Châteaux Country

Of Roosters, Queens, & Modest Triumph

The summer lasts longer in châteaux country. I'm sitting by a turquoise, rectangular pool whose thirst is quenched by a fountain that falls from an elevated Jacuzzi. The water cascades in a single sheath. The pool laps itself up. I am guarded by a pride of lions made of white stone. They sit passively beneath a cooing pigeon sky.

I am at a château in the Loire Valley, and the green grounds are maintained by someone whose job is to be rarely seen but always present. Out here, this is the idea: retreat into the past behind rusted iron gates, removing oneself from society, but only slightly, for this castle is within reach of tolling bells from what sounds like a cathedral.

What is it about chateaux that so attract us? Could it be the tapestried walls? Or maybe it’s the Bösendorfer grand piano where I sit and improvise a song? Or is it the trickle of the water fountain uniting cool pool and hot jacuzzi? Could the allure be, as one American in present company suggested, daily access to a private gym? Or is it the polished brass cookware hanging in the newly remodelled kitchen, inspiring people from Tokyo to Montreal to Timbuktu to travel deep into a vinous land of sweet and sour grapes where crusaders and Vikings once roamed?

To say we came to the Loire Valley in search of luxury is too simplistic, for the definition of luxury afforded in this medieval stone mansion is decidedly dustier—and the floorboards far creakier—than any digitized or plasticized version of luxury we’ve come to expect in this metamodern age.

Which is one of the main reasons, I suspect, why I’m here amongst a group of influencers, fashion models, producers and photographers, all talented women from around the globe who’ve flown across an ocean for a shoot, perhaps in search of a more aged idea of luxury that, while we know the idea is long-dead, long live the idea.

Never before in the history of the human species has anyone with a decently-paid job and/or a credit card been able to rent a château without bearing the cost of royal blood. The idea of coming to a château is simple enough: for the right price (which, it must be said, is far cheaper than at any other time in human history), people like yours truly can live like queens and princesses, prophets and jesters … if only for a day.

a witchy queen at work

There is a purple peacock in the garden and it struts like it owns the place—magenta shine, feather blue, and beady black eyes to interrogate your soul. While the models and photographers and make-up artists who came here are doing what they came here to do, I sit by the pool and wonder who built this place. There is a moat in the backyard, but it could be jumped over by an athlete, which makes me think the water is for decoration and not to defend from barbarian hordes.

There is a rooster in the front garden and it crows an instant before the church bell. Does the rooster know something we don’t know? Can it tell the passing of time? Or perhaps a better question: can we?

These botanical gardens play host to a never-ending party of naked female nymphs, their breasts made of stone, their hands small and delicate, their eyes a mixture of carnal freedom and gentle supplication. Some hold out their hands to me as I walk the garden path, while others smile at me, their stone shoulders draped in shawls. My favorite of these sculpted temptresses dares me to follow the muscular line of chiseled stone from her hips down to her feet, and now to her toes dipping ever-so-vividly into a marble pond.

photo by Augusta Sagnelli

I wonder: how many Dukes and Earls have invited young women to drink champagne in this garden, hoping to impress them with the family crest and their father's sword? Or: how many serfs and gardeners have showed their lovers a secret forest path, where the royal family never dared to roam? And how many aristocrats have gotten drunk in this very garden, laughing over stories of times past, of the beasts and dragons of colonialist adventure? And how many chambermaids, queens and princesses had to hide beneath the cover of patriarchal darkness to scurry into the garden at night with a young strapping suitor in hopes of exploring and being explored with unsophisticated tongues? Just one more question: on the other side of the iron fence, how many villagers spent a lifetime daydreaming of it all?

Like the other Americans currently on these castle grounds, I've come here for a job, ostensibly, as the stick-shift-driving chauffeur for a trio of badass female artists who’ve come to the Loire to prove why you can’t teach talent and you can’t fake good art. In the old days, these women’s tattoos alone would have had them burned at the stake, to say nothing of these women’s wisdom and confidence and general artistic witchcraft and wizardry.

a witchy queen who also happens to be my wife

And now if you’ll permit me, let’s continue the stroll down a tangential garden path: The Queen died the other day, though she really was just a queen, after all … far be it from me to neglect the thousands of queens who once lived, let alone the many queens who stand amongst us today. But with the death of the last British queen, the royal world of yore is experiencing a sea-change in its significance.   

The queen is dead. Just think of it: previously un-licked silver oxidizing in a late-18th century armoire can now be inserted into the salivating mouth of a construction worker or adjunct university teacher for not much more than the price of a night out in an expensive city. Long live the queen. Perhaps this marks the beginning of a new definition of monarchy, wherein the matriarchs of our lives can lead us through the pitfalls of a post-patriarchal age … a human can hope.  

And still, I wonder. What is it about châteaux? Perhaps it’s the evidence of things past, of a bygone era, of mythologized time. Because while it is a luxury, surely, to sit and record an improvisation in Ab major on a Bösendorfer grand piano, and to bask in the cool warmth of my impending dive into this glistening pool, what I appreciate most in this moment is not so much the luxury of material wealth as a temporal one. This journey to this castle has afforded me time to think, which is a far greater luxury than any French armoire can hold.

I stand up and walk towards the pool. I watch as the groundskeeper slips between the trees to pick up a white cotton pillow from the green earth and return it to its rightful place on a chair. He walks amongst the shadows, perhaps to stay out of sight, perhaps to stay cool. He  gives me a wave. We say bonjour.

The groundskeeper looks upwards towards the aqua blue sky. He closes his eyes and breathes-in deeply. The rooster crows again, but there is no tolling of the church bell this time. And still, I wonder: what does the rooster know? Perhaps that just on the other side of the moat there is a child returning home from school, and further still there is an ocean, and across the English Channel there is Buckingham, where the last of this era’s British matriarchs now lies in wait, mummified for the world to pay their respects, her rosy cheeks no longer human though they are still of human skin. Farewell, Queen of Narnia. The royal wardrobe has been closed.

a groundskeeper’s favorite flower

I am at the precipice of the pool now, ready to jump. Is it true that it’s only after disintegration that we come to understand what has passed? Or maybe Hegel was wrong. Maybe he, too, was confused by the absurdities of his time. Maybe in the cracked stone faces of the lions guarding this pool, there is a deeper, inanimate understanding of luxury. For they have seen me before, haven’t they? And they’ve seen you, too: in the incredulous vision of a pauper invited to a castle feast; in the amazement of a wayfarer who stumbled upon this place; or in the quiet footsteps of a hunter who once felled a deer on the forbidden border of this esteemed château.

Just before I fling my body into the crystal water, I see the groundskeeper again. He is picking flowers from a cultivated garden. He collects his bouquet of blues, pinks, and reds and holds his bounty to his chest in modest triumph.

The rooster crows. The bell tolls. I jump in.

I’d like to say a special thank you to my paid subscribers for making this space possible.

As a token of my appreciation, below you’ll find a 3-minute video in Châteaux Country, which includes scenes from the pool, the sculpture garden, and the surrounding moat, all of it scored to a piano improvisation recorded on a Bösendorfer grand piano, one of the most elegant pianos in the world.

Improvisation in Ab Major