 | Wolfert's roost |  |
THE TUILERIES AND WINDSOR CASTLE.
I have sometimes fancied I could discover national characteristics
in national edifices. In the Chateau of the Tuileries, for
instance, I perceive the same jumble of contrarictics that marks
the French character; the same whimsical mixture of the great
and the little; the splendid and the paltry, the sublime and the
grotesque. On visiting this famous pile, the first thing that
strikes both eye and ear, is military display. The courts glitter
with steel-clad soldiery, and resound with tramp of horse, the roll
of drum, and the bray of trumpet. Dismounted guardsmen patrol
its arcades, with loaded carbines, jingling spurs, and clanking
sabres. Gigantic grenadiers are posted about its staircases;
young officers of the guards loll from the balconies, or lounge in
groups upon the terraces: and the gleam of bayonet from window
to window, shows that sentinels are pacing up and down the corridors
and ante-chambers. The first floor is brilliant with the
splendors of a court. French taste has tasked itself in adorning
the sumptuous suites of apartments; nor are the gilded chapel and
splendid theatre forgotten, where Piety and Pleasure are next-door
neighbors, and harmonize together with perfect French bienseance.
Mingled up with all this regal and military magnificence, is a
world of whimsical and make-shift detail. A great part of the
huge edifice is cut up into little chambers and nestling-places for
retainers of the court, dependants on retainers, and hangers-on of
dependants. Some are squeezed into narrow entre-sols, those
low, dark, intermediate slices of apartments between floors, the inhabitants
of which seem shoved in edgeways, like books between
narrow shelves; others are perched, like swallows, under the
eaves; the high roofs, too, which are as tall and steep as a
French cocked hat, have rows of little dormer windows, tier
above tier, just large enough to admit light and air for some dormitory,
and to enable its occupant to peep out at the sky. Even
to the very ridge of the roof, may be seen, here and there, one of
these air-holes, with a stove-pipe beside it, to carry off the smoke
from the handful of fuel with which its weasen-faced tenant simmers
his demi-tasse of coffee.
On approaching the palace from the Pont Royal, you take in
at a glance all the various strata of inhabitants; the garreteer
in the roof; the retainer in the entre-sol; the courtiers at the
casements of the royal apartments; while on the ground-floor a
steam of savory odors, and a score or two of cooks, in white caps,
bobbing their heads about the windows, betray that scientific and
all-important laboratory, the royal kitchen.
Go into the grand ante-chamber of the royal apartments on
Sunday, and see the mixture of Old and New France: the old emigrés,
returned with the Bourbons; little withered, spindle-shanked
old noblemen, clad in court dresses, that figured in these
saloons before the revolution, and have been carefully treasured
up during their exile; with the solitaires and ailes de pigeon of
pins stuck through dry beetles. See them haunting the scenes
of their former splendor, in hopes of a restitution of estates, like
ghosts haunting the vicinity of buried treasure: while around
them you see Young France, grown up in the fighting school of
Napoleon; equipped an militaire: tall, hardy, frank, vigorous,
sunburnt, fierce-whiskered; with tramping boots, towering crests,
and glittering breastplates.
It is incredible the number of ancient and hereditary feeders
on royalty said to be housed in this establishment. Indeed all
the royal palaces abound with noble families returned from exile,
and who have nestling-places allotted them while they await the
restoration of their estates, or the much-talked-of law, indemnity.
Some of them have fine quarters, but poor living. Some families
have but five or six hundred francs a year, and all their retinue
consists of a servant woman. With all this, they maintain their
old aristocratical hauteur, look down with vast contempt upon the
opulent families which have risen since the revolution; stigmatize
them all as parvenus, or upstarts, and refuse to visit them.
In regarding the exterior of the Tuileries, with all its outward
signs of internal populousness, I have often thought what a
rare sight it would be to see it suddenly unroofed, and all its
nooks and corners laid open to the day. It would be like turning
up the stump of an old tree, and dislodging the world of
grubs, and ants, and beetles lodged beneath. Indeed there is a
scandalous anecdote current, that in the time of one of the petty
plots, when petards were exploded under the windows of the Tuileries,
the police made a sudden investigation of the palace at
four o'clock in the morning, when a scene of the most whimsical
found foisted into the huge edifice: every rat-hole had its occupant;
and places which had been considered as tenanted only by
spiders, were found crowded with a surreptitious population. It
is added, that many ludicrous accidents occurred; great scampering
and slamming of doors, and whisking away in night-gowns
and slippers; and several persons, who were found by accident
in their neighbors' chambers, evinced indubitable astonishment at
the circumstance.
As I have fancied I could read the French character in the
national palace of the Tuileries, so I have pictured to myself
some of the traits of John Bull in his royal abode of Windsor
Castle. The Tuileries, outwardly a peaceful palace, is in
effect a swaggering military hold; while the old castle, on the
contrary, in spite of its bullying look, is completely under petticoat
government. Every corner and nook is built up into some
snug, cosy nestling-place, some “procreant cradle,” not tenanted
by meagre expectants or whiskered warriors, but by sleek placemen;
knowing realizers of present pay and present pudding; who
seem placed there not to kill and destroy, but to breed and multiply.
Nursery maids and children shine with rosy faces at the windows,
and swarm about the courts and terraces. The very soldiery
have a pacific look, and when off duty, may be seen loitering about
the place with the nursery-maids; not making love to them in
the gay gallant style of the French soldiery, but with infinite bonhommie
aiding them to take care of the broods of children.
Though the old castle is in decay, every thing about it
thrives; the very crevices of the walls are tenanted by swallows,
rooks, and pigeons, all sure of quiet lodgment: the ivy strikes
tower.[1] Thus it is with honest John: according to his own
account, he is ever going to ruin, yet every thing that lives on
him, thrives and waxes fat. He would fain be a soldier, and
swagger like his neighbors; but his domestic, quiet-loving, uxorious
nature continually gets the upper hand; and though he
may mount his helmet and gird on his sword, yet he is apt to
sink into the plodding, painstaking father of a family; with a
troop of children at his heels, and his womenkind hanging on
each arm.
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