THE GARDENS OF VERSAILLES AND THE TRIANONS

Versailles without its court of marble, its fountains, its gardens and its park, and the attendant Grand and Petit Trianons, would hardly have the attraction that it has to-day.

The ensemble is something of more vast and varied extent than is to be seen elsewhere, though its aspect has somewhat changed from what it was of old, and the crowds of Sunday and holiday visitors give the courts and alleyed walks somewhat the aspect of a modern amusement resort.

The gardens of Versailles were but the framing of a princely dwelling created to respond to the requirements of a court which was attempting to do things on a grand scale. Everything was designed with most magnificent outlines; everything was royal, in all verity architecture, garden-making, fêtes, receptions and promenades. What setting, then, could have been more appropriate to the life of the times?

Versailles, the town, had never prospered, and has never proved sufficiently attractive to become a popular suburb; and, though to-day it passed the mark of half a hundred thousand population, it never would have existed at all had it not been for the palace of Louis XIV.

Were it not for the palace and its attributes, Versailles would have absolutely no memories for visitors, except such as may have lunched well at the Hotel des Reservoirs or the Hotel du Trianon. That is not everything, to be sure; but it is something, even when one is on an historic pilgrimage.

Even in the day of Louis XVI the popular taste was changing and Versailles was contemptuously referred to as a world of automota, of cold, unfeeling statuary and of Noah’s Ark trees and forests. There was always a certain air of self-satisfaction about it, as there is, to-day, when the Parisian hordes come out to see the waters play, and the sight-seers marvel at the mock splendour and the scraps of history doled out for their delectation by none-too-painstaking guardians.

In spite of all this, no sober-minded student of art or history will ever consider Versailles, the palace and the park, as other than a superb and a spectacular demonstration of the taste of the times in which it was planned, built and lived in.

Versailles was begun in 1624 by Louis XIII, who built here a humble hunting-lodge for the disciples of Saint Hubert of whom he was the royal head. So humble an erection was it that the monarch referred to it simply as a “petite maison” and paid for it out of his own pocket, a rare enough proceeding at that epoch.

The critical Bassompierre called it a “chetif chateau,” and Saint-Simon referred to it as a “house of cards.” Manifestly, then, it was no great thing. It was, however, a comfortable country-house, surrounded by a garden and a more ample park.

It was not Lemercier, the presiding genius of the Louvre at this time, but an unknown by the name of Le Roy, whom Louis XIII chose as his architect.

Boyceau traced the original parterres with a central basin at a crossroads of two wide avenues. Each of the four compartments thus made was ornamented with broderies and trimmed hedges, and the open spaces were ingeniously filled with parti-coloured sands, or earth. A parterre of flowers immediately adjoined the palace and rudimentary alleys and avenues stretched off towards the wood. Although designed by Boyceau, this work was actually executed by his nephew, Jacques de Menours, who, with difficulty, collected his pay. His books of account showed that in five years, from 1631 to 1636, he had drawn but once a year a sum varying from fifteen hundred to four thousand livres while in the same period the king had spent on the rest of the work at Versailles two hundred and thirty-eight thousand livres, thirty-two sols, six deniers, nearly one million one hundred thousand francs of the money of to-day.

The first of the outdoor embellishments of the palace at Versailles is the great Cour Royale, or the Cour d’Honneur, which opens out behind the long range of iron gates facing upon the Place d’Armes. At the foot of this entrance court is an extension called the Cour de Marbre. This Cour de Marbre, on January 5, 1757, was the scene of the infamous attack on Louis XV by Damiens, just as the king was starting out for the Trianon.

A thick redingote saved the king’s life; but for “this mere pin-prick,” according to Voltaire, the monarch went immediately to bed, and five times in succession sought absolution for his sins. Sins lay heavy even on royal heads in those days.

Damiens was but a thick-witted, superstitious valet, who, more or less persecuted by the noble employers with whom he had been in service at various times, sought to avenge himself, not on them, but on their king, as the figurehead of all that was rotten in the social hierarchy. Louis, heretofore known as the “Bien Aime,” had become suddenly unpopular because of the disastrous war against England and Germany, and his prodigal dissipation of public moneys.

Stretching out behind the palace are the famous gardens, the parterres, the tapis vert, the fountains and the grand canal, with the park of the Trianons off to the right.

