Anthony Trollope and I

It was spring - April, and who has sung "April in Paris"? For I was living in Paris. It was years ago, well before The Little Family and well before I thought of The Village as my home. It was the place where I had almost always spent my holidays or part of my holidays, and I loved it as such. I was still a student. I was too old to follow my parents around the world and my school was in Paris.

My brother had died in the previous September. I was dreadfully shocked, but thought that I had no right to cry or to show my sorrow as this was first and foremost the right of my parents, especially Mother's. I was also too proud to say anything. At last, Mother had gone away with Father, joining him in a sedentary and secure post abroad. I had stayed behind with my Godmother whose four years of work in Paris, per chance, was  being done at the same moment. She was living in what I always think is the most beautiful part of Paris, the top of the 5ème arrondissement, rue Saint-Jacques, near the Panthéon and close to the Jardin du Luxembourg. Bliss!

But she and my parents had thought I was old enough to take care of myself and she had lent me a one room flat she had further down the arrondissement, rue du Cardinal Lemoine. I had a very little kitchen, a bathroom and one room where the bed was sofa at the same time, and the dining table had been changed into a long and wide desk. Shelves along the walls everywhere it had been possible to put them, a tea table, an armchair, four folding chairs, which were either folded or supporting stacks of papers and books, and cushions to sit on the the floor. It seemed to me the height of bohemianism and sophistication at the same time since there was only soft indirect lighting plus the strong desk lamp and the bedside lamp (not much more was required), a chimney place with a great looking glass above and gilded plaster all around it, plaster mouldings looking like pastries in the middle of the ceiling as decoration where the chandelier should have been hanging, and flowers wherever I could put them as I had made an arrangement with a florist who knew the various sizes of my vases and the places where they would be put. A lot of my allowance went into flowers - more than it was reasonable but I thought I was very reasonable in most other things.

To go to my Godmother's and to my School, I had to go up the rue du Cardinal Lemoine for two hundred metres at the utmost and then turn right into the rue des Ecoles until La Sorbonne, cross the boulevard Saint -Michel to Louis-le-Grand, or up by narrow streets to the back of the place du Panthéon to Henri IV. After that, I was free to choose an itinerary to my journeys and my dreams. Most of the time, if I was not in a hurry, I was going by foot, looking at the bus with disdain but looking at bookshop windows with interest.

My life could have been this pure bliss and I saw myself as a character in a Barbara Pym's novel who was dwelling in a bedsitter - not the spinster type but the busy student - if my brother had not been haunting me. I worked a lot and kept myself occupied but there were times when I had to go to bed and sleep would not come or was interrupted by nightmares. My usual "bookfriends" were of no use. I was getting more tired and excited and going to a breaking point without wanting to say anything and without knowing what to do.

One evening after the School, I was going back home and looking distractedly at the shop windows in the rue des Ecoles when I saw boxes full of second hand books on the pavement and a filthy door engagingly open. It was a shop for English books only. There was a youngish man at the counter, muttering to himself, who did not answer to my tentative "good evening", and two or three patrons who were reading freely from oldish volumes that had seen better times. I started browsing from the door, trying to make my way through the various stacks of books or boxes that made navigating in the shop a real steeplechase. I had not gone far when I found a shelf packed with new Oxford University Press paperbacks so thickly that their weight had made the rough plank curve dangerously in its middle.

I had never read 19th century British literature in its original language but for School then, and, although I had lived in English speaking countries, my vocabulary and my command of speech were far from being fluent enough for a "classic" novelist. Therefore I had my most brilliant idea never equalled since. I chose the fattest volume of the longest row of books by the same novelist, thinking that either it would keep me awake by doing something clever and improving my English or would send me to sleep far more naturally than the drugs I was given.

I had met Anthony Trollope.

