Having left Chartres behind earlier in the day, a coffee stop in Anet turned into something else entirely, as we noticed a curiously mish-mashed Chateau. It was festooned with a plethora of different symbols, ranging from the hunting goddess Diana, to mathematical, gyroscopic and physics icons, sundials, clocks, and religious iconography.
Atop the entrance a relief of a reclining nude Diana was dwarfed by a large Stag surrounded by four hounds.
Intrigued, we paid our money, and in we went… It proved to be the house of Diane of Poitiers, who, at sixteen years of age, married a guy forty years her senior, the senechal of Normandy, Louis de Breze. Upon reaching her thirties she fancied a bit of new blood, and, obviously employing the method of starting at the top and working down, assumed the role of “friend” to the sixteen year old King Henry the Second.
Apparently he had numerous “friends” (I think they call them Groupies now) but Diane was his favourite, and he indulged her in some serious gift giving, this Chateau for example, he had built for her. Plainly, he had adored her since early childhood. I quote from Philippe Erlange’s Diane of Poitiers;
“He saw once more the unchangeable huntress, majestic, glorious. Timid, he hardly spoke to her, but from this moment she was his Lady, the Lady whom a paladin serves to death. He was eleven years, she, thirty one. "
The architect, Phillipe De l’ Orme, was fascinated with Maths Physics and the Sciences, and the chateau just drips with his input, all strangely interwoven with the rampant religion of the private chapel. Science and God, strange bedfellows indeed, but it seems Diane had her share of those…… Her “Double D” logo is simply everywhere, from carvings to crockery to floor tiles. She reached a ripe old age for the time, too, sixty-six, and then only succumbing to a fall from her horse. She was enshrined in the funerary chapel on the estate, but fast forward 200 years to the revolution and those jolly fellows defiled her tomb, where she then lay at rest between her daughters, and reburied what they hadn’t destroyed in the peasants graveyard in Anet. Her sarcophagus was used as a trough for pigswill.
Mercifully, prior to the outbreak of World War 2, the French had an attack of conscience and the tomb was rescued and rebuilt, and though the remains of this remarkable woman no longer rest here, one can feel a presence as you enter the chapel and gaze on her black marble sarcophagus. Perhaps the weight of history is a tangible force.
Heady with the historical delights of the day, we pointed the Boomobile Northwards once again, me at the wheel, Miki consulting the Motorhome Rest-stop guide, where she had found an interesting entry.
Apparently there was a rest stop in a small town called Cleres, about 40 k short of Dieppe, with free water, waste disposal AND electricity, it said. Scarcely able to believe it, we made for it anyway. As we drew nearer, we began laying bets on the number of motorhomes there. There were place for twelve, it said in the guide…I thought at least 7 would be there, and indeed that was the case. The amazing thing was, it really WAS free electricity, with four access points….and one of them was EMPTY!! I whipped the cable out faster than you could say “alternating current” and there we were, plugged in for the rest of the day and night. Bliss!
Text by Kev Moore
Drawing & Photos by Miki
Both on Planet Goodaboom
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