Good fortune came to Louis XIV when he found Andre Le Notre, for it was he and no other who traced the general lines of the garden of the Versailles which was to be. He laid a generous hand upon the park and forest which had surrounded the manor of Louis XIII, and extended the garden to the furthermost limits of his ingenuity. Modifications were rapid, and from 1664 the parterres and the greensward took on entirely new forms and effects. The Parterre des Reservoirs became the Parterre du Nord, and an alley of four rows of lindens enclosed the park on all sides. The Parterre a Fleurs, or the Jardin du Roy, between the chateau and the Orangerie, was laid out anew.

By the following year the park began to take on the homogeneity which it had hitherto lacked. The great Rondeau, as it was called, and which became later the Bassin du Dragon, was excavated, and the Jardin Bas, or the Nouveau Parterre, with an oval depression, was also planned.

At one end of the park was the celebrated Menagerie du Roy, where the rare and exotic animals collected by the monarch had “a palace more magnificent than the home of any other dumb animals in the world.” This was the first period of formal garden construction at Versailles, and it was also the period when the first great impetus was given to sculptural decoration.

In 1679, following a journey in Italy, Le Notre took up again the work on the gardens at Versailles, devoting himself to the region south of the palace which hitherto had been ignored. This was Le Notre’s most prolific period.

The creations at Versailles can be divided into two distinct epochs, that before 1670 and that coming after. After Le Notre’s generous design, the king and queen were seemingly never satisfied with the endless plotting and planting which was carried on beneath the windows of the palace, and in many instances changed the colour schemes and even the outlines of Le Notre’s original conceptions.

The Versailles of to-day is no longer the Versailles of Louis XIII, so far as the actual disposition of details goes. Then there was very little green grass and much sand and gravel, a scheme of decoration which entered largely into the seventeenth century garden. This refers principally to the general effect, for Le Notre made much use of the enclosing battery of lindens, chestnuts and elms of a majestic and patriarchal grandeur which have since been cut and replaced by smaller species of trees, or not replaced at all.

No sooner were the ornamental gardens planned at Versailles than the Potager du Roy, or fruit and vegetable garden, was created. This same garden exists to-day with almost its former outlines. Here a soil sufficiently humid, and yet sufficiently well drained, contributed not a little towards the success of this most celebrated of all kitchen gardens the world has known.

The work of installing a further system of artificial drainage was immediately begun, and the Eaux des Suisses was created, to take the place of a former stagnant pool near by. Undoubtedly it was a stupendous work, like all the projects launched with regard to Versailles, but, like the others, it was brought to a speedy and successful conclusion. The details of the history of this royal vegetable garden are fully set forth in a work published in 1690 by the son of the designer, the Abbe Michel de la Quintinye, in two bulky volumes. “It was meet that a royal vegetable garden should have been designed by a ‘Gentleman Gardener,’” said the faithful biographer in his foreword, and as such the man and the work are to be considered here.

The work was accomplished by the combined efforts of a gracious talent and the expenditure of much money, put at La Quintinye’s disposition by his royal master, who had but to put his hand deep into the coffers of the royal treasury to draw it forth filled with gold. Critics have said that La Quintinye’s ability stopped with the preparation of the soil, and with the design of the garden, rather than with the actual cultivation, but at all events it was he who made the garden possible.

La Quintinye adopted Arnauld d’Andilly’s method of planting fruit trees en espalier by training them against a wall-like background, and to accomplish this divided the garden plot, which covered an area of eight hectares (twenty acres), into a great number of subdivisions enclosed by walls, in order to multiply to as great an extent as possible the available space to be used for the espaliers. Again, these same walls served to shelter certain varieties which were planted close against them. If this Potager du Roy was not actually the first garden of its class so laid out, it was certainly one of the most extensive and the most successful up to that time.

The great terraces of at least two metres in width surrounded the central garden, leaving a free area for the latter which approximated three hectares.

These terraces were divided into twenty-eight compartments, forming nine distinct varieties of gardens.

The celebrated gardener of Louis XIV sought not only to obtain fruits and vegetables of a superior quality and an abundant quantity, but was the first among his kind to produce early vegetables, or primeurs, in any considerable quantity, and, by a process of forced culture, he was able to put upon the table of the monarch asparagus in December, lettuce in January, cauliflower in March and strawberries in April. All these may be found at the Paris markets to-day, and at these seasons, but the growing of primeurs for the Paris markets has become a great industry since the time it was first begun at Versailles.

Of asparagus La Quintinye said, “It is a vegetable that only kings can ever hope to eat.”

