Travelers' Tales Paris (32 page)

But her apotheosis quite literally was her appearance at the Folies three years later—another Farewell Appearance as Mary, Queen of Scots, crowned, wearing an enveloping white, six-foot-wide crinoline gown and
a fifteen-foot train, held and maneuvered by uniformed attendants as she came down that Folies staircase, majestically unhurried.... It was all absurd and sublime. It was Liberace and Radio City Music Hall's East Pageant rolled into one. She announced this as her final stage appearance and when she came forward to sing her adieu, the burden of the song was an account of her responsibility to her village, her castle, her dozen adopted children, and her threatening bankruptcy. She wept on cue at every performance and held out her hands to her beloved public. Men and women—all those bourgeois and concierges streamed down the aisles, weeping loudly and screaming “Josephine, don't leave us! Don't leave us!” Mountains of flowers were thrown on the stage. She hugged and kissed everyone in reach—tears mingled, love crossed the footlights, hovered, and settled. The curtain didn't come down for an hour.

—Julian Heath,
Deep Are the Roots: Memoirs of a Black Expatriate

BOB BRADFIELD

I
T WAS A BRIGHT BEAUTIFUL MORNING IN
P
ARIS, AND
F
OQUET
'
S
sidewalk café on the Champs Elysées was definitely the place to be because a German crew was filming a scene for a World War II film at this historic landmark. I had just arrived on the Red Eye from California, and could have used a few winks. But my friend Bernard was in his element. Like most airline press officers, he always had a good story idea, which invariably involved his company. I always thoroughly enjoyed listening to his yarns, and pretended to believe most of them. But this time he had gone too far. He had arranged to play an extra in a German film about occupied Paris because it appealed to his sense of the ridiculous—he had been a French Air Force pilot during the war, but he had also organized a small part for me in the café scene, and shooting started in five minutes. After the 15th take I quit, maybe I was fired; it's a little hazy, but taking 3 hours to complete 30 seconds of film was too much of a drain on life's juices for me.

“Bobby,” he said, “our film careers are in a shambles, but life must go on. Tomorrow is Sunday. If you could do anything you wanted to do anywhere in France tomorrow, what would you like to do?”

I mulled it over a few moments and replied, “I would like to do something very few people have done. I would like to get a small high-wing plane or glider and go along the Loire River at low altitude photographing the most interesting castles and châteaux from the level birds see them. I want to know from the land why they are located where they are. I want to look down on the complicated royal gardens surrounding the châteaux to get a better idea of what the designers had in mind, from a perspective even they did not have. I want to see how they used flowing water as a design element, whether natural or created.”

His face lit up, and he almost shouted “
C'est magnifique
!” His eyes sparkled. “I've never done it either, and don't know of any-one who has. If I set the whole thing up tomorrow, could I go up with you?”

“
Mais oui, compadre
,” I agreed. He was transfixed with my newer knowledge of French.

Yet he looked worried. “But, Bobby, there are more than 400 châteaux and castles along the Loire, you will have to choose just a few.”

I replied, “Not to worry, Bernard. I have always wanted to visit just three; Chenonceau, Chambord, and Azay-le-Rideau. Chenonceau because it is unique and looks like I imagine a royal residence should look. The River Cher runs right through it, and it has elegant gardens best seen from the air. It reeks of both British and French royal history. Chambord is enormous, structurally very
different, solid-looking, and it is located in an enormous park. Azay-le-Rideau just
is
, a jewel of a château designed just right for an ideal location. If I were president of this country I would make it the presidential residence. And all three of these properties are within 25–50 miles of each other.”

He smiled. “I'll organize it right now.”

He was back in an hour. “We have a single-engine, high-wing plane at Chartres laid on for 9:00 a.m. It's an old trainer, but we'll manage. I'll pick you up at your hovel”—he knew I preferred inexpensive lodgings on the Left Bank—“at 5:30 a.m. because I want you to see the stained glass at the Chartres cathedral by early light, and it opens at 7:30 a.m. Take a very wide angle lens, the cathedral is narrow, but more than 400 feet high.” He rubbed his hands together with glee. “Today we lost our opportunity to be matinee idols, but tomorrow will be a better day.”

Bernard swung by bright and early the next morning in an old black Citröen, the doors-the-wrong-way model so familiar to movie fans from Jean Gabin's classic gangster films, and we headed towards Chartres, about 60 miles south and west. The horrible clog of Paris traffic was a breeze on the weekend, and we were out of town in twenty minutes. There is an awe-inspiring view of the cathedral from the junction of two highways just outside Chartres. The architectural details are best seen when the sun is low. The commanding presence of the cathedral over the town can best be appreciated from here. Rodin described the cathedral as “the French Acropolis,” and it is a particularly appropriate description. Both the Acropolis and the cathedral are impressive structures perched high on rocky promontories in the middle of town.

I found it interesting to explore the town of Chartres on foot, particularly the narrow cobblestoned lanes near the River Eure. Locally-made stained glass windows can be seen around town, and glass workshops can be visited without much fuss. Near the cathedral, the International Stained Glass Center is well worth a visit. The cathedral has nearly 150 stained glass windows containing 27,000 square feet of stained glass beauty, depicting mainly religious
subjects. Many are 700 years old and extraordinarily complex. They are best seen in the early morning or late afternoon when the light enters at an angle.

