Eclairage Chauffage: Helen McNicoll and the painting of light

Posted on July 9, 2023 by Parisian Fields

This image of a market in Brittany was painted by Helen McNicoll in 1910. The sign “Eclairage Chauffage” on the building in the background seems appropriate, since the sun is beaming down and you can almost feel its warmth. McNicoll had a genius for painting light, including dappled light and filtered light.

One of my favourite McNicoll paintings is In the Tent, painted on a beach in the south of France in the summer of 1914. The diffused light is magical and you can almost feel the heat of the day.

This is the image that greets you as you enter the exhibit “Cassatt/McNicoll: Impressionists Between Worlds” currently on view at the Art Gallery of Ontario. I fell in love immediately with this picture’s light and calm. Cassatt I knew about (I once reviewed an exhibit of her art in Paris for another blog), but McNicoll was a discovery. The two women were not contemporaries and never met, but the parallels in their lives and art made for a thought-provoking exhibition.

Helen Galloway McNicoll was born in Toronto in 1879, raised in Montréal, and became deaf at the age of two after a bout of scarlet fever. She moved to England when she was 23 and attended the Slade School in London, where she received training in life drawing (something not available to women art students in Montréal). In 1905 she began studies at the Cornish School of Landscape, Figure and Sea Painting in St. Ives, which emphasized working outdoors (plein air).

England became her home base, and she maintained a studio in London, making frequent trips back to Canada to see her family and to France to paint in the company of her friend Dorothea Sharp, another artist. In fact, they were in France at St-Valéry-sur-Somme in August 1914 when the First World War broke out. Helen was excited by the activity around her and keen to stay, but McNicoll’s father was vice-president of Canadian Pacific, and the company arranged to get her and Dorothea out of France posthaste. It all happened so quickly that they had to leave some of their belongings behind. (The exhibition catalogue notes that the gallery’s collection of her sketchbooks contains nothing dating from later than 1910. Were the others left behind in France in 1914?)

Helen McNicoll died the following year, aged only 35, of complications from diabetes, in Swanage, Dorset, leaving behind an impressive body of work.

Her painting of the marketplace is unusual for her in that it depicts a crowd and a certain bustle. As one might expect from a painter who is deaf, most of her pictures depict quieter moments. Her subjects, usually shown alone or with one other person, are often absorbed in a task such as reading or sewing, seemingly oblivious to the world around them, and those depicted in a landscape may be only vaguely sketched in.

Sometimes people are missing altogether, as in Interior, painted in about 1910. It’s the strip of sunlight on the carpet and chest of drawers that I love. Eclairage. The chauffage is represented by the fireplace. (The AGO has created an extraordinary animated version of this painting for the exhibition.)

Here’s a table set for tea, but without anyone partaking.

Of course, I looked to see if there were any paintings of Paris. One, The Avenue, dating from about 1912, might have been painted in Paris. It depicts a few isolated figures among the wintry plane trees in a park.

One delightful element of the exhibit is the display of McNicoll’s sketchbooks. The Art Gallery of Ontario has even made a little video of these books, filled with quick takes on people, animals, and places. I’ve put the link at the bottom of this post.

A few of those in the sketchbooks are identified. “Dollie” is a sister, and “Amy” a cousin. The former is not to be confused with “Dolly,” Helen’s name for Dorothea Sharp (whose real name was Lydia Mary Sharp). Dorothea called Helen “Nellie.”

Dorothea Sharp (1873–1955) was six years older than Helen. She had studied in Paris at the Académie Colarossi in Montparnasse, and had been deeply influenced by the work of Claude Monet. She painted many images of children and visits to the seaside, and she and McNicoll often worked with the same models at the same time.

The book that I bought at the gallery (Samantha Burton, Helen McNicoll: Life & Work) includes two images on the same page of the same scene in 1912, one painted by Sharp and the other by McNicoll. Dorothea’s (shown first, below) is a little spikier, and I like the reflections in the water. Helen’s is softer, with one child in the shade and another in the sun, and the children are watching other children on the far shore launching a toy boat. Same scene, viewed by two different personalities.

The book also informed me that after Helen McNicoll’s death, Dorothea continued to travel and paint with a younger friend, Marcella Smith (1887–1963). Marcella had been born in England but grew up in the United States. It turns out that she too had studied at Colarossi’s and lived for many years in St. Ives, Cornwall. So I went to look for some of her paintings.