The book I bought was "Can You Forgive Her?", and at the beginning it was hell. I recognised the codes of 19th century literature, the length, the presentation of the settings and characters, the slow introduction of the story, the pace, the digressions. I thought of Balzac, so irritating for some. But my first thought had been right: the language was the stumbling block. I needed a pad and pencil and a dictionary - not only a bilingual dictionary English/French but also a whole English/English (!) dictionary with references to former meanings of words that were (or not) still employed nowadays. The first nights I was so exhausted after a few pages that I went to sleep without any drug. Good! Afterwards I picked up the rhythm of the sentences, and it was a music that lulled me to sleep. I was less and less thinking about my brother's death when going to bed and it was not love diminished but love soothed.

And I made the reading some sort of challenge to myself.

And I learnt to love the research and the struggle to understand.

And I took the book, pad and pencil with me on my walks, sat down in the Jardin du Luxembourg and read.

And I went back to the weird little bookshop to find reference books and to other British bookshops in Paris. And started changing my spending of allowance for less flowers and more books.

As a good French girl I was used of course to the rule of unities defined in the 17th century for plays but that were more or less implicit and respected in the 19th century classic novel - most of all ONE plot. But as in Shakespeare, I discovered that Trollope was weaving at least three plots: Alice Vavasor and her two "suitors", her aunt and her suitor as well, and Lady Glencora being married to Plantagenet Palliser and loving another man. These three plots were answering each other as in a choir voices answer each others or sing together. There was also a political element and references to other characters to what I discovered quickly was another series of novels. One fat book to keep sorrow away had opened the doors of a whole new world. It reminded me more and more of La Comédie Humaine by Balzac.

This is how I became obsessed by Trollope. I bought the whole series of  the "Parliamentary novels" or "Palliser novels":

and read them in order, not in this disorderly fashion! I went then to the Chronicles of Barset from "The Warden" straight to "The Last Chronicle of Barset". 

I was attracted by some topics like spinsterhood and religion:

or by what seemed a "queer" title:

I was clearly hooked. But I was hooked not only by Trollope but by his contemporaries: I read Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, Wilkie Collins, discovered links and families of writers the "Gothics",the "Realists", Lawrence Sterne, then the XVIIIth century, Fanny Burney, Charlotte Lennox, Fielding, Richardson, and down in the XIXth century, the "Sensationalists" through Mrs Oliphant who was polymorph, and the Bloomsbury Group (I knew Woolf, of course, but not the others in the group), and it seemed without end because one book was sending me to another or to the critics and the critics were sending me to Thackeray who was sending me back to Trollope and Dickens and Mrs Oliphant and Jane Austen (but I have never liked the Austen mania and was rebuked by it) and Oliver Goldsmith and further back through Barbara Pym to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Piers Plowman, and the Paston Letters, and Chaucer. And I read and read and read and decided to add to my already well loaded studies a BA in English. 

I discovered Paris through Trollope. Because I made a mental geography of the various bookshops that specialised in criticism, or those selling English literature, or those selling American literature or both, or adding Canadian and Australian literature. I learnt the ways of the buses through Paris. I was interested in the film adaptations of the novels by EM Forster or what Kenneth Branagh had done with Shakespeare. I had a serious Shakespeare crisis that brought me for short week-ends across the Channel to see plays at the Barbican or Stratford or the National Theatre or Chichester Festival.

I discovered the British Council and the American Library. I went to conferences. I hunted new bookshops I did not know. And I was so lucky to find kind booksellers who guided me through the maze of books to read and others that could be left for later, or others who introduced me to contemporary literature and contemporary trends of criticism. This is how I discovered the Persephone Books and the Virago Books and later the Slightly Foxed Books and the Greyladies Books. All these are reviving these neglected women's books from 1900 to Barbara Pym and Anita Brookner - low voices, almost whispers who took more strength thanks to Nicola Beauman and the Virago Press in the first place.

And even if it is called "falling" from "great literature" to "gentle literature", I discovered Johanna Trollope and Angela Thirkell and DE Stevenson and O Douglas - but I have already spoken of some or shall speak of others.

