Chapter XVI: The Abbey of Livry

|THE ancient abbey of Livry, situated between the village of Livrv-en-l'Aulnoye and that of Clichy-sous-Bois, three leagues from Paris, is about to be sold by public auction. This property belonged to the Congregation of the Fathers of the Assumption, who had their houses of novices here. As in a short time it will probably be turned over to speculators, who will cut it into lots for suburban houses, it is necessary before its destruction to evoke some of the souvenirs which have rendered this place illustrious.

Other than precious and charming memories, there is nothing which can interest us at Livry; and these relate only to literary history. The religious chronicles of the abbey of Notre Dame de Livry, founded at the end of the twelfth century as a monastery of canons regular, offers no episode worthy of attention. There is nothing here for the archaeologist save a pile of old stones, remnants of capitals and of funeral slabs, which were discovered a few years ago. Of the architecture of the ancient monastery, there remains only a dwelling house of the seventeenth century. The rest of the buildings were destroyed after the Revolution and have since been replaced by characterless structures. Finally, though the park presents almost its former beautiful design, its trees were replanted in the nineteenth century. But Livry was the "pretty abbey" dear to Madame de Sévigné. It is here that she wrote her most charming pages, passed her sweetest horns, felt the most vividly the seduction of the country. So Livry is sacred soil for every lover of French letters.

*****

In 1624 the King gave the abbey of Livry to Christophe de Coulanges as commendator. He was then only eighteen years old.

In both a spiritual and a worldly sense the abbey was in a pitiable condition: its church was crumbling, its houses were scarcely inhabitable, and great disorder reigned among the few ecclesiastics who remained in the cloister. The young abbot was pious and economical. The abbey was reformed with his consent, the church restored, and a part of the cloister rebuilt. He put up this grand building of noble and simple aspect, which still stands; he made of it an agreeable country house, surrounded by orange trees, flower beds bits of water, and easily accessible, for a fine avenue joined it to the highway from Paris to Meaux. He furnished apartments there, received his family and his friends, and led a life without display, but without privations. Besides, if the rule was then strictly observed in the monastery, the monks were not very numerous: in 1662, there were only eight professed friars there. [30]

In 1636, the Abbé de Coulanges was invested with the guardianship of a little orphan, his niece, Marie de Chantai: the child was ten years old; the tutor twenty-nine. For fifty years he watched over the person and the property of his ward with an entirely paternal solicitude, gave her very wise masters, like Ménage and Chapelain, occupied himself with her establishment and, when she became a widow, wisely administered her fortune. But everything was said by Madame de Sévigné herself, when the "very good" died: "There is nothing good that he did not do for me, either in giving me his own property entirely, or in preserving and reestablishing that of my children. He drew me from the abyss in which I was at the death of M. de Sévigné, he won lawsuits, he restored all my properties to good condition, he paid our debts, he made the estate which my son inhabits the most handsome and agreeable in the world, he married off my children; in a word I owe peace and repose in life to his continuous cares..." And she adds this reflection so tenderly true and so sadly human: "The loss that we feel when the old die is often considerable when we have great reasons for loving them and when we have always seen them." (September 2, 1687.)

Madame de Sévigné had passed her youth at Livry near this worthy man. After the death of her husband she stayed there from choice. She lived happily there with her daughter, and the latter even returned there several times after her marriage. These memories rendered Livry still more dear to Madame de Sévigné, who, on an April day, after having heard the nightingales and contemplated the budding greenery of the park, wrote to Madame de Grignan: "It is very difficult for me to revisit this place, this garden, these alleys, this little bridge, this avenue, this meadow, this mill, this little view, this forest, without thinking of my very dear child." (April 22, 1672.) In the summer, when they put her little daughter in her care, she took her to Livry: "Presently I am going to Livry; I will take with me my little child and her nurse and all the little household...." (May 27, 1672.) She loved to receive her son at Livry. She went to Livry to care for her maladies and to follow her treatments.

She also went there to pay her devotions in Holy Week: "I have made of this house a little Trappe.... I have found pleasure in the sadness which I have had here: a great solitude, a great silence, a sad office, Tenebræ intoned with devotion (I had never been at Livry in Holy Week), a canonical fast and a beauty in these gardens with which you would be charmed, all these have pleased me." (March 24, 1671.) It was her favorite place for writing, and she said that her mind and her body were there in peace. And, truly, almost all the letters which she wrote from Livry breathed joy and health.

