Enchanté, Chantilly!
It’s been a while since I got on a plane and it took me to my favourite place in the whole wide world. So I live in the dreams of my past. This time around I’m returning to Chantilly. I love visiting palaces and the Domaine de Chantilly was a welcome break from the crowds of Paris or even Versailles, for that matter. Make no mistake, I love Versailles. AND I LOVE PARIS. But I think this particular visit was like, to feel like, an honoured guest. Where I shared space with a few other fellow carelessly-dressed, camera-totting lords and ladies in attendance. The operative word being FEW!
Chantilly is a very short train ride from Paris - about half hour or so. So it makes for a great day trip from Paris, giving you enough time to see the chateau and return to the city. Once you alight from your train at the Chantilly station, a little walk through some very pretty woods leads you to the chateau. The chateau’s backyard is the Chantilly race course, so it rises pretty dramatically on the horizon, as you walk across the fields. We wound up at the back side of chateau and the egalitarian ghost that occasionally possesses Sahit every time we visit a palace, began to manifest in the scowl that was steadily spreading across his face. “It’s closed” he said grumpily. But Google didn’t agree with him. Though the “chateau” before us, for one thing looked nothing like the pictures. At first we thought it was because we were seeing it from a distance. But even as we got closer, it resolutely remained a stranger. To begin with, where was the lake? And why was it shaped more like an hǒtel than a chateau? And where, oh where, was the blessed entrance!? There wasn’t a soul in sight and it looked resolutely shut!
So what was actually going on was that we’d mistaken the Grandes Écuries or the Grand Stables for the chateau. Stables that are grand indeed. And even here, we had wound up on the back side of a sparingly visited monument. Chantilly, despite its many charms, is not that much of a raging tourist hotspot. But I digress, we’re at the stables - again whose main entrance we found with a bit of difficulty. The stables were envisioned and built by Louis Henri, the Duc of Bourbon, who was so convinced of an equine rebirth, that he commissioned a suitable subsequent home for himself. Talk about thinking about the future! If we’re going by that narrative, then there must be a whole host of reborn royalty and gentry in there, for the stables are fit for royalty. The largest in all of Europe, it houses the Living Museum of the Horse. And we unwittingly ended up at a dressage demonstration which was in FRENCH. The ghost turned the scowl into full blown words of annoyance! Sahit was not amused. He was thoroughly hating being parted from his beloved Paris to only wind up in a dark stable, where a horse understood what was going on far better than he did.
After the dressage demonstration, we were still baffled - where is the chateau we saw in the pictures? Where is that glittering lake with the castle rising right in the middle, like a tall story? Were we at the wrong chateau? Why are we hanging out with horses? That was not part of the plan!! We came through a courtyard and entered these massive grounds, and then, lo behold, faaaar away in the horizon, skirted by woodland and the aforementioned serene lake, a castle rose. Almost floating on the lake, like a great, ornate lotus. The grumpy ghost put up a fight, but Sahit’s innate curiosity smote it, silencing it and I could see him beginning to look interested in the place. Finally!
The Chateau de Chantilly puts on a lot of royal airs yet. For one, it’s a favourite for wedding shoots. With brides in extravagant gowns floating about the place, you’re given imagination stimulus - and before you know it, they are medieval maidens or renaissance ladies-in-waiting, having a bit of a stroll. Fancy cars of vintage make, come to a slow halt, and dapper silver foxes (of vintage make, as well) step out in slow motion, buttoning up their crisp, expensive leisure blazers, while the wind murmurs charming things into their ears and persuades their well-set hair to loosen up a little. But the coiffure is set; and resolutely set so in its ways - not yielding to the wind. So silver fox looks like an airbrushed photograph amidst us plebeians with our hair flying every which way to Sunday.
The general ambience of the place is as if construed by an eight-year-old girl-god. A delicate mist drapes this fairy tale castle. Beautiful horses, some of them demi-unicorns, dot and trot along the horizon. Bridal veils catch the breeze, turning their attached (often) of-Oriental-descent brides into apparition-ing fairies. Lace parasols (yes I said PARASOLS!) add romantic atmosphere to slow-moving vintage convertibles. The trees are strokes of woodland wonder, painted by an indulgent brush. The gateway to the chateau is filled with huge statues of hounds. They sit with the fake repose of hunting dogs, alert for any movement in the foliage, as if ready to give chase to a passing rabbit or deer, ears and woofs a-flying! From here, the narrative becomes a bit more grown-up, but grown-up fairytale, no less!
