Tuileries Palace

“ West of the Louvre, and in the then open country, was a tile-field, which, from the fact of tuiles being manufactured there, was called Les Tuileries. The Médicean sorceress touched the tiles with her wand, and up rose under that magic stroke the stately palace which was to be the centre of so many high and wonderful destinies, and which continued to bear through all changes and vicissitudes its first homely title of Les Tuileries. One life could not suffice for the completion of such a monument, however, and Catherine left it to her three king sons, successively to finish. ”

“ The King of Rome lies in his tomb at Vienna, the Duc de Bordeaux at Göritz, the Comte de Paris at Weybridge, the Prince Imperial at Farnborough. These are the heirs of France, born in the palace of the Tuileries. How are they cast upon the waters of the world! And where the palace of the Tuileries once stood the pigeons now call to each other beneath the trees, while, near at hand, lolls on the public seat he whom France has always with her, the vaurien—the worth-nothing.
So passes the glory of the world. It is not a good thing to be born in a palace, nor to live in one. ”

“ A sorry dowry, this, for an inheritor of a palace at once so noble and admirable in spite of its unluckiness.
With the court followers and the nobility of the last days of the monarchy it was the same thing; the Tuileries was but a temporary shelter. The scaffold accounted for many and banishment engulfed others to forgetfulness.
It was a commonplace at the time to repeat the warning: "O! Tuileries! O! Tuileries! [Pg 108] Mad indeed are those who enter thy walls, for like Louis XVI, Napoleon, Charles X and Louis Philippe you shall make your exit by another door." ”

“ Until the outbreak of the Revolution, the noblesse or their privileged associates alone had the right to pace its alleys. Soldiers were never permitted to walk there. Once a year only, a great occasion, its gates were thrown open to the peuple.
A period of neglect followed upon the fine work done under Louis XIV. His successor cared nothing for the Tuileries palace and grounds. They fell into a most lamentable state; and, when in the troublous days of the year 1789, Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette and their little son took up their abode at the Tuileries, the Dauphin looked round in disgust. ”

“ It is not probable that the Tuileries will ever again be inhabited by royalty. There are too many mournful associations connected with the place ever to render it agreeable as a residence. When Louis Philippe was driven from the Tuileries, the mob again sacked it, and its vast saloons are unfurnished and empty. Four years ago, the Provisional Government passed a decree that this palace should be converted into a hospital for invalid workmen. ”

“ But it has never been a favorite residence of the kings of France, and no effort of the imagination, and no concomitants of regal splendor can make it an agreeable home. It has probably witnessed more scenes of woe, and more intensity of unutterable anguish, than any other palace upon the surface of the globe. Its rooms are of spacious, lofty, cheerless grandeur. Though millions have been expended upon this structure, it has had but occasional occupants. A few evenings ago I was honored with an invitation to a party given by Prince Louis Napoleon in the palace of the Tuileries. ”

“ It must be remembered, too, that under the reign of Louis XIV. Gothic architecture was proscribed, as recalling “the age of barbarism.” Every new edifice was constructed in the Italian or Italo-Byzantine style. The finest, if not the most ancient, dome that Paris could ever boast was the one which crowned the central pavilion of the Tuileries Palace. The cupola of St. Peter’s was the model adopted in the early part of the sixteenth century by all French architects who had studied in Italy, or Italian architects who had settled in France ”

“ At twelve o'clock the rumor sped with lightning rapidity through the streets of Paris that the troops, who had ostensibly been ordered to their quarters, were, in fact, concentrated around the palace. Instantly rose the shout, "To the Tuileries! To the Tuileries!" and a hundred thousand men from all [Pg 284] sections of the city marched toward the Palais Bourbon and the Tuileries! ”

