Dateline France, 6 November 1989
Report 6

Some of this report is a couple weeks old.  I have rearranged events
in this report and the last to put visits of Paris together and visits
to chateaux together.

Sweatshirt of the week:
          Remember
    with pictures our great holiday
      in the Norwegian Mountains

A few weeks back we headed north of Paris to Chantilly to see the chateau
there.  We decided to get dressed up and find a nice place to eat on
the way, which we did.  This was actually the first time we went out
as a family to a regular French restaurant (as opposed to a creperie
or pizzeria).  The midday meal on Sunday is not a rushed affair.  We
dined for over two hours, and this kids actually did quite well.  The
most interesting dish, I think, was my entree, which was sauerkraut and
pieces of different kinds of fish with a cream sauce.  It sounded awful
to me, too, but I figured if it was still on the menu, it must actually
be pretty good, which it was.  We didn't have a lot of time at the
chateau after the meal, but we got to see most of it at a leisurely
pace.  There is a painting museum inside.  It is eclectic, as it is
composed of collections donated by various patrons.  There is a wonderful
Bottecelli and a Raphael you can get right up next to.  It had a number
of Italian Renaissance paintings and lots of French 18th and 19th century
pieces.  There have been 5 castles/chateaux on the same site over the previous
millenium.  The most recent was by one of the Bourbons, a cousin of Louis XIV
named Conde.  However, many of the rooms had been done over at later times.
Thus you could walk from Louis XIV to Louis XV to Louis XVI and see the change
in decor and furniture.  (It was obligatory to have a room set aside for the
king, should he ever drop in.)  In the gardens, we saw the Hamlet on which
the one at Versailles is modeled.  Versailles has more charm.  Chantilly, as a
town, has traditionally been big on horses.  There is an immense stables
there, but that will have to wait for another trip.

The next chateau we visited was Fontainebleau.  You could spell it
`Fontanblo', but the French impose a 18% V.A.T. (vowel-added tax).
Francois I had a hand in this one (he built a lot of 'em), but others,
such as Henri II, Louis XII and Catherine de Medici also built parts.
With many chateaux, especially the royal ones, it was common to tear old parts
down to build new sections.  At Fontainebleau, they seemed to have had plenty
of room, so people just tacked on new wings.  Francois I was enamored of the
Italian Renaissance, and brought many Italian artisans to France.  The
chateau is unusual in that is has frescos in it.  Most wall decoration you
see is painting, tapestry or fabric.  The layout of rooms is interesting.
There is a King's bedroom (Louis XIV or XVI), with a room for the queen on
one side and a room for the royal favorite on the other.  (Kaye bought a
book on royal favorites.  Since princes were often betrothed for political
reasons, they often looked outside their marraiges for love and companionship.
While not a formal position, the king's favorite often wielded a lot of
power in running the court.  Everybody would politely not mention trifles
like adultry, but the king was expected to send the favorite away and repent
on his deathbed.)  Napolean held court at the chateau sometimes; one room
is still set up as his throne room, and there is Josephine's bedchamber.
Outside is a quasi-moat (may have been a real moat at one time) in which
there are huge carp.  You can toss pieces of bread on the water and watch
the ducks fight the fish for them.

One of the big spectacles of the time was the court moving from one palace
to another, such as from the Louvre to Fontainebleau or Chambord.  In the
days of Francois I, the court had 12,000 members, and took 11,000 horses to
move.  Few cities then had that many people.  The royal household would
have about 11 kinds of cooks (roasters, bakers, sauciers, and so forth),
various cellarmasters (wine, fruit, cheese), a winetaster (whose job, I
think, was mainly to order his staff of 4 to fetch various vintages from
the cellar and take the right jugs to the right tables), doctors, seamstresses,
lords-in-waiting, ladies-in-waiting, guards, stable hands, fencing instructors,
and on and on.  Why they moved, I don't know.  Maybe it was to impress an
uppity count or duke in some region, maybe for better hunting, maybe because
the all the ashtrays were full.

We got really heavy into chateaux on a long weekend trip to the Loire,
Loir, Loiret, Cher and Sologne valley region two weeks back.  The chateaux are
found about every 20 km there.  The density, I guess, is due to this being
the home of the Valois branch of the kings of France, and that various
ministers and sons were given lands nearby and had the moolah to put up
nice houses.  It was inspiration to me to start learning the succession of
French kings of the time: Charles VIII, Louis XII, Francois I, Henri II,
Francois II, Charles IX, Henri III.  These are not necessarily father-son
relationships, especially the first few, and the last three were brothers.
Charles VIII married Anne of Brittany to link Brittany more closely to France.
He killed himself by running from a jeu de paume (tennis precursor) court
to watch a card game, hitting his head on a low stone lintel, and keeling over
a couple hours later from a concussion.  Louis XII divorced his wife so
he could marry the widowed Anne of Brittany.  Francois I married Claude of
France, who I think was an offspring of Charles and Anne.  (Another
interesting aspect of the marraiges of European royalty was that the couples
were sometimes closely related.  The church seemed to overlook such trivia
at the ceremony, but a king or prince might "suddenly" discover the fact
later in order to get an annulment of the marraige on the basis of
consaguinuity (same-bloodedness).)  Henri II married Catherine de Medici,
who was a real schemer.   F2, C9 and H3 were all sons of Henri II.  F2 and
C9 didn't last a long time; Catherine de Medici was regent for all of them
at one time or another, I believe.

