Quel Amboise!

We went on shore at Amboise, a very agreeable village, built of stone, and the houses covered with blue slate, as the towns on the Loire generally are; but the castle chiefly invited us, the thickness of whose towers, from the river to the top, was admirable. We entered by the drawbridge. It is full of halls and spacious chambers, and one stair-case is large enough, and sufficiently commodious, to receive a coach. There is some artillery in it : but that which is most observable is in the ancient chapel, viz. a stag's head, or branches, hung up by chains, consisting of twenty brow-antlers.

John Evelyn, 2 mai 1644

The town of Amboise lies, like Tours, on the left bank of the river, a little whitefaced town, staring across an admirable bridge, and leaning, behind, as it were, against the pedestal of rock on which the dark castle masses itself. The town is so small, the pedestal so big, and the castle so high and striking, that the clustered houses at the base of the rock are like the crumbs that have fallen from a well-laden table.The platforms, the bastions, the terraces, the high-perched windows and balconies, the hanging gardens and dizzy crenellations, of this complicated structure, keep you in perpetual intercourse with an immense horizon.I remember, in particular, a certain terrace, planted with clipped limes, upon which we looked down from the summit of the big tower. It seemed from that point to be absolutely necessary to one's happiness to go down and spend the rest of the morning there; it was an ideal place to walk to and fro and talk.

A Little Tour in France de Henry James (1900)

J'aurais aimé visiter Amboise avec John Evelyn ou Henry James... [ici] et [ici]. Surtout avec John Evelyn [ici]. La première fois où je suis allée à la National Portrait Gallery, j’avais acheté une reproduction de ce portrait. Je l’ai encore. Je ne savais rien de sa vie fascinante, et je n’avais pas encore lu les milliers de page de son célèbre journal. Son visage, sa chemise, me plaisaient. Il devait représenter pour moi cet Anglais que j’avais entrevu dans les romans étudiés à la fac... Aujourd’hui – et je le vérifie à chaque fois – on ne vend plus cette carte au magasin du musée. L’ont remplacée les portraits de la famille royale et des vedettes de rock. Le chargé du marketing ne peut s’imaginer qu’il y a parmi les visiteurs une fan de John Evelyn, diplomate et diariste du XVIIe siècle, qui possédait du côté de Greenwich, un des plus vastes jardins d’Europe, et qui, en 1644, visita le Val de Loire.