“ It is nearly four o'clock in the afternoon. The invasion of the Tuileries is beginning. Let us glance at the palace and get a notion of the apartments through which the crowd are about to rush. On approaching it by way of the Carrousel, one comes first to three courtyards: that of the Princes, in front of the Pavilion of Flora; the Royal Court, before the Pavilion of the Horloge; and the Swiss Court, before the Pavilion of Marsan. The assailants enter by the Royal Court, pass into the palace through the vestibule of the Horloge Pavilion, and climb the great staircase. ”

“ Yesterday I was at the great evening reception at the Tuileries, the Queen having sent word to me by Madame Mollien that I might come and go by the private apartments, and so not have to wait for my carriage. It was the last Court of the season, and I took my daughter-in-law, Madame de Valençay. The palace, when lit up, is really superb, and many things look very well—in contrast to many others. This applies to the black coats scattered here 225 and there among the uniforms, the elaborate dresses of some women, and the bourgeois caps of others. ”

“ When the palace of Versailles was erected, the Tuileries ceased to some extent to be used by the French kings. In the Revolution it was stormed and sacked by the frenzied Parisian mob (1792) , and for a time became the seat of the national convention which governed France after abolishing monarchy. The Tuileries were also attacked and taken in the insurrections of 1830 and 1848, and during the Commune (1871) the buildings were burned, the ruins not being removed till 12 years later. ”

“ In 1564, tired of the Louvre, Catherine bought a piece of ground called the Salbonière, covered with pottery-works, the Tuileries Saint Honoré, and commenced the palace which received its name from the fabrics which had occupied its site. For six years, the new edifice steadily progressed; but Catherine, having learned from her astrologer, Ruggieri, that it was her fate to die under the ruins of a house near St. Germain, suddenly gave up the works of the Tuileries, because it was in the parish of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, and built the Hôtel de Soissons, on the site of the present corn-market. ”

“ France contains no spot more rich in touching associations.
4. The Tuileries.—"Will Prince Louis Napoleon," inquired a gentleman, of a French lady, "take up his residence in the Tuileries?" "He had better not," was the laconic reply. "It is an unlucky place." It requires not a little effort of imagination to invest this enormous pile of blackened buildings with an aspect of beauty. Three hundred years ago the palace was commenced by Catherine de Medici. ”

“ His most important work was the palace of the Tuileries, begun in 1564. Of this gigantic scheme only a small part, the central part on the garden side, was completed by De l’Orme, and this was much altered by successive architects before the building was [201] destroyed in 1871. The plan, as given by Du Cerceau (Fig. 119) , is symmetrical, but it is broken by projecting bays and angle pavilions more pronounced than those of the Louvre. ”

“ It is full of memories of the masterful Tudors, and the pleasure-loving Stuarts, a period stored with great and stirring happenings, just when the New World was being discovered, the New Learning flooding over Europe, and the Reformation stirring the hearts of men. Yet of all its vast size, only a tiny fragment is left—the banqueting hall of the magnificent palace designed by Inigo Jones—and not a brick or stone remains of the palace where Wolsey reigned in his episcopal glory, and Henry VIII. held his gorgeous Court. ”

“ Here is everything to make such a paradise delightful. In the garden I saw a rose grafted on an orange-tree. There was much topiary-work, and columns in architecture about the hedges. The Duke has added an ample laboratory, over against which stands a fort on a hill, where they told us his treasure is kept. In this palace the Duke ordinarily resides, living with his Swiss guards, after the frugal Italian way, and even selling what he can spare of his wines, at the cellar under his very house, wicker bottles dangling over even the chief entrance into the Palace, serving for a vintner’s bush. ”

“ Fast as one forgets everything at Paris, Versailles remains dazzlingly clear in my recollection; all I feared was to have too much to say. I doubt if I could have revisited the Palace under more curious circumstances. On one side was M. de Talleyrand who reconstructed for us the Versailles of Louis XV., Louis XVI. and the Constituent Assembly, and on the other King Louis-Philippe. In the middle of the hall of 1792 the King was carried back to the earliest memories of his youth and made them live again by his words no less than by the fine portraits and interesting pictures he has collected. ”