So what despair, when, at the death of the Abbé de Coulanges, she believes that she will no longer be able to return to Livry and that she must say farewell to that agreeable solitude which she loves so much! "After having wept for the Abbé," she cries, "I weep for the abbey." (November 13, 1687.) Happily the successor of the Abbé de Coulanges is Séguier de la Verrière, former bishop of Nîmes. He is a very holy prelate, and allows Madame de Sévigné liberty to go to Livry, as in the days of the "very good." But Séguier dies. New anxieties. Finally the abbey is given to Denis Sanguin, bishop of Senlis, an uncle of Louis Sanguin, Lord of Livry, friend of the Coulanges and of Madame de Sévigné. Then she writes to her daughter: "It is true that these Sanguins, this Villeneuve, the idea of the old Pavin, these old acquaintances, are so confused with our garden and our forest, that it seems to me it is the same thing, and that not only have we lent it to them, but that it is still ours by the assurance of again finding there our old furniture and the same people whom we saw there so often. Finally, my child, we were worthy of this pretty solitude by the taste which we had and which we still have for it."

*****

Since we have opened the letters of Madame de Sévigné, let us continue to mark the pages in which she has spoken of Livry, and let us seek the reason for the taste for this "pretty solitude" which she showed to the end.

She knew how to enjoy the days of sadness in this "solitude," for example when she had just been separated from her daughter, or when she had received some unpleasant news from Grignan. On these days she tasted the silence of the forest and of the meadow: "Here is a true place for the humor in which I am: there are hours and alleys whose holy horror is interrupted only by the love affairs of our stags, and I enjoy this solitude." (October 4, 1679.) And, a few days later: "I wish to boast of being all afternoon in this meadow talking to our cows and our sheep. I have good books and especially the little letters and Montaigne. What more is needed when I have not you?" (October 25, 1679.) But she was not the woman to content herself with the holy horror of the woods and to converse forever with the beasts of her meadow. She had a little of the turn of imagination of the good La Fontaine. But, affectionate and sociable, she also wished friends about her and loved conversation. At Livry she very often met her uncle, her cousins, the de Coulanges, her friend Corbinelli, the Abbé de Grignan and many others. She was neighborly with the families and guests of de Pomponne, de Clichy and de Chelles. Chariots brought from Paris loquacious visitors, rich in news. Walks on foot in the near-by forest were improvised.

Nowhere--not even at Les Rochers, where she drew so many pleasant landscapes--did Madame de Sévigné better express the pleasure given her by the spectacles of nature. She has expressed with inimitable art the particular charm of each season in a few words, and we might, by collecting certain passages of the letters written at Livry, compose, as it were, the picturesque calendar of Madame de Sévigné. Let us try it.

February: "We have passed here the three days of carnival, the sun which shone Saturday made us decide on it.... We have tempered the brilliancy of approaching Lent with the dead leaves of this forest; we have had the most beautiful weather in the world, the gardens are clean, the view beautiful, and a noise of birds which already commences to announce spring has seemed to us much more pleasant than the horrid cries of Paris...." (February 2, 1680.)

April: "I departed quite early from Paris: I went to dine at Pomponne; there I found our bonhomme (Arnaud d'Andilly).... Finally, after six hours of very agreeable, though very serious conversation, I left him and came here, where I found all the triumph of the month of May. The nightingale, the cuckoo, the warbler have opened the spring in our forests. I walked there all evening quite alone." (April 29, 1671.)

May: "The beauty of Livry is above everything that you have seen; the trees are more beautiful and more green; everything is full of those lovely honeysuckles. This odor has not yet sickened me; though you greatly scorn our little bushes, compared with your groves of oranges." (May 30, 1672.)

July: "Ah, my very dear one, how I would wish for you such nights as we have here! What sweet and gracious air! What coolness! What tranquillity! What silence! I would like to be able to send it to you and let your north wind be confounded by it." (July 3, 1677.)

August: "You well remember that beautiful evenings and full moonlight gave me a sovereign pleasure." (August 14, 1676.)

November: "I have come here to finish the fine weather and bid adieu to the leaves; they are all still on the trees; they have only changed color; instead of being green, they are the color of dawn and of so many kinds of dawn that they compose a rich and magnificent cloth of gold which we wish to find more beautiful than green, even if it were only as a change (November 3, 1677.)--I leave this place with regret, my daughter: the country is still beautiful; this avenue and all that was stripped by the caterpillars and which has taken the liberty of growing out again with your permission, is greener than in the spring of the most beautiful years; the little and the great palisades are adorned with those beautiful shades of autumn by which the painters know so well how to profit; the great elms are somewhat stripped, but we do not regret these punctured leaves; the country as a whole is still all smiling..."