This one is called Neap Tide, St. Ives. Marcella Smith painted many maritime scenes with boats, but also flowers and landscapes.

What interested me is that those 1914 paintings from the beach in southern France appear to include Marcella as well as Dorothea. This one, painted by Dorothea, is called Marcella Smith at the Beach.

So is that picture in the exhibition of the dark-haired young woman in the tent on the beach a picture of Marcella? She would have been 27 in 1914. Or was it Dorothea, who also had dark hair but was 41 at the time? A second picture by McNicoll shows two people in the tent. Maybe it’s Dolly with the paintbox and Marcella on the blanket, or maybe not.

One should not necessarily read anything into these relationships beyond friendship and mutual support. For one thing, middle-class women simply could not travel alone. For example, for Canadian painter Emily Carr, travel meant travel with her sister. And in pursuing the life of a professional artist, women needed to team up. Samantha Burton, McNicoll’s biographer, writes:

Informal personal relationships…helped to bolster a woman artist’s professional career…Together, women like McNicoll and Sharp could share the costs of studio space, support one another during their travels, and give immediate feedback while they painted…Given McNicoll’s hearing loss, Sharp must also have provided important help in navigating the more practical parts of artmaking: hiring models, renting lodgings, and purchasing supplies.*

Dorothea was vice-president of the Society of Women Artists and did what she could to advance Helen’s career. In return, Helen opened some doors for Dorothea in the Montréal art market. In those days, women struggled to be recognized as professionals rather than amateurs, and women artists needed all the support they could get. And even then, their subject matter was often limited to landscapes, still life, and domestic or outdoor scenes of women and children, because those were the subjects most easily available to them.

I plan to revisit the exhibit a few more times this summer and enjoy the sunshine and warmth of the south of France without leaving Toronto. If you want to do so too, you have until September 4.

Text by Philippa Campsie. Images from the National Gallery of Canada; Helen McNicoll: Life and Work by Samantha Burton; portrait of Helen McNicoll by Robert Harris, 1910.

* Samantha Burton, Helen McNicoll: Life & Work, The Canadian Art Library, 2020, p. 68.

Posted in Paris art, Toronto | 15 Comments

Words in the Métro

Posted on April 14, 2024 by Parisian Fields

On our visit to Paris in December 2023, our closest Métro station was Bastille. It is one of my favourites, with a view from the Line 1 platform over the péniches and pleasure boats in the Bassin de l’Arsenal.

We used the Métro more than usual on this visit, because the station entrance was so close, and because Line 1 is so useful for getting across the city. On previous visits, we stayed at an apartment much farther from a Métro station, where buses were more convenient, and we enjoyed seeing more of the city from the bus. But this was winter, it was cold, the Métro was nearby, so we took the Métro.

We also visited an exposition at the Cité de l’Architecture on the history and future of the Métro (it remains open until June 2024). The entry to the exhibit featured floor-to-ceiling screens on which were projected films of the massive construction projects involved in the building of the Métro. Norman was entranced.

We were impressed to learn that the first stretch of the Métro (now Line 1), which opened in 1900, took 20 months to build, using manual labour rather than heavy equipment. (By comparison, Toronto has been struggling to build a light-rail crosstown line for more than a decade, and the opening date has been constantly postponed and now appears to be a classified government secret.)

We rested while sitting on a section of an old second-class carriage, with its wooden seats, a place for luggage, the CMP (Chemin de Fer Métropolitan de Paris) logo, and a view of a station platform beyond the window.

The last part of the exhibit dealt with proposed expansions to the system. There were architectural models and mock-ups of new stations, many quite attractive, but some of the descriptions made me laugh out loud. Here is one example (all the displays had French and English captions):

Beyond the individual conceptual design of each project, the charter encourages the development of ‘serene’ and ‘frugal’ atmospheres, capable of arousing the sense of passengers through effects of ‘insistence’ and ‘intensity.’ It is through the senses that the station must elicit a sense of place…

Right. I’m sure if the passengers ever look up from their smartphones, they will appreciate the serene insistence or the frugal intensity of their surroundings.

But those are not the words I want to talk about. After returning home, I read a book called Metropolitain: An Ode to the Paris Metro by Andrew Martin* that contained wonderfully specific words for details of the Métro, many of which I had never seen or heard before. The book has no images whatsoever, but it has a wonderful vocabulary.