“ Many of the old noblesse have been describing the splendour of the Hôtel d'Orsay to me since I have been at Paris, and the Duc de Talleyrand said it almost realised the notion of a fairy palace. Could the owner who expended such vast sums on its decoration, behold it in its present ruin, he could never recognise it; but such would be the case with many a one whose stately palaces became the prey of a furious rabble, let loose to pillage by a revolution—that most fearful of all calamities, pestilence only excepted, that can befall a country. ”

“ The name of fortress would be more appropriate than any other, for the Old Palace; it is a great mass of stone, without columns, without frontal, without order of architecture. Time has gilded the walls with beautiful vermilion tints which the pure blue of the sky sets off marvelously, and the whole structure has that haughty and romantic aspect which accords well with the idea that one forms for oneself of that old Palace of the Seigneurie, the witness, since the date of its erection in the thirteenth century, of so many intrigues, tumults, violent acts, and crimes. ”

“ I wish my apartments to be very near those of the Empress, and on the same floor. Finally, I wish a palace that would be comfortable for a convalescent, or for a man as age approaches. I wish a small theater, a small chapel, etc.; and above all great care should be taken that there be no stagnant water around the palace."
The Emperor carried his passion for building to excess, and seemed more active, more eager in the execution of his plans, and more tenacious of his ideas, than any architect I have ever known. ”

“ Fitzalan went to Hampton Court with the usual crowd of German, Italian, and French hair-dressers, waiters, cooks, and restaurant-keepers, besides native cockneys of all classes except the upper.
The noble old Palace welcomed this mass of very common humanity with such a pageant of beauty as never greeted the eyes of its royal builders. Centuries of sunshine seem to have melted into the rich reds and grays and cream-color of its walls, under which runs a quarter of a mile of flower-border, a glowing mass of color, yet as full of delicate and varied detail as the border of an illuminated missal. ”

“ We saw the little balcony where the doomed Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette showed themselves to the mob—the "deluge" which the greater Louis had once predicted.
The palace at Versailles is like other royal palaces of France—a fine show place, an excellent museum, but never in its day of purest domesticity could it have been called "a happy little home." Everything [Pg 245] is on too extended a scale. Its garden was a tract of marshy land sixty miles in circumference until Louis XIV set thirty-six thousand men at it, turning it into fairyland. ”

“ At this time, which is devoted to Mirth, there is a Ball at Court, and on the Flesh-days there is commonly a great Masquerade representing a Country-Wedding. In the Palace there is a very magnificent Theatre, which indeed is almost the only thing there that is worth seeing, for the Imperial Palace is so wretched a Mansion that few Monarchs are lodged worse than the Emperor. ”

“ But it is refreshing for once to change this unsatisfactory position, and, instead of always looking straight in the faces of kings, and queens, and generals, and ministers, to catch, by a side-glance, a view of the times, as they appeared to men occupying a less central and less abstract position than that of the general historian. If we look at the Palace of Versailles from the terrace in front of the edifice, we are impressed with its broad magnificence, but we are soon tired, and all that is left in our memory is a vast expanse of windows, columns, statues, and wall. ”

“ It is a clean and cheerful city, though it can boast of little architectural beauty. The Royal Palace is its finest building, but even this, on close inspection, proves to be more 18 useful than ornamental, and well suited to a nation forced to practice strict economy. ”

“ In spite of the ruin to which it has been exposed, it has the stamp of noble bearing, and, previous to the invasion, must have been one of the most beautiful towns in the Spanish dominions. The Royal Palace, on the banks of the Tagus, is worthy of being the residence of princes, and contains a number of costly and magnificent paintings.
The Queen's Palace, or the Casa de Labrador, the charming summer retreat of her Majesty, is fitted up with simplicity and elegance combined, and, being replete with every comfort and luxury suited for a Queen, it may well be termed a paradise in miniature. ”