These samples, chosen from a hundred others, show how delicate was the sentiment of nature in Madame de Sévigné. We find in her letters all the themes with which modern poets since Lamartine have experimented: the first songs of birds announcing the spring, the "triumph of May," the serenity of summer nights, the beauty of moonlight, the charm of Indian summer, the sumptuous sadness of autumn. We may say that these are the commonplaces of universal poetry. But as it was long since conceded that, except for La Fontaine, no one in the seventeenth century was sensible of the charm of landscapes, it is well to note these impressions of Madame de Sévigné. I know the reply: Madame de Sévigné is herself a second exception. Is this quite certain? Observe that Madame de Sévigné does not witness in the least that she considers it original to take a Virgilian pleasure in the song of the nightingale or even in the full moon. Her correspondents whose letters we possess, do not show any more surprise at these effusions. There is no doubt that they themselves are moved by the same emotion before the same pictures. They do not say so. Therefore, the rule is to communicate one's intimate thoughts and sentiments only with all sorts of reserves and precautions; one's "impressions" are not written down. La Fontaine scorns this rule, like all others. Madame de Sévigné does not submit to it any more than he does, because she writes only for a little group of friends, and because she abandons herself to her expansive nature in everything. But, even if not the object of literature, the love of the country was neither less lively nor less widespread in the seventeenth century than at any other period.

Madame de Sévigné, then, is pleased at Livry because she is sensitive to the varied shadings of landscapes and to the changes of nature. But she has a singular preference for this bit of soil, so much so that she does not seem to feel the dampness there--which is unusual for a rheumatic--and that one day she will regret all of it, even to the rain: "How charming these rainy days are! We will never forget this little place." Perhaps the landscape of Livry, this modest and gracious landscape of the Parisis which she describes so charmingly--"this garden, these alleys, this little bridge, this avenue, this meadow, this mill, this little view, this forest"--is what accords best with her imagination. Exalted in her maternal tenderness, passionate in her friendships, Madame de Sévigné offers the contrast of ardent sensitiveness and controlled taste. Her judicious spirit shudders at excess and disorder. The humble and fine elegance of this countryside in the surroundings of Paris must have enchanted her. She loves her estate of Les Rochers greatly, but more as a proprietor proud of the improvements with which she has enriched her domain. For Livry she has a tenderness of the heart.

The comparison between Livry and Grignan recurs incessantly in her letters, as we have seen. Without doubt she is thinking principally of the health of her daughter when she curses the north wind of Provence and "this sharp and frosty air which pierces the most robust." But, at the same time, how clearly we see that to the harsh and rocky sites of the Midi she prefers northern nature, more gentle, more smiling, and to "this devil of a Rhone, so proud, so haughty, so turbulent," the "beautiful Seine" whose gracious banks are "ornamented with houses, trees, little willows, little canals, which we cause to issue from this great river!" On another occasion she writes: "How excessive you are in Provence! All is extreme, your torridities, your calms, your north winds, your rains out of season, your thunders in autumn: there is nothing gentle nor temperate. Your rivers are out of their banks, your fields drowned and furrowed. Your Durance has almost always the devil in its bosom; your Isle of Brouteron very often submerged." (November 1, 1679.)

In the last years of her life, she ended by pardoning Provence for its north wind and its sharp air; one winter, she will even decide that the mountains covered with snow are charming, and she will wish that a painter might reproduce these frightful beauties. And it will be not only the joy of living near her daughter which will cause her thus to abjure her tastes of aforetime, but also the softness of the sun and of the light. There are no old people who can resist this sorcery. In the last letters written to Grignan there is no longer a mention of Livry.

We would like to, find today in the house and the garden of the old abbey some trace of the sojourn of Madame de Sévigné; but everything has been upset since the end of the eighteenth century.

Here is the dwelling house constructed by the Abbé de Coulanges, in which Madame de Sévigné dwelt. Where was the apartment of the Marquise? In a letter of August 12, 1676, she says: "We have made a casement opening on the garden in the little cabinet, which takes away all the damp and unhealthy air which was there, and which gives us extreme pleasure; it does not make the room warm, for only the rising sun visits it for an hour or two...." The indication is precise. We are oriented, and we recognize very nearly the position of the little cabinet. But was this on the first or second floor? It is impossible to discover any indication. And we walk about soberly in the apartments, deserted since the departure of the Assumptionists: some abandoned books, collections of sermons, rest on a shelf of the library; old priests' hats lie on the floor; a béret lies on a corner of a table, a great map of Paris in the eighteenth century hangs askew upon a wall; the breeze blows through the windows whose panes are broken....