Here is a word I did not know: loqueteau. It is the name for those metal door openers that passengers have to operate themselves, pulling up sharply on the handle, “whereupon the double doors spring violently apart as if they’d always hated each other” (page 23; Martin is rather good with metaphors). You find them on the older turquoise-and-white cars.

Martin seems a little intimidated by these things and prefers to let someone else open them. I love them and feel privileged to be the person nearest the door whose job it is to lift the latch and free the passengers behind me.

I did know the word for the flip-up seats near the door: strapontins, because they are mentioned in a sign inside each car cautioning that they should not be used when the car is crowded.

Another term I had not known is PILI, an acronym for plans indicateurs lumineux d’intinéraires. I remember these maps from my time as a student, although they are rare these days. They appeared in the late 1930s and started to disappear in the early years of the 2000s.

Martin waxes poetic about these lost devices:

You pressed the button for your destination station, and a route was suggested for you by a line of little lights. … The sudden appearance of a glittering necklace is very gratifying and you immediately press another station name at random for no reason except to see another necklace.

A man after my own heart. He says there is still one at Miromesnil, and on our next visit, I shall have to take a look myself.

Another lovely word is édicule, often applied to the covered Métro entrances designed by Hector Guimard. My Petit Robert defines édicule as a little free-standing religious building or a small construction on the public way (such as a Vespasienne). Guimard’s station entrances are so much more than just a railing surrounding a flight of steps leading down, and they deserve a special name. Some are also known as libellules (dragonflies) for obvious reasons. This one is at Porte Dauphine at the end of Line 2, in the 16th arrondissement.

Guimard even designed an entrance to the Bastille station, in a style known as pagode (pagoda). It was, alas, demolished in the 1960s.

Martin also provides words for elements of the stations, such as tablier métallique, for a special kind of ceiling. Instead of the usual wide arch covered with tiles, the tablier métallique has girders running across the tracks with small arches between them. Martin explains that they are found in stations where the ceiling is close to the surface. There is a bit of tablier métallique at the aboveground part of the Bastille station on Line 1, but the example shown below comes from Bréguet-Sabin, Line 5.

Now I will know to look up and exclaim, “Regardez le tablier métallique!” when I disembark at certain stations. Well, maybe not, but I could.

The book includes a detailed history of changing fashions in station design, with a name for each version.

The default is the original white-tiled vault. You can see a hundred of these at a website called Cent Stations du Métro Parisien, which offers 100 mostly black-and-white photographs by Daniel Buren, taken in the 1970s, displayed alphabetically by station. They are all taken from the same angle and the repetition of advertisements and wooden benches in nearly all the photographs creates a sense of monotony.

There were, however, subtle difference between the CMP stations and those of Nord-Sud, the company that built Lines 12 and 13. Here is Pasteur Station, Line 12, photographed in 1974.

Note the vertical side walls (best seen on the left side of the photograph), as well as the lines and swags in the tiles on the curved ceiling. By contrast, the white vaults of the CMP had walls that curved down towards the platform and the ceiling tiles were plain white.

Things started to change in the 1960s when the tiles were covered with large metal panels, a style known as carrossage, in certain stations. Carrossage certainly allowed more space for advertising, as shown here at Falguière on Line 12.

It makes me think of the way in which nice old brick or stone buildings in small Ontario towns were covered with aluminum siding in the 1960s in an attempt to make them look modern. The siding did not age gracefully, and neither, it seems, did the carrossage. The style survives at a few stations, particularly my least favourite, the gloomy Franklin D. Roosevelt Line 1 platform. Its ghastly hanging light fixtures look like something from an outdated disco, and they obscure signs above the platform for exits or connections.

On the other hand, our favourite station is also an example of carrossage, but created with flair and imagination: the Arts et Métiers station, Line 11.

The next innovation in station design is known as Mouton-Duvernet, because it was first used at the station of that name in 1968. It was orange. Really really orange. That was the colour of trendy modernity at the time. Here’s how it looked at Havre-Caumartin, Line 9.

Moving right along, and one does want to, the next version was called Andreu-Motte, because the designers were Paul Andreu and Joseph-André Motte. This style, implemented in the late 1970s and early 1980s, affected the lighting, which was suspended from the ceiling in a long, coloured box. This colour was repeated in a low tiled shelf on which individual seats are fixed.

