After the tea party, more children's books

When I wrote the last post, I never thought I had so many comments upon the books I liked or disliked when I was a child. Therefore I searched in my memories for what I did read or, at the very beginning, was read to me at bed time.

One and only one book comes to mind: "Le Chat dans la Lune" (The cat in the moon). Why, I don't know. I don't even remember the story. But I remember vividly the cover of the booklet - the cat with its hat and feather, playing the mandolin. Perhaps, it is no mandolin but a guitar. However, Father played the mandolin among other instruments, and I found the whole thing fascinating: the word, the instrument itself, the sound, and the fact that Father used it to accompany himself while he was singing. In my mind, I saw Father dressed as the cat on the book cover, with the hat and feather, a dark cape, like the mousquetaires or Cyrano whose statue I had been shown in Bergerac - a small town nearby - singing to Roxane under her balcony.

I was a precocious child. I had to be: I was "sandwiched" between a disabled brother who suffered from myopathy, and a disabled sister who "suffered" from Down Syndrome. There was no great place for childhood.

One of my first memories was being awoken to watch Aeschylus' "The Persians" on TV when I was four. My parents thought it was a great rendition of the play - half play and half opera - and they were right. I treasure this memory; I have the DVD and I watched it with The Girls a year or so ago. But this was not really childhood literature indeed. Eccentric education.

After "Le Chat dans la Lune", I remember a book that belonged to my sister, over which I puzzled a lot. There was no text but images only. It was a fat book with nine "boxes" per page and they were supposed to tell a story. But there was no separation between the stories and it irritated me not to find a clear, defined beginning and end to each tale. I understood much later that it was a means to make my sister speak, describe the images, and eventually find the link between them.

But I was soon put to my first primer. It prided itself on addressing itself to children from to 0 (!) to 6 years old. I was early but not very much when I started, although I do not truly remember myself without this book. 

It was very complete, with realistic images from the 1950s/1960s, little sentences, examples to learn to write and count as well as read. It was an easy method or it worked particularly well with me. I learnt with Mother and these daily lessons were a pleasure. At the end of the book, I could read the little stories - quite moral - and learn the poems. I discovered later at school that the poems might have been rather difficult and from "good" poets as what I learnt there (at school) seemed too simple. In fact, I was bored at school. I was bored nearly until my second year of university. Home was the real place where I learnt and school was a rehash of notions I already knew.

When I knew how to read, I was given books. The first ones, unless I mention the old story books coming down from great-grand-mothers/fathers/aunts/uncles from the 19th and the very beginning of the 20th centuries, were series about two little girls, "Caroline" and "Martine", both in the 1960s editions.

"Caroline" was the favourite. She was the only human being in charge and she did things adults might have done. She had friends who were all animals. We never had pets at home and we still have none. We have always welcomed the stray cat who would keep his dignity and distance with us. We never had dogs and we still flee from them: my sister was bitten by a vicious small basset who belonged to a great-uncle and a great-aunt who treated him as their child. This accounts for his jealousy towards us when we were petted during our visits. My sister being the one he could reach easily bore the brunt of his feelings. 

"Caroline’s" friends were different. There were dogs and cats but a little lion as well and other exotic animals. They were anthropomorphic and reacted as human beings, eating spaghetti (one of my most favourite ever illustrations, as I loved solid food when I was a child), skiing, bicycling, moving house, etc. The whole under Caroline's strict supervising. As I liked her, I must have been a bossy child...

"Martine" was very, very different. She had a family with parents and a brother. She had friends. She was going to school and she had lots of adventures within the strict compass of a saccharin reality suited for children - well, for girls - well, for middle-class girls - well for middle-class, white girls. She was tedious and tiresome. She did everything perfectly right. She could take care of a whole house in one morning while her mother was out, cleaning up, washing up and washing, having the whole clothes and linen dry, cooking - even profiterolles! -, setting the table, adding flowers to the house, taking care of her dog, and putting herself to rights, all before her family came back!

"Martine" knew all about the seasons and enjoyed them all. The year went round without a hitch: she cared for the birds in winter, did gardening in the spring, spent nice holidays during summer and went back happy to school in autumn. 

Everybody loved "Martine". She was the one and only star among her friends who looked up to her. She was loved and praised unconditionally by her parents. She never started a feud with her brother. Even her dog adored her and did tricks - I mean useful tricks - to help her. This girl was no girl: she was a lay saint.