The chateau is surrounded by Le Notre’s gardens. Of course, I’m on surname basis with France’s most famous gardener thanks to the movie A Little Chaos and the Netflix special Monty Don’s French Gardens. Andre Le Notre dreamed the excessive French garden into being. Le Notre messed around with hydraulics and fountains long before electricity was a thing and redirected the course of rivers to feed the fancies of royals and their egos. The Sun King, Louis XIV, was so envious of one such garden that he imprisoned his competition, Nicholas Fouquet, because the latter’s opulent garden left the king smarting with a complex. Upon visiting Vaux-le-Vicomte (another chateau to visit, and another grumpy faced Sahit story to share) Louis XIV decided that this courier of his was misappropriating state fund for his private benefit. I have to leave you with that letter of recommendation of Le Notre’s talents - I have no photos to share because the weather did not allow us to explore the gardens. Weirdly too much sun prevented me from discovering the Versailles gardens and this time around, it was too much rain. In addition to the French garden that skirts the chateau with its immense ponds and parterres, the chateau also has an Anglo-Chinese Garden with tiny rustic hamlets and a very opulent English garden.
The architecture of the chateau is such that you might end up in the same room more than once. One such recurring room is the Stag Gallery. This room speaks with a thick baritone of heavy tapestries and wood panelling. There’s no mistaking the machismo in its grandeur - that only select members were allowed to dine off this table. That wine and women were loose currency in this room. The angry mob must have found special pleasure in smashing this room to pieces. Even yet, I found myself recoiling at that very masculine/boy’s club/man cave air that hangs thick in the room.
Just outside, through a vestibule and we were in a large room filled with paintings, a room that could have felt formidable if it weren’t for this “generous storyteller” feel it exuded. The Grande Galérie, as the Duke named it, invites you to sit by its brocade-skirt-covered feet and listen to all the stories that it had to tell. Right from stories of valour to downright gossip of all and gentry. The Chateau de Chantilly is home to the second largest collection of antique paintings in France after the Louvre Museum. Love affairs, war heroes, family portraits and the faces of mistresses surface in renderings of goddesses and even god’s mother take form and colour inside filigreed gilt frames. The Chantilly experience is so different from that of Louvre or Versailles. While, I repeat, I loved both of them, they did give me a sense of a culture-filled marathon, where I had to elbow people out of the way to get ahead, and come to a panting finish. I rather loved feeling like I was here upon invitation. The jewelled window panes looked out to almost empty gardens, making it feel more exclusive, more intimate, more aristocratic.
Speaking of aristocrats - the last royal to own this chateau was Henri d’Orleans, Duke of Aumale, the ninth child of the last French “roi”, Louis Phillipe. From the ruins that he inherited from his godfather, he resurrected the many times destroyed Chateau. He died childless and bequeathed the castle to the government of France. The chateau was completely destroyed in the French Revolution but again, like it did many times before, resurrected again - lovingly restored to its present state by the Duke. The Chateau also houses the second largest library in all of France. It is a veritable work of love by a self-diagnosed bibliomaniac who loved books with a passion. The Duke of Aumale, the chateau’s 19th century resident was an avid collector of fine art and books - his collection was said to be a staggering 60,000 titles!!! If you’ve ever dreamt of a having a book-wall in your house of dreams, the library will persuade you into graduating to the advanced level of book-rooming or book-caving.
We thought we would explore the grounds a bit, when the gloomy sky made a long time coming decision and let loose an intermittent rain. That made us decide that we should grab a bite and be on our way back to Paris. Outside the chateau, a little store claimed to be the oldest wine store in the city. We bought a couple of bottles, thinking of how lovely it would be to bring them back to India. I’ll have you know that the contents didn’t last the evening!!
I saw a house that would be my house of dreams (and of course would feature my book-cave) if I had all the money in the world. Chantilly is filled with elegant maisons - I’m guessing whose residents come from noble ancestry. Amongst all these genteel-looking architecture and shops, a shuttered Erotic Shop stood out like a sock puppet thumb! We stopped by a little creperie to have a bite. The hostess looked a bit taken aback as we walked in, and bonjoured us in a tad bit uncertainly. We were beginning to feel a little unwelcome, pegging it down to our brown skinnedness. And then she rattled off in French, her words tumbling over each other, half defiantly and half apologetically - she didn’t speak English!!! And we looked suspect as the “parlez vous anglais” types. It was at this moment, that the forces of Duolingo came to my rescue. All that I learnt on the app came to my rescue and rushing out of my mouth. Not only did I order for everyone in a mixture of French and hand-waving, I also recognised that the menu had NO VEGETARIAN dishes and I communicated to the hostess to make my vegetarian friend a signature crepe with “Non viande. Seule legumes”
I look up to see Sahit looking at me all spooked and flabbergasted at my so-called Frenching. And he says with a mix of reverence and fear “That Pink beret has gone straight to her head!!” And he thought Chantilly was going to be boring, ha!!!
My vegetarian friend got her 100% vegetarian crepe.
And I, I COMMUNICATED IN FRENCH.
Chantilly, you were great.