The wooden benches photographed by Buren had fallen out of favour as people took to sleeping on them, and were replaced by individual seats attached to the wall. Now a version of the long bench was reintroduced. I have seen people sleeping on the shelf, so its seems we have come full circle. Here is the style in green at Montparnasse-Bienvenüe, Line 13.

The next style was called, interestingly, Ouï-Dire (which means hearsay), and dates from the 1980s. Coloured lights were projected upwards to create interesting effects, unique to each station. This one is at Crimée, Line 7.

The updating and refashioning continues, under the unmemorable name Renouveau du Métro. Some older seats are being replaced by enamelled metal ones with a circular outline. I photographed the colourful ones shown below, not in the Métro, but in La Samaritaine, where I recognized the shape immediately. The name for this type of seating is coque (shell). Note the bevelled tiles in the background, another hallmark of the Métro.

Finally, although Martin does not mention him, I can’t resist a shout-out to the Lapin du Métro, the hapless bunny forever getting his paws pinched in the moving doors. He, too, has a name: Serge. I have mentioned him before, with a picture of the version in yellow pyjamas, but he has been updated to keep with the times and now wears jeans, T-shirt, and sneakers.

Not only does he warn against putting one’s hands on the doors, but in other illustrations he is shown getting squashed by closing doors while entering after the timbre sonore has sounded, and getting his feet pinched on the escalator. Poor Serge. He was created in 1977, with very short ears, wearing a red overall. The design was updated by Serge Maury in 1986 (yellow pyjamas and much longer ears) and once more in 2014 (jeans and T-shirt).

Everything has a name in the Metro and everything is subject to fashion.

Text and original photographs of museum display and coques by Philippa Campsie; close-up of ceramic tile by Norman Ball; photograph of loqueteau: https://soundcloud.com/ratp_officiel/sonal-de-vigilance; all other images from Wikimedia Commons.

*London: Little Brown/Corsair, 2023.

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A geranium in winter

Posted on January 21, 2024 by Parisian Fields

Finally, after almost four years, we were back in Paris. We stayed in an apartment belonging to a friend of Norman’s, and were greeted with the sight of red geraniums in the window boxes. We were there for Christmas and New Year’s, happy to get away from Toronto, with its cheesy Christmas music in shops and the insistent ads about what to buy for everyone on your list. This was a gift from us to each other, and we unwrapped it a day at a time.

Shortly after we arrived back in Toronto (during a snowstorm), I wrote down a list of things that we love about Paris, the reasons we return as often as we can. Not sights and monuments, but details we find pleasing.

Such as the way in which the city is filled with ateliers in which people make things and repair things. A street that we often passed near the apartment had both a stained glass studio and a workshop in which a man made custom frames and mountings for unusual artwork. We chatted with the owner of the stained glass shop and Norman talked to the framer. Elsewhere in the city, we’ve seen people making furniture or musical instruments, fixing locks, mending china, and even repairing umbrellas. By comparison, many modern cities are mere logistics centres, storing and despatching, but not creating and never repairing.

At the larger scale, these skills aggregate to the art of restoration. On this visit, we saw several recently restored buildings: the Hotel de la Marine, the Musee Carnavalet, La Samaritaine department store (shown below), and the Bourse de Commerce, which has become an art gallery. In each one, we marvelled at the work that had been done and the care that had been taken with old materials.

We even found a shop called Les Toits Parisiens near the Village St-Paul, in which you can learn how to create artworks using zinc or ardoise (slate), the traditional materials of Paris roofs. We bought an original picture, a zinc objet, and some delicious little bonbons the colour of slate. We spent hours talking to the owner and examining everything in the small space.

Speaking of small spaces, we love the compactness of the city and are consistently amazed at the way in which bus drivers manage to manoeuvre articulated vehicles through impossibly small gaps in traffic or between buildings. I don’t know how they are trained, but they have our unbounded admiration.

We’ve heard residents of Paris complain about the public transit system, but they haven’t lived in Toronto. We are in awe of the extent and reach of the system, the frequency of Metro trains (even on public holidays), and the imaginative decoration of so many stations. We are also delighted when younger people leap to their feet if we seem to be hunting for a seat on the Metro. It’s not that we look terribly old, but giving up one’s seat is surprisingly common. In one bus, we watched a little minuet as a middle-aged woman gave her seat to an older woman, who in turn gave it up to an even older man with a cane. I’m quite sure he would have given way if someone with crutches and a cast had entered the bus.*

Good public transit means that living in Paris without a private car is a reasonable option for all kinds of people. This fact accounts for the interest provided by sidewalk traffic, as things that would be hidden away in cars in Canada are on display in the streets in Paris. People walk by carrying furniture, works of art, flowers, bags of groceries, tools, and toys.