The Potager du Roy was begun in 1678, and completed in 1683. It cost, all told, one million one hundred and seventy thousand nine hundred and eighty-three livres of which four hundred and sixty-seven thousand three hundred and sixty-four went for constructions in brick and stone, walls, enclosures and drains. Its annual maintenance (1685) amounted to twenty thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine livres. The effort proved one of great benefit to its creator, for La Quintinye, at the completion of this work, received further commissions of a like nature from the Prince de Conde, the Duc de Montansier, Colbert, Fouquet and others.

So great a marvel was this vegetable garden at Versailles that it was the object of a pilgrimage of the Doge of Venice in 1685, and of the Siamese ambassadors in the following year. The garden has been preserved as an adjunct to Versailles up to the present day. For two centuries its product went to the “Service de Bouche” of the chief of state, that is, the royal dinner table; but in 1875 the Minister of Agriculture installed there the French National Horticultural College, which to-day, with a widened scope, has admitted ornamental plants and trees to this famous garden. Nevertheless the general outlines have been preserved, though certain of the terraces have disappeared, as well as many of the walls of the original enclosure, thus reducing the number of garden plots; in fact but sixteen distinctly defined gardens remain, including the Clos aux Asperges.

The general lines of the garden design of Le Notre and Boyceau at Versailles are to be noted to-day, but if anything the maintenance of the gardens is hardly the equal of what it was in the time of Louis XIV and a seeming disaster has fallen upon Versailles as these lines are being written.

The military authorities have set aside, as a site for an aerostation camp, some twenty-five acres of the park near Rocquencourt. This is one of the loveliest parts, shaded by magnificent trees which, presumably, will have to be sacrificed, since, if left standing, they would certainly interfere with maneuvering with military aeroplanes, dirigibles and balloons.

At a time when deforestation is recognized to be one of the greatest dangers that menace a country’s prosperity, one of its consequences being such inundations as those which recently devastated Paris and the Seine valley, it is regrettable that the forest surrounding Versailles should be depleted.

Furthermore, the realization of the project means a loss of revenue to the state which at present derives some sixty thousand francs a year from the farming lease of this portion of the park.

Therefore, for material considerations, as well as because Versailles and its surroundings should be preserved intact as a noble relic of one of the grandest periods of French history, one of the most beautiful creations of French genius, the project attributed to the military authorities is short-sighted. To diminish the attractions of Versailles would certainly prove an unwise policy, as the stream of tourists, which is the chief source of profit to Versailles and its population, would inevitably be diverted to some other channel.

Only a short time ago a Societe des Amis de Versailles was created for the purpose of safeguarding its artistic and natural beauties. The government gave the organization its approbation and there is something delightfully ironical in the fact that the military authorities of the same government are planning to destroy what the society, fathered by the Ministere des Beaux Arts, was formed to preserve.

Another modern aspect of the park of Versailles was noted during the late winter when, after a sharp freeze, all the youth of Paris had seemingly gone out to Versailles for the skating only to be met by a freshly-posted notice which read:

Defense
De Patiner Par
Arrête du 17 Decembre, 1849

These signs were posted here and there about the park, in the courtyard, on the postern gate, on trees, everywhere. The authorities were bound that there should be no flagrant violation of the order of 1849.

“You see,” said one of the park guardians, “c’est defendu; but as we are only two and the crowd is very large we can do nothing.” This was evident. Thousands overran the Grand Canal, which at its greatest depth was scarcely more than a yard to the bottom, and so, despite of monarchial decree, Republican France still skates on the ornamental waters of Versailles when occasion offers.

“N’oubliez pas le petit balayeur, s’il vous plait,” was as often heard as “Allez vous-en.”

On the whole it was rather a picturesque sight. A thick haze hung over the now white “Tapis Vert,” and the nude figures of the Bassin d’Apollon were clothed in a mantle of snow, while the white-robed statues of the Allee Royale, one could well believe, shivered as one passed.

The fountains of Versailles, the “Grands Eaux” and “Petits Eaux,” which shoot their jets in air “semi-occasionally” for the benefit of Paris’s “good papas” and their children, are distinctly popular features, and of an artistic worth neither less nor greater than most garden accessories of the artificial order. The fact that it costs something like ten thousand francs to “play” these fountains seems to be the chief memory which one retains of them in operation, unless it be the crowds which make the going and coming so uncomfortable.

