#montebellos

After graduating in the summer of 1994, I spent the last of my financial aid funds on two months in SW France with my besties who’d moved from Canterbury to the Gers and within spitting distance of Lectoure two years earlier. They suggested we pack a nice picnic, drive up to the Dordogne, and visit, for five francs each, the chateau bought, renovated, and occupied by the present duc de Montebello. My friend Jill had already been, but she said, with a straight face, that it was worth a second visit.

And as we say here in the South, “Boy, howdy!”

If this pile of stones, circa 11th century for its squat tower and through the 16th century for the rest of its unprepossessing additions, is the best that Jean-Boy’s descendants could do—or chose to do—then I have to think the gene pool has been sadly corrupted, in quite a few ways. As an aside, Jean-Boy loathed the English, so two of his sons married average middle-class Englishwomen; unfortunately, that trend continued down the line for a while. He hated the Ancien régime aristocracy, and another descendant, probably in the third or fourth line of dukes, married into the duc de Broglie’s family. He was until the end anti-clerical, and the last couple of generations are rabidly conservative Catholics, and religious artifacts, drawings, and paintings abound. He also hated the Chouans/Vendéans, and I think one or two of those somehow crept into the mix by the end of the 19th century.

The tour of the family pile—and when I say “family” here, I refer to the last duke only because he bought the place in the 1960s—began outside in the gardens. I think they were indeed supposed to be gardens because I saw a couple of roses among the knee-high weeds and a couple of shaggy ornamental hedges. Our tour guide was—wait for it!—madame la duchesse de Montebello herself; she is from some stalwart Prussian princely family, which explains why she looked precisely like Aunt Lydia or the wife of some former well-fed Nazi official. She was responsible for showing visitors around the outside grounds and the weeds.

After about 30 minutes, she shooed us inside, where Woody Allen met us. The present duke is about 5’5”, with a wizened little face, rather elf-like, with a hairstyle resembling a 13th-century monk’s tonsure. He was wearing a cream-colored turtleneck sweater, a plaid jacket, and khaki pants held up by—I do not jest here—a piece of rope. A pair of blindingly white tennis shoes and some red wine stains down one leg of the khakis completed this bit of sartorial splendor. As he greeted us, M. le duc held a full glass of red wine and never let go of it for the next hour or so as the level steadily decreased.

The tour languished in the 11th-century tower for over twenty minutes as Woody expected us to admire each stone on the way up a spiraling and quite worn staircase. At the end, we entered a large room with the usual array of wooden ceiling trusses and beams and early Renaissance features holding up an otherwise unadorned ceiling. The walls were stone with a few distinctly threadbare tapestries hanging here and there. The most noticeable feature was a long refectory table, enough for two dozen guess at least, covered in no discernible order with stacks of porcelain plates, serving pieces, and cups from wildly different designs and historical periods. The display included battalions of knives, forks, and spoons, then glassware, lots and lots of glassware. I picked up a glass and looked for a hand-written price tag; the entire setting resembled items arrayed for sale in a large junk shop. The patina of dust lay everywhere, as did the evidence of mouse droppings and a few pigeons that had flown in from holes in the ceiling to leave their calling cards on the dining table and some of the plates.

The next room was a reception room, but it was impossible to tell what historical period it represented. Jumbles of chairs, stools, small tables, a baby carriage, porcelain dolls, bookcases, modern lamps leaning to port and starboard added to the garage sale atmosphere. The oil portraits on the walls featured a collection of Ancien régime folks—Woody spent ten minutes of the glories of the de Broglies—a portrait of Berthier—Woody seemed fond of him too—and various high-ranking clergy, primarily bishops and archbishops. And who did I not see on the walls? Yep, you guessed it.

The last room on the tour was a small study, crammed so full of nondescript stuff that we could scarcely move around without bumping into something. But at last, I saw Jean-Boy. A black-and-white drawing, and not a very good one, of him, LouLou, and the five little Montebello rugrats all looking so en famille I couldn’t help but snicker. By then, I’d had it with Woody and his bottomless glass of wine. I asked what he had that either belonged to Jean-Boy or somehow related to him. He shrugged, took another gulp, rummaged around in a desk, and produced, encased in plastic, an inscribed invitation to the coronation. That was it. I asked, rather sharply, where all the letters, documents, uniforms, and other possessions had gone. Woody shrugged. His response, accompanied by more wine, was that those things had all disappeared over time.

I almost slapped him.