But we came down to fly, and we headed off to the airport. The airport manager was singularly unimpressed that Bernard had flown a Flying Fortress many years ago, and assigned a pilot who didn't appear to be more than fifteen. I wasn't sure if he had begun to shave, but he told us he knew the plane, and not to worry, flying over the châteaux would be a piece of
gâteau
. He told us to keep in mind that all of these structures had been created more than 400 years ago. When the manager wasn't looking, I removed the passenger-side window to have an unobstructed view.

The three of us piled in and headed down the runway, anxious to witness history from this unusual viewpoint. It seemed like miles before we were able to get up enough speed to take off, but finally the old crate lifted and we were on our way. Flying near the cathedral was off limits because the city fathers feared small planes would buzz around the cathedral like gnats all day, so we banked away from the city and headed for the Loire. I found the chugada-chugada-chugada of the prop motor reassuring, but it made it difficult to talk, so we shouted and used hand signals. Bernard translated above the din.

Low-level fluffy cumulus clouds gave the landscape a dappled look as we went from sun to shade and back to sun again. When we climbed we found that the clouds were all at the same level, as if they had been pasted to an invisible net at 500 meters, so we continued climbing to 1000 meters for a smoother flight. When the Loire River first came into view Bernard shouted in my ear, “Bobby, if you know the history of that river down there you will understand much of the history of France.” There was no doubt Bernard was having a marvelous time. Even if I didn't get a single picture the trip was already a huge success for him. He was trying to talk to the pilot over the noise of the motor, gesticulating and laughing as memories of flying flooded back.

The pilot pointed down with the pride of Lindberg approaching LeBourget, and Bernard shouted “There it is, Chenonceau.”
But the cloud cover had thickened and we had to go down through it if we were going to get any pictures. Because of limited cabin space available and anticipated plane movement I was using my trusty old Leica M2 range finder camera with just a wide angle and short telephoto. As we came into the clouds the old cloth plane groaned, creaked, twisted, and pitched. Suddenly it dropped several hundred feet, as if the bottom had fallen out. Then it hit an invisible bottom, and it felt like the plane had stopped dropping, but the passengers hadn't. I thought I might lose my croissant, and remembered news stories of old crop-dusters breaking up in lowlevel turbulence. The creaking noises made me worry the wings would fall off. But suddenly we broke through and the château exploded into view, set in formal gardens which can only be fully appreciated from the air.

The centerpiece is a 75-yard two-storied gallery that spans the slow-moving River Cher by means of five massive arches. I signaled the pilot with a stiff hand that I wanted to bank on the side of the open window so I could look down without wing or strut obstructions, and then moved my hand in a circle to suggest doing a tight circle. The pilot nodded and set about it, but I hadn't realized that a tight circle meant practically standing me on my head with gravity pull, nor that going through each pretty cloud meant I would be bouncing and hanging on to the bracings of the plane for dear life, rather than taking pictures. The next time around we made a larger circle, avoided the clouds, and I was able to squeeze off some shots emphasizing different aspects of the castle and grounds. We went around again for good measure so I could just look at this magnificent sight.

Bernard shouted that more than one million people visited every year and enjoyed paintings by Rubens and 16th-century tapestries in the sixteen rooms open to the public. Henry II gave the castle to his mistress, Diane de Poitiers. But when the king died his wife, Catherine de Medici, gave the mistress the boot and moved in, making many changes, particularly the gallery and the formal gardens. The castle became a royal social center and over
time François II, Charles IX, and Henri III and their courts resided here.

Chambord was just a few minutes away, but it is very different from Chenonceau in concept and execution. We went jouncing through the clouds again and circled the property at different altitudes, this time with less turbulence. My eyes were directed to the large, boxy, three-story structure by a very long, royal-looking, tree-lined road leading straight to it like an arrow, through patches of woods within the 13,000-acre hunting park. The gardens were neat but smaller, less complex, and less impressive than Chenonceau. A most curious collection of spires, domes, cupolas, gables, and turrets on the château roof looked like a small village from the air.

Some say Chambord lacks the woman's touch seen in Chenonceau, but others say it was constructed as a basic hunting lodge by François II, not as a château, and its three-story rectangular structure was appropriate for its 440 rooms and 365 chiseled turrets and chimneys. Several days later I visited the château and the guide described the roof scene as a “busy terrace.” The royal château is known for the extraordinary superimposed circular stairway, and is well decorated with furniture, paintings, and tapestries of the time. François chose the salamander as his royal emblem, and the guide told us there were more than 700 representations of salamanders within the structure. I took his word for it. Although it took many years to construct François lived there only about a month. During World War II the art treasures of the Louvre were hidden there.

Leaving Chambord, we followed the Loire River towards the ocean to Blois with its fine castle on a rock spur overlooking the river. Now we were free of clouds. The castle is located on a hill overlooking the town with a commanding view of the river in both directions and the bridge across it. A large wall surrounds the castle, emphasizing its importance. The pilot said there was enough space to house the townsfolk inside the walls in an emergency. More than the other locations we had viewed this morning, Blois
gave the impression that this castle was built with the idea it would have to be defended.