Life is lived out in the open in so many ways. People in small apartments need cafés for meeting friends or just reading a book, and even in December, the outdoor terraces were filled with patrons, drinking coffee or wine and catching up on the news from other people or from newspapers. Lingering is allowed, because the table is important, socializing is important.

People speak of sitting outside cafés watching the world go by, but the world is just as fascinating inside the café. At one of our favourite restaurants, Café Varenne on the rue du Bac, we sat on little stools in the entrance, as the wait staff bustled around us, squeezing through the crowd without spilling the contents of their trays. We enjoyed the choreography as we waited for what the cheerful maître d’ called “the pole position.”

Despite the bustle of Paris life, we like the fact that social exchanges are given priority, even if you are merely buying stamps at the Post Office or cough drops at a pharmacie. It doesn’t matter how many people are waiting in line; these things cannot be rushed. You say Bonjour, get a Bonjour in return, state your business, discuss the options available, sometimes in considerable detail, make the transaction, and end with Au revoir (or Bonnes fêtes or Bonne année at this time of year). The people waiting behind you know they will have their time too. Indeed, it is common to see a line of people waiting as an elderly customer has a full and frank discussion with a pharmacist about health matters and then spends some time finding the money to pay for médicaments. This is as it should be.

What else? Papeteries (stationers’ shops) and drogueries – the latter are not drugstores but shops filled with every kind of tool and product to clean and shine anything you can imagine. Norman calls them “drudgery stores,” but even he has bought a variety of useful items there. And then there is Deyrolle, because after all who doesn’t need a stuffed owl? And the Bazar de l’Hotel de Ville basement hardware emporium, where we inspected the vast range of door handles available.

These places have knowledgeable sales staff. Sure, Paris has its share of sulky young people on the sales floor, absorbed in their mobile phones, but they mainly work for chain stores or shops catering to teenagers. In the papeteries, the drogueries, the shops selling housewares or artworks, or the specialized food shops, the staff pay attention, know the products, and can provide useful advice.

And they need to, because shops offer so many choices. Sometimes it’s overwhelming. A friend asked me which type of kiwi I preferred. I was speechless. There’s more than one kind of kiwi? She explained that she likes the yellow-fleshed ones, but the red-fleshed ones are nice, too. I didn’t know that green was not the only option. So she brought us some to show us. At the open-air markets, usually one stall sells nothing but lettuce, about 25 types (we’re lucky to find half a dozen in our central Toronto market). At the grocery store, I can spend hours pondering the available flavours of jam or yoghurt (chestnut, anyone? fig, plum, persimmon?).

It’s not just quantity and choice, but quality. Everything tastes better, fresher, juicier.

And the bread. Some people prefer croissants for breakfast, but give me a tartine (that is, a ficelle cut lengthwise), preferably with Normandy butter and a bit of jam, and I am in heaven. Later in the day, a baguette to go with the cheese course. The cheese is optional. Bread is much more of a temptation for me than pastries. I’ve never understood the appeal of macarons, although I enjoy financiers and I always hunt for pistachio éclairs (much better than the chocolate versions).

Paris is also becoming more welcoming to gluten-intolerant visitors. A friend of ours visiting from California is gluten-intolerant, and found a wealth of options, as well as sympathetic treatment in restaurants. She brought an amazing gluten-free galette des rois to an end-of-the year celebration with friends.

We loved the apartment, with its high ceilings and enormous windows. It even had (albeit a small one, high up on the wall), an internal window, as well as a transom over the entrance (shown below). I’ve always liked the way transoms, skylights, and windows in interior walls bring extra daylight deep into Paris apartments. In a previous place we rented, the internal window took the form of a porthole.

We were impressed with some of the changes over the last few years designed to reduce car traffic. Pedestrianized streets. Other streets limited to commercial traffic only (buses, taxis, delivery vehicles). Bike lanes – okay, the bicyclists themselves are casual about obeying traffic signals, but I appreciate the infrastructure. Pedal-powered/electric delivery vehicles of all kinds.

