Chateau de Bagatelle

A private visit

 

 

…. The incredible perenniality of the ephemeral

 

 

Bagatelle, you said Bagatelle ? What are we talking about ?

The Oxford Dictionary has taught us the literal meaning and everyone knows that objects described as such are of little value.

The Ancien Régime and the many places bearing the name Bagatelle in France since can add to the confusion.

Which Bagatelle are we talking about ? The old farm in Wierre-au-Bois in the Pas de Calais? The theme park adjacent to Berck ? The ‘Folie’ of the Count of Artois resulting from a bet with his sister in law the queen Marie-Antoinette and its superb rose gardens ? Or perhaps the chalet ‘Grand-Mère’ on the coast ?

 

No !

We mean Bagatelle, one of the most exquisite ‘Folies’, the finest example of pleasure combined with useful, the perfect anthology of the house amongst the greenery.

 

 

Around the middle of the eighteenth century, Abraham van Robais is at the head of the very successful nearly 100 year old family business in Abbeville. In 1665 his grandfather had started one of the first industrial adventures of his century : the fabrication of the woollen cloth and its commercialisation.

100 different trades, nearly 3000 workers and a  flotilla of private vessels ensured the prosperity of the enterprise and the ensuing ‘princely’ standards of living of the family described by Voltaire himself.

 

It is true that the family had received royal protection and the favours of the then minister Colbert. Substantial interests were at stake: Colbert’s objective was to free the national economy from the tutelage of England and Holland in this market sector.

Whilst elsewhere in France the Protestants were subjected to religious prosecution after the revocation of the Edit de Nantes in ….. Louis XIV’s concessions went as far as to allow the van Robais to continue to practice their protestant religion, receive blessing of their matrimonial unions from their minister and have the benefit of their own cemetery.

 

Around 1750 Abraham van Robais  feels that his stately home in town is too closely intertwined with that of the existence of his factory and that his private life is starting suffer under the ever present proximity of his labourers.

At the time there is keen interest to return to nature and to live without the fastidious etiquette inherent to one’s condition. 

 

He decides to built a ‘Folie’, the name given to a refined dwelling  in and amongst the green,

( from the Latin : Foleia = greenery / leaves)  and very much in fashion at the time.

Bagatelle was built just outside the town of Abbeville, only 2 kilometers from his mansion. Initially Bagatelle comprised only three rooms : a summer drawing room, a winter drawing room and a dining room. No kitchen or commodities. Meals were brought from town and at times a nearby farm would supply the van Robais with fresh produce and succulent roasts.

Henceforth, even many of the business relations would be invited to the family home in the country.

The silver chafing dishes that were handed down from that era show that even without a kitchen it was quite possible to gently simmer a delectable dish of woodcock on the dinner table and moreover, without the presence of a multitude of domestic staff !

A return to simplicity and a sign of changing times.

Gallant encounters from then on were shielded from the curious and at times too talkative onlookers.

 

However, restricted comfort and simplicity quickly demonstrated their limits and ten years on a story was added quite harmoniously to the initial structure. Fourteen round bull-eye windows adorned  both frontages decorated with garlands and stone carved lion heads holding draperies… the draperies to which the van Robais owed everything, or nearly everything…

 

The hands of artists and the minds of genies were willingly at the disposition of the master of the house and created an unparalleled elegance from elements that could easily have become ostentatious and of disputable taste. Bagatelle really became the house of a draper, no expenses spared…

 

 

The van Robais seems to have pushed the meaning of ‘Bagatelle’ to an extreme. Their ‘Bagatelle’ is quintessence of a bagatelle without any of the related documentation worth keeping. Their archives are void of bills and orders, empty of any diaries and notes….

Why keep traces of Boucher, Pillement, Huet … ? Monsieur van Robais is not one to waste time on trifles… why ?

He had his portrait pained by Peyronneau for example and there would not have been a Flemmish artist on the way to Paris who would have declined any of his proposals.

The frivolities of decoration seemingly bare no further consequence for this man to whom anything is assessable.

 

But even if the man of the house shows indifference to the trivialities of architecture and decoration, he is not indifferent to those of pleasure ! Or as the French say ‘la bagatelle’…

The house is yet again too small to accommodate de fruits of his pleasure. Nine rooms are required to house his numerous offspring.

 

The terrace is replaced by a slate roof, and Bagatelle in the last decades of the Ancien Régime takes on the appearance that is still has today.

A magnificent place where society meets and where one can run into the poet Sedaine. The Prince de Croy wrote about having tea with Madame Roland de la Platière, the wife of the inspector of the Royal Industries in Amiens. Madame Roland who subsequently became a prominent figure in the French Revolution not at least because of the last words that she pronounced before being beheaded under the guillotine : ‘Oh freedom, what crimes have be committed in thy name’…

Madame Roland had a habit of being invited, or inviting herself all around Picardy to the mansions of those she had met through her husband’s official position.

For a time she is a regular visitor of Bagatelle, which she favoured over all and  whose owner’s industries were under her husband’s supervision…

Today, her bust in the winter drawing room still haunts the premises.

But times are changing. The people of France are in a frenzy.

The oldest European monarchy disappears. The King is forced to abdicate on 21 January 1793.

Thousand year old churches are transformed into quarries, chateaux are burnt and any reminders of the monarchy are systematically destroyed.

During these troubled days the van Robais family decides to return to the Netherlands.

Fragile Bagatelle, the frail country house, will withstand the storm without damage. Surrounded by  greenery she makes herself invisible to the turbulent outside world and goes to sleep.

In 1810,  upon his return from exile, a financially nearly ruined nobleman decides to purchase Bagatelle.

Gabriel de Wailly, who during his exile had been forced to work as a gardener will from now on continue this occupation for his pleasure and his love for the ‘Folie’.

 

And this passion for gardening will continue through generations of this family. After Gabriel, his son Auguste takes the reigns. Auguste is responsible for planting many of the specimen trees still in evidence today.

 

Paul de Wailly maintains his ancestors’ tradition, but besides the garden Paul has a passion for music. As a student of César Franck, he organises concerts with many famous musicians of his time like Satie, Fauré, D’Indy, Charbrier, Duparc and Roussel in the music room which he had designed especially for this purpose by the Parisian architect Parent.

 

His son Jacques had the very difficult task of reconstructing Bagatelle after the second word war, where shelling and fire had done severe damage to the house and grounds.

Jacques fulfilled this delicate and onerous mission for the main work on the building but in spite of all the efforts the years caught up with him and he would not live to fully enjoy the fruits of his labour.

 

 

In our times it takes a lot of courage, abnegation and sacrifice to look after the relics of our past.

Mentality has changed, and one wishes to live without worries and difficulties, yes without any burden I dare say.

 

After nearly 200 years the descendants of Jacques decide to free themselves of the enormous encumbrance that Bagatelle had become for them.

But the house even though scarred by times retained its power of seduction. And in spite of the urgent and important restoration work that was required, it was to her invincible charm that the Chagnon family succumbed in 1997.

They started nursing her with patience and determination. Her recovery was swift. The old mansion is again fresh and bright and offers a unique ensemble of 18^th century architecture, decoration, painted wood panels and period furnishing amidst its French and English gardens.

 

Bagatelle has always had its history, it has now secured its future.