The Orangerie lies just below the terrace of the Parterre du Midi, and a thousand or more non-bearing orange trees are scattered about. They are descendants of fifteenth century ancestors, it is claimed but doubtfully.

The great basin of water known as the Eaux des Suisses was excavated by the Swiss Guard of Louis XIV to serve the useful purpose of irrigating the Potager du Roy, and as a decorative effect of great value to that part of the garden upon which faces the fourteen-hundred-foot front of the palace.

Still farther off towards the Bois de Satory, after crossing the Tapis Vert, lie the famous Bassins de Latone and Apollon, the Bassin du Miroir and, finally, the Grand Canal, with one transverse branch leading to the Menagerie (now the government stud-farm) and the other to the Trianons.

The satellite palaces known as the Grand and Petit Trianons are, like the Palace of Versailles itself, of such an abounding historical interest that it were futile to attempt more than a mere intimation of their comparative rank and aspect.

The rather sprawling, one-story, horseshoe-shaped villa built by Louis XIV for Madame de Maintenon, and known as the Grand Trianon, was an architectural conception of Mansart’s.

It is worth remarking that the Grand Trianon, to-day, is in a more nearly perfect state than it has been for long past, for the restorations lately made have removed certain interpolations manifestly out of place.

It is due to M. de Nolhac, the Conservateur du Musee de Versailles, that this happy amelioration has been brought about and that Mansart’s admirable work is again as it was in the days of Madame de Maintenon and those of the later Napoleon I.

In spite of all this the Trianon of to-day is not what it was in the eighteenth century. “Madame de Maintenon,” said de Musset, “made of Versailles an oratory, but La Pompadour turned it into a boudoir.” He also called the Trianon: “a tiny chateau of porcelain.” It was, too, the boudoir of Madame de Montespan.

Louis XV, too, built, or furnished, discreet boudoirs of this order on every hand. More than one great gallery in which his elders had done big things he divided and subdivided into minute apartments and papered the walls, or painted them, all colours of the rainbow, or hung them with silks or velvets.

“Don’t you think my little apartment shows good taste,” he asked one day of the Comtesse de Serán at Versailles.

“Not at all,” she replied, “I would much rather that the walls were hung in blue.”

That particular apartment was in rose, but, since blue was the favourite colour of the monarch, the reply was but flattering. The next time that his friend, the Comtesse, appeared on the scene the apartment had all been done over in blue.

The monarch soon began to turn his attention to the gardens. Bowers, labyrinths and vases and statues were inexplicably mixed as in a maze. He began to have the “gout pastoral,” his biographer has said, a vogue that Madame du Barry and Marie Antoinette came in time to push to its limits.

The king was too ready to admire all that was suggested, all that was offered, and the ultimate effect was well, it was the opposite of what he hoped it to be, though doubtless he did not realize it.

In the garden of the Grand Trianon is a great basin with a cascade flowing down over a sort of a high altar arrangement in red and white marble called the Buffet de l’Architecture, and evolved by Mansart. This architect certainly succeeded much better with his purely architectural conceptions than he did with interpolated decorative elements intended to relieve a formal landscape.

The Petit Trianon, the pride of Louis XV, was designed by the architect Gabriel, and its reigning goddess was Marie Antoinette. Souvenirs of the unhappy queen are many, but the caretakers are evidently bored with their duties and hustle you through the apartments with scant ceremony that they may doze again undisturbed in their corners.

The garden of the Petit Trianon is a veritable Jardin Anglais, that is, the decorative portion, where sweeps and curves, as meaningless as those one sees on banknotes and no more decorative, are found in place of the majestic lines of the formal garden when laid out after the French manner.

The Hameau, where is the dairy where the queen played housewife and shepherdess, is just to the rear of this bijou palace and looks stagy and unreal enough to be the wings and back-drop of a pastoral play.

Near Versailles was the Chateau de Clagny, with a garden laid out by Le Notre, quite the rival of many better known. Of it Madame de Sevigne wrote: “It is the Palais d’Armide; you know the manner of Le Notre; here he has done his best.”

The Couvent des Recollettes, just across the Bois de Satory, was built by Louis XIV out of regard for the religieux whom he displaced from an edifice which stood upon a plot which was actually needed for the palace gardens. The Chateaux of Noisy and Molineaux were also affiliated with Versailles.

The rest of the surroundings and accessories of Versailles are mere adjunctive details of those chief features here mentioned. To catalogue them even would be useless since they are all set down in the guidebooks.