Nobility and patrimony in modern France by Elizabeth C. MacKnight

Author:Elizabeth C. MacKnight [MacKnight, Elizabeth C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9781526120519
Google: BaDVyAEACAAJ
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Published: 2018-01-15T00:38:53+00:00

6

Residences and gardens

I write these lines in the presence of the ancestors whose medallions you sent me to put with those we already owned. I was able to form a small gallery of twenty portraits in miniature.1

In 1880 César de Moré, comte de Pontgibaud wrote to his cousin Eulalie de Moré de Charaix to make a joyful announcement. Eulalie was the most senior surviving representative of the elder branch of the Moré family who owned the château and estate of Cheminades in the department of Lozère. César wanted Eulalie to know that his son was to marry Pauline Roussy de Sales, the great-grandniece of Saint François de Sales of Savoy. Since the bride’s maternal grandparents lived in Auvergne, the comte de Pontgibaud hoped that Pauline and his son would visit the region after the wedding. He wished to receive the couple at his home, the château de Pontgibaud in Puy-de-Dôme, and accompany them for sightseeing in Lozère. It would be an ideal opportunity to introduce Pauline to cousin Eulalie and to show her the town of Mende and the lands surrounding the villages of Cheminades and Serverette. These lands had been owned by the Moré since the twelfth century and were ‘the cradle of the family’.2

Eulalie was a single woman in her sixties who had never married and had no children of her own. Her two elder siblings, Charles and Virginie, had already passed away; neither of them left issue because of their vows of celibacy as a priest and a nun. The youngest sibling Hortense also had no children. In reply to her cousin, Eulalie mentioned that she had been contemplating whether the estate of Cheminades might in due course have to be put up for sale.3 The news came as a ‘wrench to the heartstrings’ for César because of ‘the precious memories of childhood’ he associated with this property where the cousins had spent time together. César requested that certain family heirlooms be transported from the château de Cheminades to his home, the château de Pontgibaud. With Eulalie’s co-operation he obtained medallion cases containing little pictures of their ancestors, a large portrait of his great-grandfather ‘who held the name César like me’, some items from the family chapel, various parchments, and the trumpet that had once belonged to Eulalie’s brother, the abbé Charles de Moré de Charaix, vicar of Mende. Thanking his cousin for the additions to his collection of family heirlooms – ‘I was able to form a small gallery of twenty portraits in miniature’ – César invited Eulalie to visit the château de Pontgibaud where he felt ‘the presence of [our] ancestors’.4

This late nineteenth-century correspondence between the comte de Pontgibaud and Eulalie de Moré de Charaix provides an illustration of the way property ownership and class created for nobles a particular relationship with space, artefacts, and the passage of time. ‘When a noble looks at the portraits of his ancestors in a gallery of his castle or looks at the walls and towers built by them,

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.