Hard to keep track of all of that, but it is very useful in trying to
sort out the castles.  Also useful is knowning some coats of arms and
symbols: Charles VIII was a flaming sword, Francois I a salamander, Louis
XII a porcupine, Anne of Brittany an ermine and a knotted rope (representing
the cincture of a Franciscan monk), Claude of France a swan with
an arrow in the neck, C de M a pelican.  They often also had a "logo"--a
stylized version of their initials.  Learning all these signs in helpful
when looking a room and trying to figure out something about its period or
history--the fireplace is carved with a salamander, but the walls are
painted with the six balls of the Medici crest: you know that Cathy had
the interior decorator in again.

So what did we see: Chambord, used much by Francois I as a base for hunting;
it has a very ornate roofline, but is relatively plain in the treatment of
walls and interior.  Sarah had a library book about Chambord, from which the
most interesting piece of history for her was that they used to dump their
chamberpots right out the window.  Chenonceaux, which spans the Cher river.
During the German occupation in WWII, one bank of the Cher was occupied, while
the other was part of Vichy France.  The gallery of this chateau figured
in movement from one zone to the other.  (This area, especially around the
Sologne, was very active for the French Resistance.)  Bloise, which
is in the center of a town by the same name, was Kaye's favorite.  It
would be a great place for an architectural history course, hitting all
the major periods from Romanesque to the time of Mansard.  In it was room
that Catherine de Medici used, with secret cupboards in the walls activated
by foot-latches in the baseboards, and a place in one wall where someone
could hide and eavesdrop.  It is also where Henri III had the Duke of
Guise assasinated (and two days later his brother, an archbishop).  Henri
was worried that the Guises were gaining too much power around Paris.  He
figured he would get Guise first.  However, someone got Henri a couple years
later.  Cheverny, which was not a royal chateau (belonged to some minister).
It is private, and had family living in it until 1983.   The Mona Lisa
(La Giaconda in France) was hidden in the Orangerie here during WWII.  They
breed their own hunting hounds here, and Sarah and Luke were much taken by
by the baying concert the 40 or so dogs in kennels gave for us.  Amboise
was the most castle-like of the places we visited, having once been part of
a fortress occupying a large bluff above the Loire.  However, much of it
was taken down for stone when the current kings thought that upkeep was
costing too much.  It was at Amboise that Nicolas Fouquet (reported on
in connection with Vaux-le-Vicompte) was imprisoned.  Also, inciters of
a Protestant plot were hung along its balcony.

In the city of Amboise is also a small chateau called Clos-Luce.  It
was here that Leonardo da Vinci spent the last three years of his life,
mostly throwing parties for the court and writing up his notes.  (Seems like
a good thing to do in France to me.)  IBM has sponsored an exhibit there
in which models were built of various devices sketched in his notes:
catapults, flying machines, pumps, ship hulls, bridges, ... .  Luke enjoyed
the models a lot, and I enjoyed explained how they worked (or were supposed
to work--I don't think two guys turning a giant screw into the air will
get you very high).

Other bits on the Loire trip:  We happened across "Gastronomy Days" in
the city of Romorantin.  This consisted of displays by local producers:
sausages, goose liver, pumpkins, wine, etc., plus competitions in the
various categories of food purveyors: charcuterers, bakers, butchers,
pastry makers, bonboniers, choclatiers, and chefs, in both apprentice and
master categories.  Taste or smell was not an issue here, pleasing the
eye is what counted: a violin of chocolate, strands of leek woven into
baskets, shrimps in acrobatic poses, a tree with birds in it all made out of
bread, and a model of Chambord carved out of lard (really; it makes ice
sculpture look like a mundane pursuit).  We stayed in a hotel one night
that had stairways so steep that they split the stairs down the middle
and staggered the left and right sides.  It was real interesting to see
Sarah go up and down them, as the steps on each side were up to her
thighs.
 
The kids are getting on well, though not much fluency in French yet (but
Sarah has a great accent).  We send a snack in with Luke to school, since
he stays so late.  The other day Kaye sent along peanuts in the shell.  These
proved immensely popular on the playground.  Luke was giving them away,
until he realized he could do better.  He now has a collection of marbles.
(His marble collection started the week before, when he found one on the
ground, and traded it five times in one recess to get a real fancy one.)
Sarah is bursting with pride because they are teaching her to write letters
at school ... in cursive.

I see that the name change went through.  (Those readers from east of the
Rockies know Oregon Graduate Insitute of Science and Technology as
Oregon Graduate Center.  It's still the same fine product.)