Hôtel de Rambouillet

“ The present century has produced two generations of Paris Bohemians who have left their mark upon the history of arts and letters. The first had its cradle in a now demolished house of the Rue du Doyenné. Nothing could have been more sombre or depressing than this street, which was one of the ugliest in Paris. Yet the indomitable spirits who made it their haunt lived within sight of all that the most artistic and delicate imagination could desire. There were the remains of the Hôtel Rambouillet, in which French literature had, in its infancy, been nursed ”

“ The Hotel de la Rochefoucauld of Madame Ancelot became a second Hotel de Rambouillet, where the classical Parseval-Grandmaison, who spent twenty years over his poem Philippe-Auguste, held armistice with the young champion of the Romantic school, Victor Hugo. The Princess de Vaudemont received her guests in Paris during the winter, and at Suresnes during the summer; and her friend the Duchess de Duras' causeries were frequented by such men as Cuvier, Humboldt, Talleyrand, Mole, de Villele, Chateaubriand, and Villemain. ”

“ The salon of Mme. de Lambert forms a period of transition from the seventeenth century type in which elegance, politeness, courtesy, and morality were the first requisites, to the eighteenth century salon in which esprit and wit were the essentials demanded. It retained the dignity, discipline, refinement, and sentiments of morality of the Hôtel de Rambouillet; it showed, also, the first signs of pure intellectuality. The salons to follow, will exhibit decidedly different characteristics. ”

“ In the beginning of the eighteenth century, with Mme. de Lambert as its leader, there was a renascence of the préciosité of the Hôtel de Rambouillet, women protesting against the prevalent grossness and indecency of manners. The salon of Mme. de Lambert was the great antechamber to the Academy, election to which was generally gained through her. A new aristocracy was forming, a new society arose; from about 1720 to 1750, libertinism and atheism, licentiousness and intrigue, crept into the salons. ”

“ Many among the great writers of the age touch in the same tone upon the philosophy underlying the various rules of manners and conversation which were first discussed at the Hotel de Rambouillet, and which have passed into permanent though unwritten laws—unfortunately a little out of fashion in the present generation. ”

“ If one literary figure is more closely identified with the Hôtel de Rambouillet than Voiture, it must be Chapelain. It is therefore curious that while M. Magne was preparing his picturesque volumes on the former, M. Collas should be independently writing the earliest biography of the latter. These coincidences are odd, but we are accustomed to them; they show that a subject is "in the air." When Chapelain made his first appearance at the Hôtel, perhaps in 1635, Voiture had long been installed there. They fell out at first sight, like dog and cat. ”

“ He employed his leisure in literary work, wrote verses in the taste of the time, and began a tragedy of Œdipe. But he is chiefly remembered by his Historiettes, a series of biographical, anecdotal, and character sketches of contemporary personages. Light, witty, somewhat cynical, and usually less restrained than modern taste demands, they are an invaluable document of the period, and particularly of the Hotel de Rambouillet. ”

“ Rambouillet derives its whole interest from the associations connected with the ancient chateau, dating originally from the 14th century, but often rebuilt. A great machicolated tower is all that remains of the medieval building; some apartments with good woodwork are also of interest. ”

“ The steeple, thirty metres high, is built of stone, and is in the form of an obelisk. The ornamental sculpture is the work of Jean Baptiste de Champaigne, nephew of the painter, Philippe de Champaigne. The church contains fine paintings by Mignard, Coypel, Lemoine, and Eugène Delacroix.
At the beginning of the Rue Saint-Louis, towards the north, commanding a superb view of the Upper Seine, stands the Hôtel Lambert, built by Le Vau, Louis XIV.’s principal architect. The first proprietor of the Hôtel Lambert, Nicholas Lambert de Thorigny, spared nothing to make it a magnificent abode. ”