This is how I begun my one-sided love story with Trollope and with English speaking literature. It is thanks to him that I escaped a bigger breakdown than that I was having, and had, and I begun to live again.

But I am eternally grateful to this little untidy bookshop in the rue des Ecoles, which has disappeared since, and to its bookseller and to the other booksellers who took time to talk with me and guide me. Now, from where I stand, it seems crazy, and I seem both crazy and obsessional but at that time I needed a strong passion. Life today would certainly be easier with The Little Family if I could do the same again...

Jardin du Luxembourg

Holidaying in the Dordogne: Périgueux

                    Have you packed your backpacks, taken bottles of mineral water, sun proof cream, cereal bars and, in case of a shower, a light waterproof? Have you got your walking shoes? Yes. Then all is right because today The Little Family takes you on a trip to Périgueux.

View of Périgeux from the Isle River

Périgueux is the equivalent of a State Capital City in the USA or a County Town in the UK, called in France le chef-lieu de département, i.e. the main administrative town of the département - metropolitan France being divided in 95 départements, classified alphabetically (from A -1 - for Ain to V - 95 - for Val-d'Oise) and la Dordogne is the département 24.

We think you will remember where the Dordogne stands in the South-West of France but, as a reminder, just in case, this is a map:

and this is where Périgueux stands:

in the middle of the département. When these were created after the great changes of the 1789 Revolution, it was decided that the chef-lieu, also called préfecture, would be in the middle of the département and could be reached within one day on horseback. This is why the other "big" town of the Dordogne with a cathedral, Sarlat, in the South-East of the département could not be chosen. Four towns were made into administrative relays instead: Sarlat in the South-East, Nontron in the North, Ribérac in the North-West and Bergerac in the South, on the Dordogne River. They were called "sous-préfectures": le préfet is the highest administrative authority in a département to represent the State (République) and the sous-préfets come immediately beneath him. In Périgueux as in other préfectures, there is also the bishopric and the town is the cathedral city. La Dordogne has the particularity of having two cathedral cities, the second being Sarlat.

We must say that the design of the département is very much like that of the Comté du Périgord (Périgord County) before the Revolution.

Périgueux is sometimes called the "Little Rome" as the town is built over and among seven hills, as is Rome. Its cathedral towers over it but it is built in a loop of the Isle River and its life began close to the River.

Before Julius Caesar and before the Gauls, we must remember that la Dordogne is one of the territories of the prehistory and here as elsewhere in Périgord, Man was present very early. But we will be more interested about his particular life during another trip of ours during these holidays.

Thus, the Gauls were established on the hills around the River. They are called the Petrocorii and will give their name to the Périgord. We have met these encampments on tops of hills in the description of The Village:

(http://camilledefleurville.blogspot.fr/2015/05/proust again.html 

and

 http://camilledefleurville.blogspot.fr/2015/07/the-first-holiday-makers-are-here.html)

They are called oppida  or castra, and they become very quickly major economical and politic centres. The Greek geographer Strabo mentions the Petrocorii expertise in the iron work. The Petrocorii worship the goddess Vesunna who will later give her name to the Roman town.

In 52 BC, the Petrocorii march off to join the other Gaul tribes and help Vercingetorix at the Alesia Battle against Julius Caesar. As is well known the Gauls are defeated and go under Roman domination. Caesar mentions the Petrocorii in his "Gallic Wars".

The territory becomes one of the 21 cities created by Augustus around 16 BC under the name of Vesunna. The town grows thus in the Province of Aquitaine, in the loop of the Isle River the foot of the ancient oppida, still maintained in case of attacks or wars. Being so close to the river allows growing exchange and trade with Burdigala (Bordeaux), Divona (Cahors), Mediolanum Santonum (Saintes), etc. The town is at its height under the reign of Marcus Aurelius during the Second Century AD and the great Pax Romana. Vesunna has then around 10.000 inhabitants. It is modelled upon the map of Roman Towns with rich houses (domii) and of insulae. There is of course a forum and a sanctuary dedicated to the goddess Vesunna.

