From one castle to another
Château de La Napoule. The Clews' Love – Once Upon a Time.
It's a scenario we love in Hollywood cinema. He, Henry Clews (1836-1923), is an American artist who, rather than becoming an investment banker like his father on Wall Street, prefers to go into exile in France for a while, with his first wife, to live his art more freely.
She, Elsie Whelen (1880-1959), was a young beauty who lit up the parties and balls of Philadelphia. She loved painting and took lessons from Henry. It didn't take much for them to fall in love.
He is divorced, she files for divorce in turn. They each have two children, but regardless of what people will say, the age difference and even the separation from their children, they marry in 1914 in New York. They quickly settle in France, first in Paris where their son Mancha is born, who owes his unusual first name to his father's admiration for Don Quixote – "The Man of La Mancha" – a novel by the Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes. For the same reason, moreover, he gives his servant the first name Sancho! Elsie, for her part, is renamed Marie by her husband so that she would not be confused with another Elsie Clews, his own older sister, an outspoken intellectual, feminist and renowned anthropologist.
At the end of the war, seeking a haven of peace after the bombing of the capital and the Spanish flu, they fell in love with the remains of the Château de La Napoule, its two Saracen towers, and the superb view the property offered over the Mediterranean. They settled there permanently in 1919, and the château, its reconstruction, its decoration, and its gardens became their lifelong passion.
And let me tear down your roofs and chimneys, build you crenellated ramparts, trace out paths, sketch out gardens, build arcades, terraces, statues, sculpt your stone, it is a gigantic and permanent construction site. The spirit is somewhat turned towards the past but the comfort could not be more contemporary with central heating, running water, electricity and telephone. Many friends are received, despite the barracks, the cut stones, the workers at work and the work of all kinds, but one must love parties, often in costume, the heated discussions, the games of bridge, and the delicious dinners if one wants to forget all the surrounding chaos. Those who are terrified by the construction site do not return. It will continue without respite until Henry's death in 1923.
The protagonists of this wonderful adventure that this construction represents for them considered their shared history as a true fairy tale. To the point that Henry, who was not lacking in humor, marked the door of their property with an authentic “once upon a time,” in French in the text, reiterated at the entrance to the castle by a “one upon a time,” in the language of Shakespeare this time.