We had an unusual walk on the highway beside the Seine that is now closed to cars and open to pedestrians, cyclists, and scooters. A friend had invited us for a stroll by the river, but the water level was so high that part of the riverside path was closed. We ended up in a former highway tunnel. It was well lighted and ventilated, covered in graffiti (some of it sanctioned), and we emerged after more than a mile feeling faintly bemused but impressed.

Other environmental initiatives include copious recycling opportunities. Reusable food containers made without plastic (glass, pottery). Places to put Christmas trees when the season is over. Green roofs.

We could go on and on. But these everyday things keep us coming back. This was our twentieth visit to Paris as a couple, and we hope for twenty more.

And let us not forget…geraniums grow in the winter.

Feel free to suggest other things that you appreciate in the comments section.

Text by Philippa Campsie, photographs by Philippa Campsie and Norman Ball. Photograph of Metro sign (below) from Wikimedia Commons.

*The year that I was a student in France, the Metro cars all had signs on the windows for the seats nearby, reserved for “Mutilés de Guerre, Aveugles Civils, Invalides du travail et infirmes civils, Femmes enceintes, Femmes portant un enfant de moins de quatre ans sur les genoux” (people with war wounds, persons who are blind, people with work-related injuries or other infirmities, pregnant women, women holding a child of less than four years old on her knees). The wording has varied over the years, but clearly many passengers have adopted the tradition of giving up a seat to someone else from a young age.

Posted in Paris metro, Paris shops | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 23 Comments

Funeral march for a dead parrot

Posted on November 26, 2023 by Parisian Fields

I was working in the kitchen, half listening to the radio, when something caught my attention. The radio announcer, in introducing a piece of music, was describing a Parisian composer and musician who was extremely reclusive. The story went that the musician owned both halves of a semi-detached house and when visitors came, he would walk through the connecting door to the other half while the butler told the would-be visitors that he was not at home.

My initial reaction was: Wait…they have semi-detached houses in Paris? Where?

This is not a blog about Parisian house forms. But in all honesty, that’s what caught my attention at first. The announcer then added that the composer’s music was notoriously difficult to play. But the pianist Marc-André Hamelin managed it with aplomb. You can hear the piece he played on YouTube.

I liked what I heard and waited to the end to hear the composer’s name, which I had missed at the beginning of the broadcast. Charles-Valentin Alkan. I did not recognize it. Later, I mentioned it to a musician friend and he didn’t recognize it either. After listening to Alkan’s music over the last few days, I am amazed that this composer is not better known.

He was born in Paris in 1813 at 1 rue de Braque in the Marais (the house is still there). His name at birth was actually Charles-Valentin Morhange, but he and his five siblings took his father’s first name, Alkan, as their last name. The reasons are complicated, but have to do with a legal requirement relating to Jewish surnames. The father, Alkan Morhange, ran a music school. All six children went on to careers in music as composers, performers, or teachers. Among them, Charles-Valentin was considered a child prodigy.

He was not yet six years old when he auditioned for the Paris Conservatoire. He gave his first public performance (on the violin) when he was seven and started composing in his early teens. The future seemed bright. A biography of the composer suggests, however, some dark clouds.

Was Alkan overworked as a child? According to the Conservatoire register he was often away sick, and although there is no reason to suspect more than the usual childish ailments, he does seem later to have become highly neurotic about his health.*

But in his teens and early twenties, as his talent developed, it was all glitter and fame and hobnobbing with the likes of Chopin and George Sand in his twenties. Here is a picture of him as a young man.

He took lodgings in the Square d’Orléans in what is now the 9th arrondissement, the area once known as La Nouvelle Athènes. It was an exclusive enclave entered from the rue Taitbout. Several important artists lived there – not just Chopin (at no. 9) and Sand (no. 5) but also dancer Marie Taglioni (no. 2), and Alkan’s teacher at the Conservatoire, Joseph Zimmerman (no. 7).

Alkan specialized in the pedal-piano (piano-pédalier), which had playable pedals like an organ. His own instrument was made by Erard, a company with which he had a lifelong connection.

Just as everything seemed to be going so well, in 1839, when he was 26, Charles-Valentin Alkan withdrew from the concert stage for several years. Biographers attribute this withdrawal in part to the birth in February 1839 of his natural son (the euphemism for a child born out of wedlock), Elie Miriam Delaborde. (Delaborde later studied piano with Alkan, and became a celebrated performer and a teacher at the Conservatoire.)