These are the Roman remains of the temple dedicated to Vesunna
still called today la Tour de Vésonne
It has given its name to a district of the modern town

And this is the model of Vesunna as it stood under Marcus Aurelius

Near the temple, a domus has been found and researched for years: it seems to have been the Great Priest's house. Over the excavated archaeological remains, a museum has been erected so that all rooms of the house are seen from platforms above with displays of potteries, glass, and things pertaining to each room. 

The model of  the Domus as it is supposed to have been

A view of the museum with the remains of the rooms, the platforms and stairs going to the casements of the displays of potteries, glass, needles, pots and pans and things of daily life

A mosaic

The detail of another mosaic in another room

We don't know if there was a theatre and a harbour for the traffic over the Isle River, but we do know that there was an amphitheatre that could host 20.000 onlookers. When we, The Little Family, went on holidays in The Village and made the trip to Périgueux, we were almost always taken there for a walk in the park and there were great frights that lions or bears or other wild animals, notwithstanding gladiators, might appear round the bend of a ruin or a shrub.

Remains of the amphitheatre and the arenas

At the beginning of the IVth century AD, the town is surrounded by a bailey with 24 half towers and 3 doors to limit the boundaries and the population of the city and to protect it against the Barbarians (mainly the Wisigoths). This is the Fall of the Roman Empire and the High Middle-Ages. From Vesunna, the town becomes Civitas Petrocorirum. 

The bailey of the IVth century
(the stones were used later for other buildings)

What we call in French, la Légende Dorée, which is a Life of saints more or less legendary (both the saints and their lives) tells us that Front came to evangelise the area and dispel paganism. At his death, pilgrims came to pray on his tomb, which was not in the Civitas but on a previous oppidum, called Puy in the current dialect. A "puy" in the language of the South of France is a hill. There are thus a real city still down in the loop of the Isle River and the embryo of another one, a little on the East and on a hill, rather quickly called Puy Saint Front as Front is easily sanctified, makes miracles and has died a bishop.

At the end of the VIIIth century AD / beginning of of the IXth century Charlemagne (Carolus Magnus - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlemagne) gives the Civitas a count (titles meant rank but also places in the military and Court hierarchy). Therefore he does create the real proper city of the Middle-Ages with a status and the County of Périgord, divided in baronies. The Civitas changes again as the Count builds his castle in the middle of the rests of the amphitheatre, knights build their own fortified houses upon the old bailey and the bishop builds his episcopal palace and several churches and chapels. Most of these monuments were destroyed during the following centuries - and the XIXth century was a great destroyer! -. Still there remains two main edifices, one temporal, the Chateau Barrière and one spiritual, the church Saint Etienne (Stephen) de la Cité.

Château Barrière

Saint Etienne de la Cité (front)

Saint Etienne de la Cité
(back)

You will of course note that the church is fortified and was used to shelter the population in case of conflicts or wars and to sustain a siege. It is also the first church with a cupola in the Périgord.

Meanwhile, the town around Puy Saint Frontgrows and grows. Pilgrims are good for trade and merchants and craftsmen make a good business in what becomes a town. Soon they erect walls  and towers to protect them and the two cities, the Civitas in the loop of the river and on the site of the Roman town, and the new Puy Saint Front on the hill are only separated by a stone pit that is used as their battleground. They are geographically different, socially different: one is aristocratic and based on the model of knights and bishops, the other is a trading city. Conflicts rage. In 1240, Louis IX (Saint Louis - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_IX_of_France) enjoins the redaction and signature of a treaty which unites the two cities and creates Périgueux. The counts have no more authority, the merchants in guilds are vested of the temporal power (they are called consuls). And the One Hundred Years War (1337-1453) is the end of the Middle Ages, of the Counts as military authorities, and the beginning of a new era, the Renaissance.

