The Spell of the Heart of France: The Towns, Villages and Chateaus about Paris
9781465653321
100 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
Whoever has read "The Spell of Alsace" by André Hallays will need no introduction to the present book. While the work on Alsace was undoubtedly read by many because of its timely publication just at the close of the Great War, when Alsace and all things French were uppermost in the public mind, these readers found themselves held and charmed as much by Monsieur Hallays' wondrous talent for visualizing landscape and for infusing the breath of life into images of the past as by the inherent interest of the subjects on which he discoursed. His books are not travel books in the hackneyed sense of the word. He does not catalogue the things which should be seen, or describe in guidebook fashion those objects which are starred by Baedeker. He does not care to take us to see the things which "every traveler ought to see." He specializes in the obscure and the little-known. He finds that the beauty of out-of-the-way places and objects far from the beaten track of tourist traffic is as great as can be found in famous spots, and far more gratifying because of the fact that it can be observed in solitude and enjoyed in moods undisturbed by the multitude. His manner of depicting landscapes is not by meticulous description, but by apparently casual touches of color, brilliantly illuminating what might to the ordinary observer seem monotonous and colorless landscapes. The inspired flash of description clings in the mind and gives an unforgetable impression of landscape or architectural beauty. In Alsace he saw everywhere the red-tiled roofs, the pink sandstone of the Vosges, sharply contrasted against the green foliage of lush summer or the golden light of the declining sun. In the heart of France, as indeed also in Alsace, he sees, especially, architectural delights which are unknown to the guidebook and the multitude. In fact, it is with the eye of an architect that Monsieur Hallays has traveled through the outer suburbs of Paris, to write the essays which are included in this book. Everywhere he is impressed by the marvelous perfection of French architectural styles at their best, as he has found them in the regions which he traversed. He makes us see new beauty in churches and châteaux which we might pass with a casual glance had not his illuminating vision and description marked that which we might see and wonder at. The architectural settings, however, much as they may appeal to his professional eye, are but the beautiful frames in which to set a multitude of charming portraits of French worthies, from the most famous to the most obscure. He knows his French literature, and more particularly the memoirs and the letters which shed so vital a light on men and motives. He has resurrected more than one character from obscurity and forgetfulness. His pathetic picture of Bosc, the lover of nature, choosing his grave in the woods which he loved so well, in defiance of the immemorial custom of his race, will seem perhaps more unusual to the European mind than to the American, for the New England pioneer of necessity made his own family graveyard in the most accessible spot, and these little plots on farms and in woods dot American soil. His portrait of the mystic Martin of Gallardon is particularly timely in this era of revival of interest in psychical research. Written, as these essays were, through a series of years, his descriptions of Soissons and the valley of the Oise tell us of since-devastated regions as they were before the whirlwind and havoc of war swept over heroic France. Doubtless the visitor today would find but a memory of some of the architectural beauties here described. Their memories are imperishable, and not the least of the merits of the book is that the guns of the Hun cannot destroy the written records of this beauty, though they may have blasted from the earth the stones and mortar which composed those sacred edifices.