I much preferred "Titounet et Titounette" who appeared in the first newspaper to which I was subscribed. It arrived every week and I could not wait for it! There was a gender role separation between "Titounet" the boy and "Titounette" the girl. But, as with "Caroline", their friends were animals who reacted like human beings. They lived with an undescribed adult, probably their grand-mother as she was referred to as Mamie (Grannie), in a remote place called Le Bois Joli (The Lovely Wood). Their friends were a family of rabbits, another of bears (more like teddy bears), a cub, squirrels, little birds, spring (the spring season was represented as a boy dressed in a somewhat Renaissance green costume), a fawn, an owl, two mischievous white mice that I loved, etc. I shared their stories with my sister and we were given albums of their adventures. The newspapers were later on bound, year by year, and we still have them. They belonged - and still belong - to our private world.

And then, came my two great loves, not in the 1960s edition but in the beginning of the 20th century editions: "Bécassine" and the novels by the Comtesse de Ségur, the latter with the illustrations of André Pécoud. Of course, they were old books. And "Bécassine" was appearing in her beginnings in 1905 as "Titounet et Titounette" did in the 1960s: as features of a weekly magazine for children - mostly girls. The newspapers had been bound with leather covers and I had the hardback albums of the complete adventures as well. A whole post should be dedicated to "Bécassine": she is such a cultural phenomenon that I shall not try to explain her here today.

I do not know whether the children's books by la Comtesse de Ségur, née Rostopchine, are known in English speaking countries. They are a whole phenomenon in themselves also. Even if they are firmly set in the mid-nineteenth century, they are still read today as classics for children. And yet, moral is heavy within them as well. Add to this, class division, gender division, corporal punishment, a pinch of Sadistic treatments, a jingoistic vision of society and cultures, and the personal history of la Comtesse, and you have something that should be repellent to any normal child. They were my joy; they are my joy. I reread part of them each year. Not with the same eyes and attitude. I think the illustrations did a lot for my enjoyment when I was a child. They are not at all 19th century; we have books with the initial drawings or etchings; they are totally different. No. I loved the lightness of line in the drawings. They were like sketches and nothing more was needed to give life to the characters because a space was left to my imagination. 

I was so bored when I started the elementary schooling at five that, while the class (where the average age was six) was learning to read, I chose a seat at the back of the room, and started writing follow-ups of la Comtesse's novels. I got caught of course and it was the first of the numerous times when my parents were called in by the teacher to be told that their daughter was not attending but doing things on her own. I was always scolded, but I skipped classes, finished elementary school earlier than usual - the same with secondary school.

I should really never have watched Aeschylus at four: perhaps it would have been more natural to stick with “Le Chat dans la Lune”!

Tea Parties, Children's Books and Mythology

Last Friday, The Girls and I gave a tea party. 

In fact, in French it is more properly called un goûter (a snack you give children when they come back from school around five o'clock, or that adults eat either alone or together or as a party, also around five o'clock, with cake and coffee or other refreshment; tea is not the mandatory beverage). But for the sake of clarity, let us say we gave a tea party.

Friday is the day of important shopping for the week to come. The Shopping Lady comes for two hours and takes The Girls, with my shopping list. She comes again on Tuesday, but it is more for the sake of buying magazines, fresh baguettes, meat and fish, milk and the things that were either forgotten on  the previous Friday or are now missing.

But after the shopping, if my Shoppers hurry a little, there is still time left for other activities. 

Some time ago, there was quite a discussion about the merits of an almond cake that The Shopping-cum-Cleaning Lady in Training (remember the S-c-C-i-T?) had baked according to a new recipe, and its compatibility with tea from a great French House of Teas in Paris, which I was making them taste.

I have to say that the tea we find in French supermarkets and use to make tea is close to washing up water. It comes in teabags and is mostly flavoured - fortunately! Without being flavoured, it is... Better not attempt to qualify it. Well, France has never been a country for tea. It is a country for coffee, good strong coffee, rather Italian-like. Nevertheless, with the influx of British expats and tourists, most of our supermarkets in la Dordogne have part of an aisle dedicated to Anglo-Saxon products, among which at least two brands of tea. But they are of course much more expensive. So the French mostly stand staunchly by their washing-up water tea.

During winter, I brewed some British tea from the supermarket for The Shopping Lady to show her there was a difference and it was really worthwhile buying something more expensive when I requested a special brand of tea on my shopping list. She discovered I was right and she loved good tea. The next time, I tried loose leaf tea from this Paris House of Tea and she delighted in it. The week after was one of the first of the Lady in Training who joined the Shopping Lady in tasting another tea from the same House. And she discussed her almond cake.