La Tour Mataguerre
(the last defensive tower of the Puy Saint Front)

House of the Middle Ages near the River
(at the opposite side of the Civitas)

We are not the best judges and critics of Périgueux but we do find that the end of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance are the Âge d'Or of the town. Its history will now follow the centralised history of France with its wars and peaces and rebellions and revolutions and kings and queens but we want to show you the heart of the city around its cathedral Saint Front and how harmoniously the life of our days and the architectural background with all its wealth do marry.

Street from the Middle Ages in the centre of the town
(cars are prohibited)

The most well-known of these streets
Rue Limogeanne
(with a wonderful bookshop: La Mandragore)

These streets are lined on each side by Renaissance houses or mansions, sometimes with wonderful stairs and staircases.

And life goes on: this is no museum but a continuous flow of lives and Life:

with passages half hidden between the houses and squares which join "official" streets:

All this thrives around the cathedral that was first built before Carolus Magnus, under the Mérovingiens (500-750 AD), then destroyed and rebuilt under the Carolingiens (750-900 AD), destroyed again, and rebuilt again as a Latin church (architectural mode on the model of a Latin Cross) that was burnt in 1120. It was rebuilt again after knights were coming back from the crusades and were used to the Byzantine architectural mode (Greek Cross and five cupolas - it is the only one in France).

But... but in 1852 the architect Paul Abadie (contemporary of the architect Viollet-Leduc - not well beloved by The Little Family, both of them) undertakes works of renovations. He destroys parts of the monastery ... and (unfortunately) wins in 1870 the contest to build the Sacré-Coeur in Paris (which is for the Little Family a monstrosity. And very soon he will transpose what he did to Saint Front in Périgueux for the Sacré Coeur.

The cathedral is on the caminos de Compostella, the roads the pilgrims took and still take nowadays to go to Compostella in Spain and has been registered at the UNESCO Heritage in 1998.

The XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries do not have great interest for our visit to the town and we can make a break either to buy postcards or to eat delicious ice creams in the Rue Limogeanne or taste the local strawberries if there are still some from the market this morning. Some of you will like a good lunch with duck and raspberry vinegar with pommes de terre sarladaises or cèpes or foie gras followed by goat cheese and figs while drinking a good bottle of Bergerac wine. I may leave you a moment to go to my favourite bookshop and converse with the new owners that I do not know, and as we are all in a dream, I shall come back with boxes of books in French (sorry, no English books there). After a light lunch taken at the terrasse d'un restaurant, place Saint-Louis, the Little Family is already in the most recent part of the town built in the XIXth century where they have THEIR favourite bookshop and they will have completed their own purchases (other boxes of books and DVDs and CDs!).

We shall regroup on the boulevards, which are the main great streets of the town and where cars are not prohibited and watch inattentively the architecture à la Zola of some of these buildings that can be seen everywhere in France, which date very recently from the mid XIXth century.

Remember Pot-Bouille by Zola?

The Court
(All the Courts buildings are almost the same in France: they were built after Napoleon I, of course)

The Préfecture
(well, not the administrative offices but the residence of the Préfet)

Let's sit down for a last time at the terrasse d'un café and drink whatever you choose. I will tell you of the statues of four great men that we honour in la Dordogne: 

Daumesnil (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Yrieix_Daumesnil), 

Bugeaud (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Bugeaud), 

and most of all Fénelon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_F%C3%A9nelon), 

and Montaigne (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_de_Montaigne).

The old town with the red tiles roofs and the "new" town with the Boulevards

This is the hour to stroll and enjoy the end of the day. Do you want to wait for the festival du mime -Mimos? Or do you prefer coming back home with us to The Village? The Little Family is tired and will fall asleep while I drive us and we shall talk again about Montaigne who is a neighbour of ours. The car is full of books. We were glad to show you our capital city. We have not told you about railways and highways or motorways, about the unemployment or the economical difficulties of the population. It was a day for fun, for dreams and for friends.

