Timeless Touraine
By JOHN KITTESFORD T was a wonderful summer in Touraine. You could see / that from the burnt-up pastures, from the brilliant dahlias and zinnias, from the morning glory convolvulus climbing over every other cottage, and above all from the vineyards of Vouvray, Mont- louis and Bourgueil. And when the weather began to break up, the great doubt was whether the rain would ruin the vintage. Fortu- nately it held off, thanks to le bon Dieu—and the 75s fired off some- what alarmingly, and always without warning, into the heavy thunder- clouds overhead. Before the end of September the vintage was in full swing ; a bal du vendange was being held in every village, and all along the valleys of the Cher and the Indre wayside cafés invited you to taste the bernache, the opaque, bitter must, newly trampled out by the sweating vendangeurs. To them the sampling of their work was, as always, something of a sacrament, though to us, fresh from England, the bernelche seemed a horrible tonic-like drink, worthy only of Mr. Bevan's worst efforts. But sated with rillettes, contrefilets and entrecores washed down by the smooth wines of Touraine and Anjou, we should have been unfriendly to complain even of the bermiche. I expect in the end it will make a very good wine.
Even in October there were still many British tourists to be seen in the Loire country, clutching their guides des gourmets, trying to avoid the other British tourists, wondering whether their petrol would last out, or alternatively whether they could manage to cadge a lift to the next place or wait for the train, and above all making Interminable and intricate calculations on their menu cards as to the effect of the devaluation. The British are still very welcome in Touraine. But they are no longer quite the tourists that the guide and the innkeeper and the garagiste wish to sec. Even the Dutch and the Belgians can afford to be freer with their francs than we, and the notices in the shop windows which proclaim, " Tourists! you may now take home five bottles of cognac free of duty " were, alas, addressed not to us but to the Americans. But though since 1939 we have lost our status of tourists par excellence, we have gained something, I think, in the sympathy of the common people, and our shared misfortunes of the 'forties seem somehow to have bound us closer together.
Fascinating though the countryside of Touraine is with its spread- ing acres of vines, corn and sunflowers cut by poplar-bordered streams, there is a certain melancholy about its chateaux for all the majesty of their architecture. One cannot go to Amboise without thinking of the 1,50o Huguenots who were hanged from the castle walls, or to Loches without recalling the horrors devised for Louis XI's Italian captives and the sufferings of the cardinal he suspended for eleven years in a cage. At Blois, the guide will still explain to you with gusto and in detail exactly how and where Henri III arranged the murder of the Duc dc Guise, and will show you the cupboards where Catherine de Medicis kept her poisons. And_a visit to Azay-le- Rideau or Chenonceaux is marred by the thought that the creator of each was a fraudulent financier who was found out before the chateau was finished. At Chenonceaux—perhaps the loveliest of all houses built on a river—the impression is deepened by the English scribblings on its walls by the homesick Highland bodyguard of Mary Queen of Scots in the 1540s, and by the recollection of Catherine de Medicis' successful attempt to take the property away from her husband's mistress, Diane de Poitiers. The symbols of Touraine- the ermine of Anne de Bretagne, the porcupine of Louis XII and the salamander of Francis I—are often symbols of blood and tears as well as of majesty and proud possession.
The French have lost nothing of their genius for looking after their ancient monuments, and we might do well to study it. Information is copious, upkeep is meticulous, repairs are judicious and gardens beautifully kept. Historical accuracy is respected, though the guides do not so far seem to have received any such directive as that issued lately to their colleagues at Windsor. Sometimes, it is true. the contents of the museums which many chateaux now house arc a little surprising. It is odd, for example, to find a magnificent collec- tion of Rhodian pottery in a Renaissance dining-room built for Francis I. And you do not expect to discover that all you will see of the inside of Villandry is a really very remarkable gallery of Spanish primitives. But of Villandry you must not be critical. For it is privately owned, and by a family which must have spent a lane part of its very considerable fortune in keeping the astonishing gardens in the state to which they were accustomed by their seven- teenth-century designers, complete with hedges of box and yew and the favourite flowers of the time.
But, generally, there is a striking difference between the mansions belonging to the State and the few which still remain in private hands. As in England, the number of those who can still- afford to maintain such places is rapidly diminishing, and as with us the only answer in the end is to make a present of them to the State. But when it comes to a whole town-full of mediaeval private property like Chinon, where you can still see the inn at which Joan of Arc is said to have stopped when organising her resistance movement against the English, you wonder how buildings which have had so little done to them for so long can possibly survive another decade.
Sinistration, too, is much in evidence in the château country. As a fat Tourangeau wine-merchant said to us, Paris may have been less sinistre in the late war than London, but France has certainly been more sinistrie than England. I do not know if this is true. But you cannot go very far in Touraine without coming across the tracks of war. At Amboise, for instance, many rooms are still sealed off by the ominous notice: "Smistre dans la guerre de 1940"; one of the bridges was blown by the French in 1940, one by the Americans in 1944, and neither has yet been fully repaired. At Langeais the magnificent bridge we saw just after it had been finished in 1937 has been lying in the Loire for nine years, and you cross by a terrifying footbridge suspended by wobbly wires. And at Chinon it is not easy to follow the advice you will get from any- one who lives within 50 kilometres, and cross to the other side of the Vienne to get the view of the old town. For the bridge is still fa from being a bridge, though if you thread your way between the cranes and the pile-drivers you will be rewarded by one of the most
astonishing glimpses of mediaeval Europe it is still possible to obtain —and, if you are lucky, by the sight of a kingfisher flashing below. Almost alone the bridge of Montrichard stands intact, and a simple inscription tells how it was saved from the Germans by some latter- day Horatio of the resistance, one Frideloux, who gave his life in the attempt, though not before he had accounted for five of his opponents.
But once you are away from the main roads, the life of Touraine still goes on in its quiet, timeless, peaceful way. Every river is still full of the little blue punts containing hopeful fishermen ; every Sunday resounds to the cries of chiens de chasse and the tramp of the shooter in search of the now almost mythical rabbit and hare and partridge. In the forest of Chinon gipsies still go out after mushrooms and return home (by bus) with basket-loads of enormous mustard- coloured fungi, to the English eye certainly inedible and probably lethal, but to the French a splendid addition to the dinner-table. And, even stranger, they still hunt the stag, and the forest drives still echo to the notes of the great curly horns carried by master, huntsmcn and guests alike. One of the huntsmen, we were told, comes from a family who have been huntsmen since the days of Joan of Arc, and the tempo of life is so slow in Tourainc that the story may well be true. As yet industrialisation has hardly shown its ugly face, for you can scarcely count the factory at Azay which, in four days, turns fresh poplar trees into the round, wooden boxes that bring us our Camembert. The countryside is still much the same as when it was the favourite retreat of our Angevin and Plantagenet rulers, and Richard Coeur de Lion wished in vain to end his days at the Abbey of Fontevrault. Time has not stood still in Touraine. But it has marched on with somewhat lagging feet.
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