Chateau Life: Elegance in the French Countryside

Besides the well-known historic chateaux of Chaumont, Chenonceaux, Azay-le-Rideau, Maintenon, Dampierre, Josselin, Valencay, and scores of others, there are quantities of small Louis XV chateaux and manoirs, half-hidden in a corner of a forest, which the stranger never sees. They are quite charming, built of red brick with white copings, with stiff old-fashioned gardens, and trees cut into all sorts of fantastic shapes. Sometimes the parish church touches the castle on one side, and there is a private entrance for the seigneurs. The interior arrangements in some of the old ones leave much to be desired in the way of comfort and modern improvements,—lighting very bad, neither gas nor electricity and I should think no baths anywhere, hardly a tub. On the banks of the Seine and the Loire, near the great forests, in all the departments near Paris there are quantities of chateaux—some just on the border of the highroad, separated from it by high iron gates, through which one sees long winding alleys with stone benches and vases with red geraniums planted in them, a sun-dial and stiff formal rows of trees—some less pretentious with merely an ordinary wooden gate, generally open, and always flowers of the simplest kind, geraniums, sunflowers, pinks, dahlias, and chrysanthemums —what we call a jardin de cure, (curate's garden)—but in great abundance. With very rare exceptions the lawns are not well kept—one never sees in this country the smooth green turf that one does in England.

 Phillipe, Duc De Magenta et Marquis De MacMahon outside Chateau Sully in Autun with his fiancee Amelie Drummond

Some of the old chateaux are very stately—sometimes one enters by a large quadrangle, quite surrounded by low arcades covered with ivy, a fountain and good-sized basin in the middle of the courtyard, and a big clock over the door—sometimes they stand in a moat, one goes over a drawbridge with massive doors, studded with iron nails and strong iron bolts and chains which defend the entrance, making one think of old feudal days, when might was right, and if a man wanted his neighbours' property, he simply took it. Even some of the smaller chateaux have moats. I think they are more picturesque than comfortable—an ivy-covered house with a moat around it is a nest for mosquitoes and insects of all kinds, and I fancy the damp from the water must finish by pervading the house. French people of all classes love the country and a garden with bright flowers, and if the poorer ones can combine a rabbit hutch with the flowers they are quite happy.

— Excerpt from "My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879", by Mary King Waddington

Guests around the pool at the Chateau St. Jean, owned by Rosemarie Kanzler Marcie Riviere, Cap Ferrat, France, September 1973

An outdoor luncheon by the swimming pool of the Chateau
Saint-Martin on the Cote d'Azur, France, 1986

Breakfast on the verandah of the Chateau Saint-Martin on the Cote d’Azur, France, 1986

Madame de la Haye-Jousselin on her horse at the gates of her chateau in Normandy, 1957