This is how the Lady in Training decided there and then that she would bake another cake that we would eat all together after a shopping session. The Shopping Lady said she would provide les oeufs fermiers de sa cousine (the eggs from the farm belonging to her cousin), and I said I would provide another tea.

There were delays with colds, bronchitis, the Lady in Training's schooling part of her training, holidays, and other impedimenta, but it was finally decided that the goûter/tea party would take place last Friday.  

While The Ladies and The Girls were out shopping, I set the table with care and felt like a kind of tea seller with my tea caddy and its various containers of loose leaves! But I don't know who was happier from The Girls or The Ladies, to come back, let down the shopping bags, wash hands and sit down round the table. The Lady in Training had baked a perfect cake, golden brown and tasting delicately of almond; everybody chose the same tea; the tea cosy was something of a curiosity; but soon there was only the shushed clink of cutlery and china, the hushed noise of gentle chat, and the gurgle of the kettle to refill the teapot. 

Of course, amidst this very civilised occasion, I could not but think with a smile and some nostalgia of the tea parties Mother had held in her time, or the tea parties of older days when I was a child and even before, as they were told to me. And I thought of the mad tea party in "Alice in Wonderland".

The latter was uppermost in my mind, as a friend and I talked at some length some time ago about our childhood books, about Alice and about a film ("Dreamchild") he recommended to me.

I have always been frightened by "Alice in Wonderland". I guess I was already too rational for fairy tales and nonsense tales. I was told Alice as a bedtime story and was scared by the very beginning: how could someone disappear in a hole in the earth and then change from being over-tall to over-tiny by drinking and eating? How could one chat with a caterpillar that was obviously  completely drugged and talked nonsense? How could babies turn into piglets? How could kings and queens be so dumb and frightening? What was this story where rabbits had fobs and animals were so extraordinary as to talk and make daft things? What about a cat that disappeared leaving behind it his large grin? And what about this mad tea party?

It was more than a nonsense tale for me ("Le Petit Prince" by Saint-Exupéry was enough of that); it was a nightmarish tale. Add to it my fear of my teddy bear and you will have the perfect image of the dreaded bedtime I lived every night. I guess the illustrations by Tenniel were another trigger for my terror.

It took me years to be reconciled with Alice. I read comments, exegesis, paratextes or metatextes about the books, and then - then only - I could go back to the text as to any text and rationalise it. I am aware that I must have lost much of its immediate poetry. My friend reminded me that it was a tale told on a sunny afternoon to children to amuse and not to frighten them. The film of which he gives me the link for a long trailer shows all this:

Dreamchild - extract 38 minutes

https://youtu.be/4XYdoK8fT0E

And yet, when I look at the March Hare with his yellowing teeth, and the poor dormouse, or the Mock Turtle and the Gryphon, I still feel the hair on my neck bristling.

This led me to think about children's book in Britain and France (my Anglo-Saxon friends all told me that "Alice" was a delightful book - well books, with "Through the Looking Glass"-, and that they revelled in both and rather wanted to meet the characters), and British and French mythologies. 

To talk of both would take too long for such a blog but it seems that there are less fairies and elves and "little people" in French tales and myths, unless it is in Brittany - but Brittany is a Celtic country. The French are more at ease with the solar Greek and Latin/Roman myths, their gods, goddesses and minor divinities. The Gallic roots (I mean the roots of the Gauls) have been slowly erased by the Roman civilisation, itself carrying Greek traditions. The invasions from the East and North (Vandals, Visigoths, Franks et al.) did nothing to rekindle the Celtic ground. Christianity had come over the Roman gods. By the end of the fifth century, the core of what would become the Realm of France was officially Christian with the christening of the Frank King Clovis. A breach of civilisation was irredeemably dug between France and Britain.

Meanwhile, oblivious of all these more or less idle considerations, our tea party was a very reasonable one, not mad at all but greatly enjoyed. "Alice" was in my sole and only mind. Thus we all said we would make another occasion soon: so many cakes to bake and so many brands of tea to taste! 

Would we be on our way to seal the breach between "two nations" by way of tea parties?

Lights and shades

Spring

I have been silent from the beginning of March - more than a month without writing, more than a month without you, dear friends and readers. 

Time has elapsed and events have happened. Of course, these are daily events without great importance compared to the course of the world. Nothing like Brussels, Lahore, Syria, Ivory Coast, and other atrocities, catastrophes, wars, crises of every hue that keep happening on Planet Earth.

No. Our daily lives have been impaired, hustled, moved round but not grievously hurt.

March

First, I lost my email account, which was hacked. As the blog was somewhat linked to it, some difficulties to retrieve it, the creation of a new email account and the attempt to find back my contacts.

