country.

The donjon, the first dwelling of the lords of Amboise, occupied the west, the space comprised between the two little headless towers which still exist.

On the side of the Loire, opposite the building of the Sept-Vertues, there rise other buildings belonging to Amboise, but they were restored by Charles VIII. and completely changed by Louis XII. and Francis I. There are to be found the apartment of the King and Queen, due to the last prince, and close beside it, that curious chamber which was supported by four massive pillars of masonry, and to which no entrance was possible except by a single opening pierced through the floor. This was the work of Catharine de’Medici, after one of her astrologers had forewarned her of the fall of a great edifice. She thought that, by means of these material precautions, she could escape the menace of Fortune which allowed her to see the fall of quite a different edifice to Amboise: that of the Valois dynasty, so laboriously restored by her efforts.

The chapel is the perfect antithesis of the castle.

Just as the one is sombre, severe, dominating and sinistrously beautiful, on account of its mass and size, the other is bright, efflorescent, and smiling, delicately embroidered and pierced like lace.

This charming chapel, proudly encamped upon a rocky peak, is one of the best products of the third ogival style of that period of Flamboyant Gothic that immediately preceded the Renaissance. But it is not, as has been believed until now, the work of Italian artists brought from Naples by Charles VIII. That is an error in which even M. Jules Quicherat shared, but which was obliterated at the recent discovery of an itemized account of all the expenses of furnishing and decorating the Chapel of Amboise and for the contiguous apartments in the towers. This precious document states that the expenses commenced in 1490 and continued until 1494. Now the year 1494, in which Charles VIII. finished ornamenting and furnishing the Chapel of Amboise, is precisely the one in which he started on his expedition to Italy. The honour of this charming conception then reverts wholly to native artists.

The façade is entirely occupied by a large ogival entrance, the top of which presents one of those great, circular rose-windows,--the characteristic sign of the Flamboyant Gothic. An authority no less exact for the construction of this façade is shown in the form of the two doors cut in the entrance, these showing that surbased arch so common in the English buildings of the reigns of Henry VII. and Henry VIII., and which derives from them the name of the Tudor arch. These two doors, separated by a pilaster and niche, support a stone bas-relief, the principal motive of which is the conversion of Saint Hubert.

A gigantic stag stands in the centre of the composition. Between his horns there rises a flamboyant cross. The ardent huntsman stops in terror at this sight, he bends one knee, and with one hand restrains his horse, while with the other he salutes the miraculous sign destined to convert him to Christianity: instead of the Aquitaine Nimrod, the persecutor of the forests of Ardennes, he is only an apostle, the successor of Saint Lambert. A host of wild animals form the accessories of this picture, as if the entire population of the forests is taking part in the conversion of the patron of huntsmen. Saint Anthony, in a corner to the left, contemplates Saint Christopher bearing his divine burden.

This bas-relief, somewhat clumsy in workmanship, does not give the slightest idea of the charming delicacy of the interior. The banal and rather strained comparison of lace woven by the fays, is more than a truthful one here. Imagine two rows of _point d’ Alençon_, half a metre high, festooned the entire length of the walls to form a series of canopies and niches in corbelling, diversified by graceful little columns with prismatic arches. Carvings and figures, inexhaustible in variety, terminate the pendentives of these niches. Not one of these motives is repeated a second time: vine leaves, acanthus leaves, holly leaves, oak leaves, cabbage leaves, and thistle leaves,--the entire architectural flora of the Fifteenth Century is here under our eyes mingled with a host of real and fantastic animals. There are also some human figures: a little monk in a corner by the side of the altar blows the trumpet in a whimsical manner, exactly like the one that serves for a reading-desk in the _Temptation_ by Callot.

Upon this profusion of lace, of foliage, of crockets, and stags’ horns, upon this mass of curled leaves, pinked leaves, and leaves turned and twisted in a hundred fashions, there falls a glowing light, sifted through the windows, where vermilion, orpiment and ultramarine are the dominating colours. These windows, upon which saints are represented in life-size, were made in Sèvres, some of them after the designs of the Princess Marie d’Orléans. Perhaps there is a slight false note in the selection of these strong colours. Light tones and yellowish and whitish tints were generally preferred at the end of the Fifteenth Century. It was this gradual abandoning of colour that fifty years later engendered the _grisailles_.

Before it was restored by Louis-Philippe, this church had been used for twenty years as the hall for the castle’s police. One may judge by that alone of the seriousness of the mutilations.

BLARNEY CASTLE

MR. AND MRS. S. C. HALL

Few places in Ireland are more familiar to English ears than Blarney; the notoriety is attributable, first, to the marvellous qualities of its famous “stone,” and next, to the extensive popularity of the song,--

“The groves of Blarney, they are so charming.”