The gardens have long since given place to meadows and thickets. An old orange house with broken glass is half in ruins. The basins have disappeared. Here is, however, the canal where M. du Plessis, tutor of the children of M. de Pomponne, tried to down himself. The little bridge, near which Madame de Sévigné went to wait for her visitors or her mail, no longer exists, but the abutments mark its position, and, there also, an iron gate which assuredly dates from the time of the Abbé de Coulanges still hangs between two stone pillars. And this poor remnant of the ancient architecture is sufficient to render more lively the little picture which Madame de Sévigné has drawn in one of her letters: "I pace about the little bridge; I emerge from the 'Humor of my Daughter' and look through the 'Humor of my Mother' to see if La Beauce (one of her lackeys) does not come; and then I walk up again and return to put my nose into the end of the path which leads to the little bridge; and by dint of taking this walk, I see this dear letter come, and I receive it and read it with all the sentiments which you may imagine." (August 4, 1677.) And naturally, nothing exists of the two alleys which had been given those singular names, "under which"--the remark is by Father Mesnard, the best of the biographers of Madame de Sévigné--"one cannot fail to imagine the so different tastes of the mother and of the daughter, their so opposite characters, their occasional poutings, and their promenades separated after some quarrel, and which make us always think, the one of a beautiful smiling alley, full of light and verdure, the other of some path more cramped, more sad and more dry." In the park, if we no longer promenade under the very trees that sheltered the reveries of Madame de Sévigné, the alleys at least have remained rectilinear and still present the perspectives which were ingeniously arranged by the gardener of the Abbé de Coulanges. Finally, the "little view" which charmed Madame de Sévigné has not changed. There is always, beyond the meadows and the park, the same horizon harmoniously bounded by a swell of land covered with woods--a gracious site, ennobled by so many beautiful memories that, if we were not entirely barbarous, we would have to save it from the woodcutters and the builders. Ah! if there could only be found some friend of Madame de Sévigné to prevent them from touching the "pretty solitude!"

THE END

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Page 28. Bossuet by Rebelliau, in the series "Grands Écrivains français."]

[Footnote 2: Page 42. Le Naturaliste Bosc. Un Girondin herborisant, by Auguste Rey.--Versailles, published by Bernard.]

[Footnote 3: Page 45. Mémoires de Larêveillière-Lêpeaux.]

[Footnote 4: Page 53. Mémoires de Larêveillière-Lêpeaux, Vol. I, page 167.]

[Footnote 5: Page 61. I owe this quotation to the excellent work of Canon Müller: Senlis et ses environs. Why can we not have a book written with such knowledge and skill about every city of France!]

[Footnote 6: Page 82. Sainte-Beuve] Port-Royal, Vol. Ill, pages 510-512.]

[Footnote 7: Page 82. The historian of Juilly is M. Charles Hamel. His book (Paris, Gervais, 1888) is a moving and very vivid picture of the college during its three centuries of existence.]

[Footnote 8: Page 83. L'Oratoire de France, by Cardinal Perraud.]

[Footnote 9: Page 88: Published in four volumes by Dufey, Paris, 1833.]

[Footnote 10: Page 101. In regard to the history of the Oratory in the nineteenth century we may profitably read the work in which Father Chauvin has preserved the life and work of Father Gratry.]

[Footnote 11: Page 105. The Louvre has just bought an Egyptian stele for a hundred and three thousand francs, and the Château de Maisons going to be demolished.]

[Footnote 12: Page 113. We may remark that the Château de Maisons was later purchased by the State while M. Henri Marcel was Director of Fine Arts.]

[Footnote 13: Page 130. It must be understood that this impression does not correspond to archaeological facts.]

[Footnote 14: Page 136. The most important document about Thomas of Gallardon is the medical report, addressed to the Ministry of Police, by Doctors Pinel and Royer-Collard, in 1816. I owe to the courtesy of M. Gazier the opportunity of seeing a copy of this report. At the same time, this learned professor of the Sorbonne has been kind enough to place at my disposal a mass of pamphlets and manuscripts, some of which are unpublished, in regard to the seer of Gallardon: I have made use of these various documents in preparing this little essay.--In 1892, Captain Marin published an interesting book: Thomas Martin de Gallardon (published by Carré of Paris), in which he studied numerous articles which appeared during the Restoration, and reproduced the report of the doctors from a copy in the possession of M. Anatole France. We may add that the latter wrote a charming article in review of Captain Marin's book (Temps, March 13, 1892).]

