In Château Land

Anne Hollingsworth Wharton cast her 1911 travel book as a packet of letters home. The narrator, Zelphine, writes to her friend Margaret across a few late-summer weeks, traveling with her husband Walter, the quiet and studious Lydia, and Lydia’s Quaker aunt, Miss Cassandra, who supplies most of the wit. They come by way of the Italian lakes and Madame de Staël’s house at Coppet before settling into Touraine, where the real subject waits: Langeais, Azay-le-Rideau, Chenonceaux, Amboise, Blois, Chambord, Chinon, Angers. Each stop draws out the history worked into its stones, from Louis XI to Joan of Arc. Wharton made her name as a historian of colonial America, and the research shows beneath an easy conversational surface. For anyone who prefers châteaux served with anecdote rather than floor plans, it remains a pleasant way to travel the Loire.