When or how the stone obtained its singular reputation, it is difficult to determine; the exact position among the ruins of the castle is also a matter of doubt; the peasant-guides humour the visitor according to his capacity for climbing, and direct, either to the summit or the base, the attention of him who desires to “greet it with a holy kiss.” He who has been dipped in the Shannon is presumed to have obtained, in abundance, the gift of that “civil courage” which makes an Irishman at ease and unconstrained in all places and under all circumstances; and he who has kissed the Blarney stone is assumed to be endowed with a fluent and persuasive tongue, although it may be associated with insincerity; the term “Blarney” being generally used to characterize words that are meant neither to be “honest nor true.” It is conjectured that the comparatively modern application of the term “Blarney” first had existence when the possessor, Lord Clancarty, was a prisoner to Sir George Carew, by whom he was subjected to several examinations touching his loyalty, which he was required to prove by surrendering his strong castle to the soldiers of the Queen; this bet he always endeavoured to evade by some plausible excuse, but as invariably professing his willingness to do so. The particulars are fully detailed in the “Pacata Hibernia.”

It is certain that to no particular stone of the ancient structure is the marvellous quality exclusively attributed; but in order to make it as difficult as possible to attain the enviable gift, it had long been the custom to point out a stone, a few feet below the battlements, which the very daring only would run the hazard of touching with their lips. The attempt to do so was, indeed, so dangerous, that a few years ago Mr. Jeffreys had it removed from the wall and placed on the highest point of the building, where the visitor may now greet it with little risk. It is about two feet square, and contains the date 1703, with a portion of the arms of the Jeffreys family, but the date, at once, negatives its claim to be considered the true marvel of Blarney.[7] A few days before our visit a madman made his way to the top of the castle, and after dancing around it for some hours, his escape from death being almost miraculous, he flung this stone from the tower; it was broken in the fall, and now as the guide stated to us, the “three halves” must receive three distinct kisses to be in any degree effective.

[Illustration: BLARNEY CASTLE, IRELAND.]

The age of the song has been satisfactorily ascertained; it was written in the year 1798 or 1799, by Richard Alfred Millikin, an attorney of Cork. The author little anticipated the celebrity his lines were destined to acquire; they were composed to ridicule the nonsense verses of the village poets, who, with a limited knowledge of the English language, and a smattering of classical names, were in the habit of indulging their still more ignorant auditors, by stringing together sounds that had no sense, but conveyed a notion of the prodigious learning of the singer.

Millikin’s song has been injurious to Ireland; it has raised many a laugh at Ireland’s expense, and contributed largely to aid the artist and the actor, of gone-by times, in exhibiting the Irishman as little better than a buffoon--very amusing, no doubt, but exciting any feeling rather than that of respect.

It is impossible to contemplate the romantic ruins of Blarney Castle without a feeling more akin to melancholy than to pleasure; they bear, so perfectly, the aspect of strength utterly subdued, and remind one so forcibly that the “glory” of Ireland belongs to days departed. The castle stands--

“as stands a lofty mind, Worn, but unstooping to the baser crowd, All tenantless, save to the crannying wind.”

The stronghold of Blarney was erected about the middle of the Fifteenth Century by Cormac MacCarthy, surnamed “Laider,” or the Strong; whose ancestors had been chieftains in Munster from a period long antecedent to the English invasion, and whose descendants, as Lords of Muskerry and Clancarty, retained no inconsiderable portion of their power and estates until the year 1689, when their immense possessions were confiscated, and the last earl became an exile, like the monarch whose cause he had supported. The castle, village, mills, fairs, and customs of Blarney, with the land and park thereunto belonging, containing 1400 acres, were “set up by cant” in the year 1702, purchased by Sir Richard Pyne, Lord Chief Justice, for £3,000, and by him disposed of, the following year, to General Sir James Jeffreys, in whose family the property continues. Although the walls of this castle are still strong, many of the outworks have long since been levelled with the earth; the plough has passed over their foundations, and “the stones of which they were built have been used in repairing the turnpike-roads.”

The small village of Blarney is about four miles north-west of Cork; a few years ago it was remarkably clean, neat, and thriving; its prosperity having resulted from the establishment of several linen and cotton factories, the whole of which have been swept away, and the hamlet is now, like the castle, an assemblage of ruins. In the vicinity, however, there is yet a woollen-manufactory and a paper-mill, both in full work. The scenery in the neighbourhood is agreeable, but the grounds that immediately surround the castle are of exceeding beauty. Nature has done much more for them than art; although there is evidence that the hand of taste had busied itself in the duty of improvement. “The sweet Rock-close” is a small dell, in which evergreens grow luxuriantly, completely shaded with magnificent trees. At its termination, are the “Witches’ Stairs”; a series of rugged stone steps which lead down through a passage in the rock to a delicious spot of greensward forming the bank of a clear rivulet--and where some singular masses appear to have been “the work of Druid hands of old.”

CHÂTEAU DE LOCHES

J. J. BOURRASSÉE