Then, I had a bout of  depression. Not enough sunshine and the feeling that winter, rain, darkness, clouds, damp would never come to an end. The "I have enough of all" Syndrome.

Then, when things were getting better, a nasty cold with cough and fever. 

Of course, I could not keep it all to me: I shared it with The Girls but it turned as bronchitis to Eldest One. And that was frightening because it was a very bad bout of bronchitis. At one point, I thought she would pass away.

Ill

Now, things are going back to normal. Eldest Girl is bright and sprightly, up and about, just declared perfectly fine by her doctor. There are longer times of sunshine. Cherry trees and plum trees are in bloom. The oaks are putting on tiny bronze leaves. Lilacs show bigger tender-green shoots. There are tulips in the garden and not only under the protection of walls or shrubs. Blackbirds are hopping along the house and on the lawn. There are concerts of birds morning and evening. We know that there will still  be rain (giboulées), nevertheless spring is here!

Black thorn and blue tit

It is high time to write again.

Nonetheless there will be a change in my writing blog.

This one will remain as it is: something between a diary, a chronicle of life in the country, a commonplace book of reading, art, and music, a place where to chat. 

But I have decided to create another blog, "Lights and shades", that will be dedicated to the role of caregiver, his or her life, the joys and difficulties of this function that sometimes turns out as a full time job. And the life of the "caregiven" that is sometimes sadly forgotten when he or she gets older - of course, I am thinking of my Girls here. People with Down Syndrome (commonly written DownS) are always shown as children or youngsters. What happens when they are adults and growing old? 

You may not be interested by these issues: this is why I have decided to keep two separate blogs. But you are welcome to both and a lively interaction is all I wish for. There is already a Facebook page called "Camille de Fleurville-Malaret, blogger", which you may "like", and upon which you may leave comments and reacts or send pictures, for instance. I shall create another one for "Lights and shades" where I hope that discussion will begin. We may all happen to be caregivers to our parents or members of our families. But caregivers need care themselves, and respite. I wish the new blog and the new Facebook page will be a space where to talk, weep, laugh, live together. Welcome!

Down Syndrome... What then?

Down Syndrome? Does it matter to you?

And, last, it has been now a year since I have begun to write this blog. You have read it. You have made comments. You have criticized. You have approved. Under any guise, you have been a great support: you have been here. 

Thank you.

A first smile for spring

No, it is not yet spring, official spring. But there are clumps of daffodils in the garden and they are spring and well worth a smile!

We had a lovely blue sky all day with a bright sunshine, birds singing, fresh ait, I must confess, not at all a warm afternoon. But THE day where the light is more bright, where there is something in the air that shows winter is gone.

And this made me smile ... and write here for the first time!*

*This is part of a series called: "a smile a week": #weeklysmile

France: a country without literature

Madame de Pompadour as patron of arts and letters

"She" (that's your servant) "comes from a country" (France) "which has produced VERY little of what I consider literature compared to teeny British Isles!"

A short story and a big laugh about what happened to me this week.

I belong to a rather large number of reading groups or lists online. People read and discuss books and authors or books from one author. The groups and lists have various intellectual levels. I have been participating in one of these groups for more than year and became increasingly restless and angry because this was not a reading group but a super fan group worshipping an obscure British authoress who wrote some good light romantic novels, and more that are less good until, down the scale, very bad fiction that would have been better left in obscurity.

Some of her publishers agree as they let her resurrected titles slowly die again until what they hope will be extinction of the stock.

I said so.

And, tired of eternal vacillations and speculations that were coming back again and again after I had given the solution to sort out the issue last year (why and when the authoress' husband had moved from one regiment to another: the MOD has all elements and treats these questions every day) - but obviously without result -, I added some sentences about the lack of seriousness of the reading and researching - if research was really made, which I doubted - by some members of the group who made themselves leaders, while others were meekly following, a fact called the "herd phenomenon".

This started a great hulla-balloo, and, of course, I was expelled from the group, with collateral damages.

The good ladies started being - let's say - slightly paranoid, and saw me everywhere: they banned innocent people from their facebook writer fan page, thinking I was masquerading behind new aliases, all the time discussing among themselves openly - which was sad for the banned persons but awfully funny for me. I only stayed and kept quiet and read everything. Had they forgotten my real name?

