Before the bustle of autumn, a happy "parenthèse"

Chère amie, cher ami,

September is a golden month. The sun slants through the trees in the allée of lindens and in the park, striping the grassy lawn with ochre rays. The stone façade of the Chateau takes on a coppery glow. The pears against the garden wall are a rosy yellow; the vermeil of our cider apples are streaked with gold.
 
Summer ripens into its last splendid days.
 
Laden with blooms, roses climb against the farmhouse wall. These are young sujets, carefully tended by Monsieur Martyn. But even amid the thicket of weeds in the stable block, roses planted long ago by Madame la Comtesse put forth gallant buds.

“C’est une année rosière,” says our neighbor, looking with admiration at the sprays of a climber Monsieur Martyn has planted against another bâtiment of the farmyard.
 
It has been a particularly good year for roses, with periods of strong heat and plenty of water from our spring-fed reservoir.
 
“Amazing,” announced Monsieur Martyn, taking a deep sniff and gazing with tender satisfaction at a yellow rose he is training over the door through the Orangerie garden wall. “It must be the garlic I planted around its roots.”
 
But not just roses are on full throttle these days. 
 
Our new English gardener could not resist mingling delicate clematis with thorny branches of rose. Late this summer, the clematis began to flower for the first time. Also planted last year, the several varieties of hydrangea now bring forth panicles luminous with rosy purples and the palest of creamy green. The big round parterre in the center of the manège, the entrance courtyard between the first and second moats, is in full flower. It is not a new planting, but Monsieur Martyn has given it vigor and a beginning of color harmony.
 
Beyond the manicured enceinte that surrounds the Chateau, the last wildflowers are blooming along our stream and in the ditches beside hedgerows. The sunflowers growing in a nearby field are lustrous and full; time has yet to curl and crumple the yellow petals into dry strips of insignificant brown.
 
This is the glorious season, spring’s fresh promise maturing into the rich but dying paysage of autumn. Soon enough, yellow-speckled leaves will fall, and morning mist will blot out even the dark silhouettes of bare trees.
 
Vivez, si m’en croyez, n’attendez à demain :
Cueillez dès aujourd’hui les roses de la vie.
 
“Live, if you believe in my love, wait not for tomorrow:
Gather even today the roses of life,”
 
wrote the French poet Pierre de Ronsard to the fair Hélène in 1587.
 
The fate of a rose should remind her that all things, including our very selves, fade into death.
 
Away, winter thoughts, thoughts of mortality!
 
Other preoccupations fill a châtelaine’s days as summer ends.
 
There are finishing touches for the new kitchen that whirled into existence in April. A new menuisier and a new electricien start next week, adding skirting boards, shelves, crown molding, plugs and proper lighting.
 
There is storage to empty and a new atelier to put in place. Here, at last, Monsieur will set up the table saw, install vice grips, plug in power tools, sort out the accumulated hodge-podge of the Chateau’s outillage.
 
Meanwhile, a beam in the old four à pain has collapsed. It burst through the roof slates. The couvreur is on his way; happily, he was booked anyway to repair the roof of the stabulation. Too long neglected, as our farmer Monsieur Yves sternly warned, this must be done before the cattle come in for winter.
 
And this is the year, promis! that the little house in the stable block will finally be restored.

So much to do.
 
But before the bustle of autumn begins, before the flowers fade and the sunlit days darken into lengthening nights, there is time for a “parenthèse.”
 
Monsieur and I are celebrating his birthday. We took a train from Paris and to London. We are on a petit séjour on the other side of the Manche.
 
A birthday, like the change of seasons, is a time for taking stock. Like a parenthesis that slides between sections of a sentence, it stands outside the regular order of things. It invites a closer look. 
 
One September long ago, my husband and I met in London. Our lives have twined together ever since.
 
As in those far-off days, I spent an afternoon by myself in London, visiting some of my favorite places in the city: Fortnum and Mason’s, the British Museum, Hatchard’s bookstore. 
 
London has changed. When I first went to Fortnum’s, very long ago, a clerk followed me around with a basket. He wore a tailcoat and carried my selections to the cash register. On Friday, I bought three packages of loose tea from a person in a long platinum wig and enormous glued-on eyelashes. 
 
“D’you want a bag?” I was asked.
 
A rambling, noisy tea room used to overlook the main shopping floor. Here, country ladies clad in sturdy tweeds and sensible town pumps would take refreshment. It has been replaced by a brightly-lit tea salon cum ice-cream parlor. Almost every customer is a tourist.
 
London has changed, too. It is entirely cosmopolitan, international. Not even the taxi drivers are always English. London today seems a more thorough reflection of the former British Empire than 19th-century maps that show half the globe as part of her Majesty’s dominion.
 
At the British Museum, I had been to see the Benin bronzes and brasses for the first time. These decorative plaques and sculpted heads were confiscated in a punitive British mission to the kingdom, now part of Nigeria, in 1897. Compelling and beautiful, these unique objects are to be returned to the current oba, the king of Benin. It’s the new Britain’s recognition of post-colonial Africa. And thanks to that gesture, I’d been moved to see the collection.
 
London adapts. If I miss the British authenticity of the Fortnum’s of yore, it’s nice to see the old girl hasn’t gone out of business. Far from it; the store has reinvented itself for a new kind of customer. So, too, has the British Museum.
 
In a different registre, Hatchard’s has a fond place in my itinerary. When we first moved to France and the children were longing for home, I called the shop and had a selection of children’s books in English mailed to the Chateau. I visit Hatchard’s every time I come to London, as if my loyalty could stave off the general decline afflicting the book trade.
 
Hatchard’s too has adapted, I saw, but in a strikingly different way. It has reinvented itself as an actual bookstore. No virtual-office workers take up space at long tables. No coffee is served. Customers whisper requests and the staff whispers back. Books are gift-wrapped in brown paper. And the shelves are even more full of books than when I visited several years ago.
 
Everything has its season. The world spins. Things get rattled around and reassorted. Some, like Hatchard’s, seem to be eternal and only improve.
 
Perhaps this is the message our little English parenthèse has for us as we celebrate this most recent of birthdays. Times moves ever forward; not to evolve is impossible; some things can be counted on. 
 
And in the corner of our smiling eyes as we turn homeward is the glimmer and the shadow of such an understanding.
 
Soon enough, we will be back at the Chateau. Hammers will ring, paint brushes will glide over weathered wood, a roof or two will be razed and raised again.
 
We’ll take a moment to admire those roses of summer.
 
Bon anniversaire, Monsieur!

A bientôt, au Chateau...

Elisabeth

www.chateaudecourtomer.com