Spirit of Combourg

A walk in the park

Presence. The weight is there from the moment of stepping into the park, something mighty, long-suffering, repentant. On the rise, a castle that combines the sober facets of defence with romantically suggestive towers, said to be haunted by a wooden leg and a black cat. Ahead, majestic avenues of lime, oak and chestnut. Trees of stature, channelling their forest forebears, making up for lost wood in their prinking. So much is here, sharp and sweet notes bravely blended like a mysterious cocktail. The château of Combourg is both place and person, spreading a sensuous protoplasm over the landscape.

This is my special place, so much so that I cannot write about it without a depth of emotion that mirrors the stirring experience of every visit. Arrival is magical, affirmative and joyful. Departure brings tears and real distress. These responses are based on something very particular and yet also all-embracing. Elements of my attachment have evolved over time into the complex layers of an archaeological dig, pulling me into a deep dive of history. But it’s more than that. This place is profoundly personal.

I first spent a month in the town many years ago, using it as a base for research in the east of the region after I had been commissioned to write a book about the cultural history of Brittany, examined in the context of landscape. Within easy reach of Saint Malo, Dol-de-Bretagne, Mont St Michel, Fougères and all the castles of the old border territory with France, it was an ideal location. I did not know it would also be the source of a heart-aching love affair. I met people who would become important to me, including the local historian and the castle owners, people who have become my friends and shared their stories.

Combourg’s story derives from a large gesture, the foundation of the castle in the early 11^th century to defend access to Dol-de-Bretagne. A bold, new statement of power. All its subsequent flowering and enfeeblements have been concentrated into the blink of time that generated particular, international fame as childhood home of the Father of French Romanticism and inventor of angst, François-René de Chateaubriand. His father bought the castle in 1761, having restored the family fortunes with shipping ventures.

In his great autobiographical work Mémoires d’outre tombe or Memories from beyond the grave, Chateaubriand gives an unforgettable account of teenage years passed at the château and in the forested surroundings, in lonely roaming and agonies of hormonal yearning. He was overwhelmed by a presentiment of future hopelessness in his destiny and thought of suicide in the park. The hunting rifle in his mouth failed to fire. More attention now is given to his first passionate tendencies towards women after brushing against a lady in the narrow window embrasure of the château as they looked down on a local festival in the town.

But all the intense knowledge of this one young man’s experience does not account for what remains, large and patent within the castle precinct. Nor is it the summary of further flashes from history: a previous owner of the château, Malo-Auguste de Coëtquen lost his leg at the Battle of Malplaquet in 1709. It is his artificial limb that is said to hop down the turning staircase some dark nights, with or without an accompanying black cat. The arms of the Coëtquen family, included in neo-Gothic re-decoration of the hall in the late 19^th century, are the same of those of Lancelot du Lac, reminder of other echoes in this area of the Arthurian sagas.

The current owners are descendants of Chateaubriand’s family. His elder brother Jean-Baptiste was guillotined in the French Revolution, leaving behind a young son whose own son would eventually restore the depleted castle and neglected park in 1875. During WW1 it became a military hospital for convalescence. It has always been at the heart of the town and celebrations like the Foire de l’Angevine, celebrated every year on September 4^th. Chateaubriand recalls this event as a brief interval of joy amidst life’s melancholy timbre.

So many stories. How do they add up to one dynamic disposition? Over the years, the sense of presence here has shifted. I no longer think that it is generated by some cipher of Chateaubriand, like a lingering simulacrum of literary genius. Or even an amalgam of human endeavour and containment over centuries, springing from the deep-seated walls of the fortress, the park jewelled with trees. It is something more porous, something which has activated a connective gene in me.

I walk, absorbed, on the familiar loved paths that criss-cross the landscaped grounds like veins carrying life-blood to the heart of the castle. Companions may be the owner and her dachshund, friends who are visiting me in my element, or my own young intractable terrier, yet I am always alone, separated even from my dogged self. I am not so much in the present, as in the presence. Something is lit up inside me by the contours of space. Strolling down to the lake is a slow waltz with this attentive shadow, whose airy touch spells out a reminder of liberation, a freeing of the core.

The spirit of place breathes completeness. It cuts away division, releasing me from that dialogue that animates every walk on every surface, hour by hour, day by day, toing and froing over each step and every notion of progress. Talking with myself as the miles stretch out. Longing for the end and wishing never, ever to reach it. Combourg feels like destination. Once here, my journey is over. I can have my happy ending.