They even told another group, also on facebook - group that is usually mild and very nice - whose administrators banned an impecunious Croatian lady to whom I had been talking in order to send her spare copies of books she had no money to buy. But the good American, Canadian and British ladies thought that I was talking to myself, pretending I was both an alias and the Croatian lady. They were crediting me with an agility to manoeuvre facebook, from which I would have had to log in and log out at the rhythm of a conversation! At the same time, they declared that the Croatian lady was "fishy", therefore she and I were the same and that no book should be given. "Off with our heads" - would have said the Red Queen!

I discovered I was clever, indeed. 

But the funniest thing was the note sent by one member, British and proud of it, who wrote it very seriously, to the administrators of the reading group online (not facebook), copied and pasted it and sent it again as an e-mail to one of her buddies on the list - forgetting that she was making it open to all eyes. The note included the sentence I posted at the beginning of this blog entry:

"She" (your servant) "comes from a country" (France) "which has produced VERY little of what I consider literature compared to teeny British Isles!"

Therefore, dear friends and readers, do remember: France has produced VERY little literature... Push it a little further and you may consider that this country has neither culture nor civilisation...

La Liseuse Verte (Renoir)

Would you like a cup of coffee or tea?

Good afternoon!

Please, come in: it is drizzling at best, raining at worst, and in between you may stand under an impromptu shower. This is a very unpleasant weather although it is mild enough for the season. But any good farmer would look quizzically at the sky, the trees, the grass growing, and ask "Which season?"

Do come in the sitting room and make yourself at ease. Give me your coat or your raincoat, and I will pour some coffee or tea - even Clipper mint tea... There is a whole array of teas from the UK, Russia and good French houses. 

It has been some time since I have not asked you to come. You may see by the untidiness of the room that we are up to something, and, yes, we are. We have planned a great overhaul of The House as soon as the sun will be here. Miss Read's readers will recognise the symptoms of spring cleaning! No Mrs Pringle but the Shopping-cum-Cleaning Lady who is training a very nice young woman. Over a cup of tea, after shopping, one Friday aternoon, we decided to unite forces and to go through the whole rooms, one after the other: five pairs of hands should be efficient. 

But we have to do something with the stacks of books that are littering every flat inch of table, armchair, sideboard, and even floor. We have cardboard boxes and sticking tape; I am trying to sort out rationally the books and magazines and pack them.

I would be glad to have most things tidy by April as we may have guests then. Best Friend from England told me yesterday over the phone that she thought about coming and visit us with her husband in April. Said husband was drinking tea with me at the same moment, smiling and nodding all the time. This is something to look forward to! Other Friends may be on their ways to visit their families and would stop en route.

Oops, here is the jug of hot water from the kitchen and some biscuits. Please, help yourself.

You may have seen that there are still crocuses, and that the winter jasmine is in full flower as well as briars. Have you noticed the clump of narcissi around the summer jasmine. Their buds are ready to explode in a flutter of white with an orange heart frilled with black. And were you to come on the North-Eastern side of the house, you would be able to watch the first primroses. Soon, there will be a whole carpet of them under the cherry trees. Readers of carissima Lucia, you will recognise Perdita's garden further West, close to the garden house. It is a remain of the efforts of a Grand-Mother who was an adept of E.F. Benson.

We had some sunshine days last week, mostly during the late afternoons. A kind Friend known online gave me some things to potter round, about English literature, and I have been reading about known authors, regional authors, and authors I did not know at all. That brought me back to Parson Woodforde and Francis Kilvert. (Decidedly, I am full of references for Miss Read's readers and Barbara Pym's). In fact, I dipped happily into Betjeman's poetry. This quiet, discreet, and reserved England, well-bred and uncomplaining, who does not exist that much any more nowadays.

I read one book about which I would like to talk with you: "English Passengers" by Matthew Kneale", and begun another: "The Master" by Com Toibin. Both are re-reads that I enjoy slowly and probably more than I did the first time I read them. More to come.

At first sight, this seems very conservative and very "gentle": it is less than it seems. Have you read these books? Did you like them?

What are you reading these days? Are you, like me, induced to be more outside, watching the flowers and listening to the birds, now that days are growing? 

However, I may be indiscreet and asking too much. Perhaps it is time for you to leave? The drizzle has ceased. The night is slowly falling. Grey swollen clouds take over the sky, but still the twitter of greenfinches sings in the fir tree near my window. Look up and you will see wild geese in formation looking like an arrow. There is a thrill of spring. If you are in the Northern hemisphere, do you feel it as well? And what does it look like in the Southern one?

Yes, sorry, so sorry: I am too talkative. I was glad to have you this afternoon. Please, do come back and let's chat again! Thank you for your being with me. You cannot begin to guess how much you are important for me!