CHARTRES

After David and I saw the grand rooms in the palace at Versailles, we walked in the gardens, strolling down long avenues lined with plane trees. We call them “sycamores.”  Four of them, with leaves like ragged handkerchiefs, lined the sidewalk in front of my grandmother’s house in Fort Worth.  At Versailles dispersed among the trees were marble statues, copied from Greek and Roman originals of scantily clad gods and goddesses.  

We peeked over the fence at the fake farm where Marie Antoinette and her entourage played at being milkmaids (like George Romney pretending to be an Iowa farmer).  I was reminded again of the sad life of the 14-year-old, daughter of the Empress, shipped off to a strange country, where she did not speak the language, to be married to a kind but blundering 16-year-old.  No wonder she wanted to escape to what she imagined was the more simple life of a milkmaid.  It was all fantasy.  The real life of French peasants was so harsh that they revolted and cut off her head.  

The fountains were like dead ponds.  No water shooting up.  I told David we would return in the evening, when they would be turned on to display all their magnificence. 

Meanwhile, since it was still early in the day, I decided to go to Chartres.  It was only about 90 miles or so further to the southwest, and, after Paris, David and I would be headed northeast, I was unlikely to have another opportunity to see the famous cathedral.  So, David and I got into the Opal and headed down a wide, divided highway, going further and further away from Paris.

Many years before I read Henry Adams’s “Mount Saint-Michel and Chartres.”   I still have my beautifully bound, boxed edition on the shelf in my living room in Garland, Texas.  Adams was enthralled with the architecture of the Middle Ages.  To him the prime examples were the abbey built on the pinnacle of a rock in Brittany and this cathedral, the finest of many built in towns throughout France. 

By the time David and I reached Chartres, it was late afternoon.  Cast in shadow were statues of saints, kings, and queens in niches beside Gothic-arched doorways where they stood for more than 800 years.  We went inside.  Cold from the stone floors penetrated the soles of our shoes.  The church was dark, cold, and gloomy.  No light came through the windows; instead of the glowing colors described by Adams, we saw a gray blur.
 
(I was equally disappointed when I went back in 1983.  Rain poured rivers on the cobblestones, making it impossible to properly see the outside, as well as inside the cathedral.   I finally saw the windows in all their glory when I went with John in 1988.  John, who was color-blind, was not impressed.  I went to France again in 1994 with my brother Preston.  We spent the night in a miserable hostel in Chartres; my crazy brother refused to go look at the cathedral.  People are what they are.  You can’t change them.)

Night comes early in October.  In leaving Chartres, I missed the main highway, and David and I ended up on a narrow, winding road.  At some point I stopped at an attractive-looking restaurant, but the man told me they would not serve dinner until 8 o’clock.  The French countryside would have been beautiful in the daytime (you’ve seen the Impressionist paintings), but it was a bitch driving at night.  By the time we reached Versailles, I was exhausted.  I picked up some rolls and cheese at a chartouserie (sp? French delicatessen); David and I ate a cold supper in our room in the little hotel next to the railroad. 

I broke my promise to return to the palace to see the fountains.  I regret that.  David, as a little boy, delighted in the big fountain in front of the art museum in Philadelphia, the one behind Silvester Salone when he ran up the steps in “Rocky”.   The horses in the fountain at Versailles would have thrilled David. 

Mothers do the best they can.  It would be another ten years before I was diagnosed as manic-depressive.  I would finally understand why I rushed into big, exciting projects and then crashed before I finished them.  Maybe people can change.  Medication helps.  Today I would have better sense than to try to see both Versailles and Chartres in one day. 

Of course, today I am on dialysis three days a week.  I can not travel anywhere.  But I’ve been there, kid.  I may have been crazy to take all those trips.  But I did. it, and I’m glad.