“ He added these wings, and placed in that on the northern side this stately stone staircase, filling the width between the stone walls, with no hand-rail to break its sweep. Nothing is left of the former grandeur of the interior, which is given up to large industries 262 and petty handicrafts; even the vast and lofty chambers are cut up for trade purposes by partitions and by interposed floorings.
In 1658 the Hôtel d'Angoulême became the Hôtel Lamoignon by purchase of Guillaume de Lamoignon, a wealthy President of Parliament, and in 1684 it went to his son, Chrétien-François de Lamoignon. ”

“ Mlle. de Scudéry describes the salon of Mme. de Rambouillet in the following:
"Cléomire (Mme. de Rambouillet) had built, according to her own design, a place which is one of the finest in the world; she has found the art of constructing a palace of vast extent in a situation of mediocre grandeur. Order, harmony, and elegance are in all the apartments, and in the furniture also; everything is magnificent, even unique; the lamps are different from those of other palaces, her cabinets are full of objects which show the judgment of her who chose them. In her palace, the air is always scented ”

“ It should be generally known that sympathies will not group, that the current of thought will not flow freely when a table is unfavourably placed for the seating of society expected to converse.
Three hundred years ago the creator of the first French salon discovered this fact, and her discovery marked a date in the history of our social life.
Mme. de Rambouillet owned a dilapidated mansion standing between the Tuileries and the courtyard of the Louvre, near the site of the now existing Pavillon de Rohan. ”

“ The long dark form of the Louvre; the beautiful Notre Dame with the nearby Hotel de Ville, and the gold-domed Hotel des Invalides are among the dominating views of the famous little Seine, and in them is summed up much of the death and resurrection of a nation. But outside of Paris the footsteps of the world seemed to turn toward Rheims. Rheims with its far-famed cathedral, all war-despoiled, became a place of pilgrimage not only for the devoted French, but for the thousands of foreigners on their soil. ”

“ When we take into account the connection of the Hotel de Ville with the different revolutions, we must come to the conclusion, that it is one of the most remarkable buildings in Paris. The room was pointed out where Robespierre held his counsels, and from the windows of which he could look out upon the Place de Greve, where the guillotine stood before its removal to the Place de la Concorde. The room is large, with gilded hangings, splendid old-fashioned chandeliers, and a chimney-piece with fine antiquated carvings, that give it a venerable appearance. ”

“ Rambouillet is one of the most famous of the minor royal chateaux of France. Built under the first of the monarchies, in the midst of the vast forest of Yveline, it has always formed a part [Pg 310] of the national domain. Even now, under Republican France, it is still the scene of the hunts organized for visiting monarchs, and, within the last half dozen years alone, the monarchs of Spain and Belgium, Italy and England have shot hares and stags and pheasants in company with a Republican president. ”

“ To enable you and your friends to form some idea of the merits of the different hotels, and accordingly to give directions to your correspondents, I will add a list and short account of the most celebrated.
“L’Hôtel de Grange Batelière, rue de Grange Batelière,” in the Chaussée Dantin, (where Lord Cornwallis lodged) is a large and spacious house, in which there are many handsome apartments. It has also the advantage of a fine and extensive garden. I think I have heard, that the charges here are rather high. The situation of the house is excellent ”

“ The “hôtels garnis” are not so good or so numerous as they were formerly; but I think them still better than our houses of the same kind in London. There is also a privacy in a french apartment (the outward door of each making a distinct habitation) , which gives it a decided advantage over the lodgings of an english hotel.
The public rooms and private cabinets of “restaurateurs,” are certainly more elegantly fitted up than the apartments of our taverns or coffeehouses. ”

“ Protoplasm maturing into perfect humanity is as nothing to them. See how, through many gradations, the primeval well has become the well-stocked bar-room of to-day; the antique hovel is now the luxurious Windsor, the resplendent Palace, the Grand Hôtel du Louvre; the uncouth barbarian, who showed to each comer his own proper corner to lie in, has blossomed into the smiling and gentlemanly proprietor or clerk, who greets you as a man and a brother ”

