The Taj Mahal by Esther Singleton
"The Taj Mahal" is a prose essay by André Chevrillon, originally published in *Dans l'Inde* (Paris, 1891) and translated and anthologized by Esther Singleton in her 1898 collection *Turrets, Towers, and Temples: The Great Buildings of the World, as Seen and Described by Famous Writers*. It is a lyrical, impressionistic first-person account of multiple visits to the mausoleum at Agra, India, blending architectural observation with rapturous aesthetic and spiritual reflection. **Approach and First Impression** Chevrillon establishes the monument's identity at the outset: the Taj Mahal is a mausoleum erected by the Mughal emperor Shah Jehan in memory of his beloved wife, the Begum Mumtaz-i-Mahal. It is a regular octagon surmounted by a Persian dome, flanked by four minarets, built entirely of blocks of the purest white marble, and rising to 243 feet. The visitor enters through a noble portico of red sandstone pierced by a great arch and covered with white arabesques, and from there catches a first distant glimpse of the Taj some 800 metres away. That initial sight—the white edifice floating above a dark canal, framed by black cypresses and red flowering masses—Chevrillon deems unequalled among all masterpieces of architecture. The building appears not solid but aerial, a "floating dream," so perfectly balanced in its lines and so pale and translucent in its marble that it seems about to dissolve into the sky. The contrast with the real and vibrant garden—lush green sward, sharp-cut tree silhouettes in sunlight—renders the monument itself more unreal, more visionary. **The Exterior: Marble and Inlay** Walking toward the Taj along the marble bank of the dark canal, Chevrillon shifts from panoramic impression to close attention to surface and ornament. The octagonal face is composed of great rectangular expanses of polished marble on which light rests with a soft, milky splendour. The surfaces are alive with inlaid scrollwork: large flowers of onyx and turquoise fitted with perfect smoothness into the white marble, along with lace-like marble carving and balustrades of a thousand perforations. The author marvels that so apparently simple a quality as surface can, when large and pure, achieve such transcendence. The whole declares a tension between simplicity and inexhaustible ornamental richness. **The Gardens** Chevrillon insists the garden is inseparable from the monument; together they form the complete masterpiece. The avenues leading to the Taj are lined with funereal yews and cypresses whose dark verticality makes the distant white marble appear even whiter. Behind these, thick and massive bushes rise in rich waves, their trunks half-buried in masses of roses and clusters of unknown, sweet-scented flowers. Sweeps of lawn, purple-chaliced blooms, golden petals, humming bees, and diapered butterflies animate the solemnity of the burial ground with light and joy. The garden, Chevrillon argues, is the work of an extraordinary artist who understood that it should contain "the amorous and religious delights of the Mussulman paradise." An inscription over the entrance gate reinforces the theological dimension: "No one shall enter the garden of God unless he is pure of heart." The garden is further populated by little striped squirrels, green and brilliantly plumed parrots, and guards in white muslin who protect small creatures from crows and vultures with long pea-shooters—a detail that renders the garden an emblem of peace actively maintained. **The Interior** Inside the mausoleum, the experience shifts to shadow and mystery. The interior is at first as dark as night. From the darkness a grille of antique marble lace glimmers faintly, draping the tombs and seeming to wind and unwind forever, shedding on the vault a yellow light that appears ancient, as if it has rested there for ages. In the centre stand two small sarcophagi—the tombs of Shah Jehan and Mumtaz-i-Mahal—on which a mysterious light falls from no identifiable source. The acoustic quality of the dome is extraordinary: a single note sung beneath it rises and multiplies, growing fainter and then re-echoing far above, "glorified, spiritualized, and multiplied indefinitely as if repeated by a distant company, a choir of unseen angels," until only a faint murmur remains, vibrating perpetually over the tombs of the beloved. The interior is declared entirely aerial, nothing substantial or real: "a world of shadowy visions." **The Taj at Noon** Chevrillon records a second visit, at noon under a vertical sun. The atmosphere is transformed utterly. The melancholy phantom of the morning visit vanishes. The great marble terrace is blinding; light reflected from the immense white surfaces multiplies a hundredfold in intensity. The inlaid flower incrustation burns like sparks of magic fire, red flowers gleam like coals, and the religious texts inlaid in black marble stand out as if traced by lightning. The minarets, in the intense noon light, lift themselves into the blue "like pillars of fire." The severe simplicity of the building under this intensity acquires something Chevrillon describes as Semitic—evoking, in its chastening whiteness, the flaming sword of the Bible. **Dusk and Departure** The essay closes in the fading light, the author wandering outside in the fresh air under leafy arches until twilight. The garden, again, commands attention: lilies and lotus sleep on still water, blue convolvulus entwines tree trunks, great red star-like flowers gleam through dark foliage, and through the dark boughs English-like meadows appear bathed in brilliant sunlight with triangles of white storks crossing patches of blue sky. At certain moments, the tomb seen from a distance resembles "the melancholy spectre of a virgin." The essay ends in an invocation of "the beauty, the tenderness, and the light of Asia, dreamed of by Shelley," joining two poetic traditions—European Romanticism and Mughal devotional art—in a single image of the monument as the highest expression of love beyond death. Throughout, Chevrillon's central argument is that the Taj Mahal is not merely a work of architecture but an act of sustained, perfect mourning: a place where beauty, built with absolute mastery, performs the permanence of love. Sources: - [Turrets, Towers, and Temples — Internet Archive](https://archive.org/details/turretstowerstem0000sing) - [Books by Esther Singleton — Project Gutenberg](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/7412) - [Esther Singleton — Online Books Page](https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname?key=Singleton,+Esther,+1865-1930)
By Esther Singleton · First published 1865 · Genre: Travel Literature, Architectural Criticism, Lyrical Prose