The connection between Alkan and Delaborde was never made official. It is not confirmed in any French records. Alkan himself never acknowledged the child as his own. The boy’s mother was said to be Lina Eraïm Miriam of Nantes, who was apparently married to someone else at the time, but the records of the child’s birth are missing. Indeed, there are no records of Lina’s life either. She is a mystery. The name Delaborde may have come from the child’s foster mother in Brittany.

On the other hand, no information to the contrary has emerged, either. The child seems to have inherited Alkan’s musical talent, but also something more unusual: a fancy for parrots.

Both Delaborde and Alkan were parrot enthusiasts – Alkan [composed] a tombeau to a parrot in 1859, the Marcia funèbre sulla morte d’un papagello [funeral march on the death of a parrot] – and one hundred and twenty-one parrots and cockatoos accompanied Delaborde on his London trip in 1870.**

Inconclusive as evidence of paternity, but what a story. You can’t make this stuff up. The funeral march was written for four voices, three oboes, and a bassoon. The parrot’s name was Jaco. The singers repeatedly sing the words “As-tu déjeuné Jaco? De quoi?” (Have you lunched, Jaco? On what?) It is funny and sad at the same time.

Alkan returned to the concert stage in the 1840s, but he did not re-enter society. Although he was admired by his fellow artists, and his compositions attracted the attention of musical critics, the public did not warm to his choice of repertoire as a performer. One reviewer considered Schubert “old-fashioned” and Mendelssohn “drily scholastic.” I cannot imagine a modern critic saying that. As for his compositions, many were fiendishly difficult and he was probably one of the few who could master them. Have a listen to this tour de force, “Chemin de Fer” (Railway).

In 1849, Alkan gave a performance with a group of string players, a program of Bach and Mozart and his own compositions. It would be his last public performance for 25 years.

He became a private piano teacher, mostly to wealthy aristocratic women, which paid the bills, but he was otherwise reclusive and obsessed with his health. He moved away from the Square d’Orléans. He stopped composing. He mourned the death of his friend Chopin, who had died in 1849. He insisted on preparing his own food (unusual for a man in those days). He spent hours studying the Talmud. A photograph of him from this time does not even show his face.

The anecdote I heard told by the radio announcer is a garbled version of the fact that his concierge was instructed to tell all callers, “Monsieur Alkan is not at home.” When asked when he would be at home, the concierge usually replied, “Never.” Once, a dear friend visiting from Germany was told this, and when Alkan found out he had missed someone he actually wanted to see, he rushed out to find him, but it was too late.

The departure of his long-suffering housekeeper in 1861 brought on a crisis. Alkan went through no fewer than 51 servants in the year that followed (he was forced to make his own bed as well as make his own meals, just imagine), and he searched for a smaller flat. Eventually he found something affordable and acceptable at no. 29 on what was then called the rue de la Croix-du-Roule, now called the rue Daru, in the 8th arrondissement. He lived there until his death. It’s the building with the pinkish brick on the right in the photograph below.

He survived the siege of Paris and the Commune, and wonder of wonders, decided to perform in public again in 1873, when he was sixty years old, at the Erard Salon. He played the program entirely from memory and the audience (mostly fellow artists) gave him a warm reception. He went on to give more concerts, organized by his youngest brother, Gustave. He suffered from stage fright, but coped by giving informal recitals twice a week at Erard’s piano showroom on the rue du Mail, to build his confidence by playing for an audience. He maintained this routine for about eight years. You can still see the entrance to the Erard building at 23 rue du Mail.

Alkan’s death in 1888, when he was alone in his apartment, has given rise to a constellation of stories. One version is that he was crushed by a falling bookshelf (or a cupboard). Another person suggested that it was an umbrella stand (that would have been an enormous umbrella stand). Another version has him falling from a library ladder. In several versions, he was said to be clutching the Talmud, which is traditionally kept on a top shelf so that no other book will be higher than it. But other versions have emerged, rather more mundane, suggesting that he died in his kitchen, probably of a heart attack, just as he was about to make a meal. There is even some disagreement on the date of his death.