“ Along this pavement the small Gavroche led the two smaller Thénardier boys, on his way to his hôtel—the plaster elephant in Place de la Bastille. A wide avenue, bordered by modern constructions, is fast taking the place of the old street and robbing it of all its character.
Where Rue Pavée meets Rue des Francs-Bourgeois, stands the Hôtel Lamoignon, formerly the Hôtel d'Angoulême. At that corner a square turret juts out from above the ground floor, overhanging the pavement, its supporting bracket cut under in shell-like curves. ”

“ It was here that Mme. de Rambouillet held her court for nearly thirty years, her salon reaching the height of its power under Richelieu, and practically closing with the Fronde. She sought to gather all that was most distinguished, whether for wit, beauty, talent, or birth, into an atmosphere of refinement and simple elegance, which should tone down all discordant elements and raise life to the level of a fine art. ”

“ But if a pot of tea had to be carried a quarter of a mile in a grand hotel, from the kitchen to a bedroom, people would say, “How absurd!” or, “How stewed!” The “layer” system of architecture is from all points of view indispensable to the grand hotel, and its scenic disadvantages must be met by the exercise of ingenuity. There are other problems confronting the hotel architecture, such as the fitting together of very large public rooms with very small private rooms, and the obligation to minimise externally a whole vital department of the hotel (the kitchens, etc.) ”

“ On one side of us is the King’s Head, whose steep tiled roof and square front has just that air of respectable importance that one expects to find in an old-established English hotel. It looks across the cobbled space to the curious block of buildings that seems to have been intended for a church but has relapsed into shops. ”

“ Nothing, however, is to exert a vaster influence on our style than the hotel. This 'institution,' as we have it, is comparatively unknown in Europe; beyond all nations are we a travelling and hotel-building people. Our hotels have not grown up with the scant traffic of the post chaise or diligence; they overleaped that feeble infancy, and started at once with the railroad and steamboat. Large, luxurious, and well appointed, they are usually the prominent buildings in all our large cities.
But as yet it is only their size and social importance that distinguishes them, not their architecture. ”

“ It is one of the strangest features of French hotels that dressing-tables are not included in any suite of bedroom furniture; there are looking-glasses by the score, there are handsome marble slabs bearing ornate clocks that do not go, there are gorgeous armoires à glace, but never a good, commonplace, useful dressing-table. French people seem to do without them in the same simple, uncomplaining way that they do without baths.
We cannot pretend to say we slept well in our opera-box. Everything in the hotel seemed to stay up{23} ”

“ The Hôtel de Ville is a very old and large structure containing the public city offices, and has a high tower and belfry, with clock and chime of bells. Another ancient structure is the Hôtel de Guise, an edifice erected for the wool-stapler's guild—an institution founded by Edward III. There are various statues and busts of distinguished men in the more public places ”

“ Gawky though this hotel is, and very uncertain in its use of French precedent, contemporaries generally recognized its inspiration as derived from the period of Louis XIV. The complex massing and the broken skyline, with roofs of different heights and pavilion-like towers at the ends, are much more obviously a premonition of the Second Empire mode in the form the world outside France would shortly adopt it than were the London and New York houses of two years earlier. ”

“ The exquisitely decorated Hotel Lambert, on the Ile Saint Louis, still retains much of its old splendor, though the finest masterpieces of Lebrun and Lesueur which ornamented its walls have found their way to the Louvre. "It is a home made for a sovereign who would be a philosopher," wrote Voltaire to Frederick the Great. In these magnificent salons, Mme. de Lambert, surrounded by every luxury that wealth and taste could furnish, entertained a distinguished company. ”

“ Germain, which the space employed, and, as it were, lost, make so vast. A modern house might, with ease, be contained in the limits devoted to the staircase of one of these palaces, and a whole quarter might be built in the extent they occupy.
About nine o'clock in the evening of this day the two vast folding-doors of this hôtel opened on the arrival of a magnificent chariot, which, after having taken a dashing turn in the spacious courtyard, stopped before the large covered flight of steps which led to the first antechamber. ”