[Footnote 15: Page 165. The most extraordinary thing was that ingenious Legitimists later found a way to give credence to the prophecies of Martin of Gallardon without ceasing to be faithful to the Count de Chambord. In 1871, thirty-seven years after Martin's death, an anonymous author (the question of Louis XVII has been handled by a number of anonymous writers) relates a conversation which M. Hersent, a Lazarist, had with the visionary in 1830. The latter then announced that the crown of France would return to its true heir.

"But," said the curious Lazarist, "how will he ascend to the throne?"

"Monsieur, he will ascend to the throne over corpses!"

"Who will lead him to us?"

"The troops of the north."

"How long will he reign?"

"Not very long; he will leave the crown to a prince of his race."

"And when will all this happen?"

"When France shall have been sufficiently punished for the death of his father."

Now see the conclusion of the anonymous writer of 1871: "Henri V has indeed said lately, in a letter which has been universally judged to be of very great importance: 'I am the heir'; but he has not said: 'I am the immediate heir' If Louis XVII exists, his proposition is true; he is the heir, after the immediate heir, since, according to Martin, this true heir, who must come in an extraordinary manner, led by troops from the north, who have already frightfully punished France, is to reign only a very short time, and leave the crown to a prince of his race, who can only be Henri V." (Grave question.--Louis XVII est-il bien mort?--Roanne, 1871.) Credulous persons are full of subtlety.]

[Footnote 16: Page 167. Figaro, August 8,1904.]

[Footnote 17: Page 172. In regard to these charities consult the work of Émile Rousse: La Roche-Guyon: Châtelains, Château et Bourg (Hachette et Cie., 1892). This book,--much more vivid and captivating than this kind of local monographs generally are,--contains a very accurate and very complete history of La Roche-Guyon. I have used it extensively.]

[Footnote 18: Page 176. Chronique de Sabit-Denis.]

[Footnote 19: Page 191. Instead of to give it would be better to write here arc en tiers-point, so as not to annoy the archaeologists. But all my readers are not archaeologists and would not be interested in the fine distinctions among pointed arches.]

[Footnote 20: Page 194. This history is a reprint from the Mémoires du Comité archéologique de Noyon (Vol. XVII); it is adorned with numerous illustrations which show different aspects of the cathedral.--The members of a recent Congress of the French Society of Archaeology met at Novon. The Guide published for members of the Congress contains short and precise notes upon the different monuments which were visited. That which relates to the Cathedral of Noyon was written by the Director of the Society, M. Eugène Lefèvre-Pontalis.]

[Footnote 21: Page 201. The stone is broken at the end of the seventh line.]

[Footnote 22: Page 206. I have taken these dates and some other facts from an article by M. Fernand Blanchard, Secretary of the Archaeological, Historical and Scientific Society of Soissons (1905). This pamphlet contains a very clear summary of the history of the monument and an excellent description of the ruins.]

[Footnote 23: Page 213. These ingenious remarks on the flora of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes were made by M. Fernand Blanchard (Joe. cit).]

[Footnote 24: Page 217. Nothing has been done since 1905 in the way of freeing from military authority the refectory of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes.]

[Footnote 25: Page 220. The history of Madame de Monaco has been pleasingly told by Marquis Pierre de Ségur, in a study which forms the second part of the book entitled La Dernière des Condé. I have borrowed from this work many details regarding Betz which the Marquis de Ségur has extracted from the archives of Beauvais.]

[Footnote 26: Page 243. Musées et Monuments de France, 1906, No. 10.]

[Footnote 27: Page 244. The architect of the Temple of Friendship was called Le Roy; this is the name which is signed to the memorandum of the sums paid to the sculptor Dejoux for the casting of the group by Pigalle,--a memorandum which has been published by M. Rocheblave.]

[Footnote 28: Page 249. Since these lines were written the Archaeological Committee of Senilis has published a work on the gardens of Betz by M. Gustav Macon. The gifted curator of the Musée Condé reproduces in this a very complete description of the gardens of the Princess of Monaco which must have been drawn up in the last half of 1792 or the first half of 1793. Its author is unknown. According to M. Macon, he was perhaps one of the writers who collaborated at that time in the preparation of Le Voyage 'pittoresque de la France' we might also think of Mérigot, who had just described the gardens of Chantilly so attractively. To this unpublished description M. Macon has added a series of notes in which he has collected all the information which he has found in the works of other historians or which he has himself discovered in regard to the artists who collaborated in the adornment of the domain of Betz. In short, he has exhausted the subject.]

[Footnote 29: Page 266. The transformations of Chantilly have been studied and described by M. G. Macon Revue de l'art ancien et moderne, April, 1898.]

[Footnote 30: Page 293. I have profitably consulted Livry et son abbaye, by Abbé A. E. Genty (1898).]