See you again soon holidaying in la Dordogne with us?

Rupert Brooke

The Great Lover

I have been so great a lover: filled my days
So proudly with the splendour of Love's praise,
The pain, the calm, and the astonishment,
Desire illimitable, and still content,
And all dear names men use, to cheat despair,
For the perplexed and viewless streams that bear
Our hearts at random down the dark of life.
Now, ere the unthinking silence on that strife
Steals down, I would cheat drowsy Death so far,
My night shall be remembered for a star
That outshone all the suns of all men's days.
Shall I not crown them with immortal praise
Whom I have loved, who have given me, dared with me
High secrets, and in darkness knelt to see
The inenarrable godhead of delight?

Love is a flame; -- we have beaconed the world's night.
A city: -- and we have built it, these and I.
An emperor: -- we have taught the world to die.
So, for their sakes I loved, ere I go hence,
And the high cause of Love's magnificence,
And to keep loyalties young, I'll write those names
Golden for ever, eagles, crying flames,
And set them as a banner, that men may know,
To dare the generations, burn, and blow
Out on the wind of Time, shining and streaming. . . .

These I have loved:
                         White plates and cups, clean-gleaming,
Ringed with blue lines; and feathery, faery dust;
Wet roofs, beneath the lamp-light; the strong crust
Of friendly bread; and many-tasting food;
Rainbows; and the blue bitter smoke of wood;
And radiant raindrops couching in cool flowers;
And flowers themselves, that sway through sunny hours,
Dreaming of moths that drink them under the moon;
Then, the cool kindliness of sheets, that soon
Smooth away trouble; and the rough male kiss
Of blankets; grainy wood; live hair that is
Shining and free; blue-massing clouds; the keen
Unpassioned beauty of a great machine;
The benison of hot water; furs to touch;

The good smell of old clothes; and other such --
The comfortable smell of friendly fingers,
Hair's fragrance, and the musty reek that lingers
About dead leaves and last year's ferns. . . .

                                                         

                                                        

 Dear names,

And thousand other throng to me! Royal flames;
Sweet water's dimpling laugh from tap or spring;
Holes in the ground; and voices that do sing;
Voices in laughter, too; and body's pain,

 Soon turned to peace; and the deep-panting train;
Firm sands; the little dulling edge of foam

That browns and dwindles as the wave goes home;
And washen stones, gay for an hour; the cold
Graveness of iron; moist black earthen mould;
Sleep; and high places; footprints in the dew;
And oaks; and brown horse-chestnuts, glossy-new;
And new-peeled sticks; and shining pools on grass; --
All these have been my loves. And these shall pass,
Whatever passes not, in the great hour,

Nor all my passion, all my prayers, have power
To hold them with me through the gate of Death.
They'll play deserter, turn with the traitor breath,
Break the high bond we made, and sell Love's trust
And sacramented covenant to the dust.
---- Oh, never a doubt but, somewhere, I shall wake,
And give what's left of love again, and make
New friends, now strangers. . . .

                                             

 But the best I've known,
Stays here, and changes, breaks, grows old, is blown
About the winds of the world, and fades from brains
Of living men, and dies.
        

  Nothing remains.

                         

O dear my loves, O faithless, once again
This one last gift I give: that after men
Shall know, and later lovers, far-removed,
Praise you, "All these were lovely"; say, "He loved."

Mataiea, 1914.

I could comment my love for Rupert Brooke - less the war poems than those which are not swept by the national impetus. But what could I add to this? It describes my love of the small things I have been talking about the past two or three weeks. These little things that bring joy and contentment but need a little practise to be noticed.

Yes, I would be glad to have said: "All these are lovely". And to be said that "She loved".