One scholar published a couple of articles just on the death of Alkan, and concluded:

Alkan most probably collapsed between noon on the 28th and noon on the 29th [of March] in his kitchen. In falling he clutched at a large piece of furniture which fell with him to the floor. He was unable to extricate himself until the arrival of the concierge… He died at 8 p.m. on the 29th.***

Only four mourners were present at the burial in Montmartre Cemetery, one of them a representative of Erard, the piano makers. Some people were surprised to learn of his death, having assumed that he had died years earlier. His compositions were largely forgotten until the 1960s, and the revival of interest in his work was led by English and American pianists, one of whom became his first biographer; another had studied with a former student of Delaborde’s.

There is now an Alkan Society, based in England, and pianists who want to demonstrate their technique show off by performing his more difficult pieces, filled with fireworks. But he could also write quiet pieces, such as the lovely nocturne at the beginning of a recording by Stanley Hoogland.

Many mysteries in his story, but Charles-Valentin Alkan left a legacy of music that is well worth discovering.

Text by Philippa Campsie; portraits of Alkan and photo of piano-pédalier from Wikimedia Commons; photograph of Square d’Orléans from BNP Paribas Real Estate; photos of rue Daru and rue du Mail from Google Street View.

*Ronald Smith, Alkan: Volume 1: The Enigma (London: Kahn and Averill, 1976), page 17.

**William Alexander Eddie, Charles Valentin Alkan: His Life and His Music (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), page 7. What the quotation does not make clear is that Delaborde left Paris during the Franco-Prussian War. This was not a casual visit with the menagerie (which included some apes).

*** Hugh Macdonald, “More on Alkan’s Death,” The Musical Times, vol. 129, no. 1741 (March 1988), page 120.

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A St. Helena Lullaby

Posted on October 15, 2023 by Parisian Fields

How far is St. Helena from a little child at play?

What makes you want to wander there, with all the world between?

Oh, mother, call your son again, or else he’ll run away,

(No-one thinks of winter when the grass is green!)

I cannot remember how I first encountered this poem by Rudyard Kipling, but when I was a teenager, I set five of its eight verses to music. The poem recounts the story of Napoleon Bonaparte from the perspective of his final years, but the first verse might apply to anyone who went to that remote island in the Atlantic. What makes you want to wander there?

That line came to mind during a recent conversation in which I learned that the great-great-great-grandfather of one of the churchwardens at St. James Cathedral in Toronto had gone with his battalion to St. Helena in 1816 to guard Napoleon Bonaparte. The ancestor’s name was William Kingsmill. He spoke French and at some point, conversed with the imprisoned former emperor.

This image of Napoleon on the Bellerophon, the ship on which he formally surrendered to the English after his defeat at the battle of Waterloo in 1815, was painted in the 1880s by my great-grandfather’s cousin, Sir William Quiller Orchardson. The Bellerophon took Napoleon from Rochefort on the west coast of France to Plymouth in England after his defeat at Waterloo. Napoleon, who had hoped to find refuge in England or the United States, was not allowed to disembark and was sent into exile instead. Another ship, the Northumberland, took him to the remote island of St. Helena in the Atlantic; he arrived in October 1815.

William Kingsmill arrived in 1816. He had been born in Kilkenny, Ireland, in 1793, and served with the 66th Regiment of Foot from the age of 16. He was 24 when his battalion was sent to St. Helena to keep an eye on Napoleon. About three thousand British soldiers were stationed there during this time – I can’t help wondering how they spent the days, with only one prisoner to guard.

Willam kept busy by starting a family. His English fiancée, Hannah Pinnock, had decided not to wait for his return to England, and joined William on St. Helena. They married in February 1817.*

How far is St. Helena from an Emperor of France?

I cannot see—I cannot tell—the Crowns they dazzle so.

The Kings sit down to dinner, and the Queens stand up to dance.

(After open weather you may look for snow!)

St. Helena was a long way from Napoleon at the height of his power, shown above in a painting by Jacques-Louis David, which takes up a whole wall in the Louvre. On St. Helena, Napoleon stayed at first in a two-room pavilion, while Longwood, the house where he lived until his death in 1821, was being renovated.

Longwood, shown above, was inland, about four miles from the capital, Jamestown. The location was windy and foggy and the house was often damp. It had been divided up into many small rooms to accommodate Napoleon, his retinue of servants (butler, valets, footmen, cooks), and three of the four associates who followed him into exile, along with several of their family members (the fourth lived nearby with his wife and children).

How far is St. Helena from the field of Waterloo?

A near way—a clear way—the ship will take you soon.

A pleasant place for gentlemen with little left to do.

(Morning never tries you till the afternoon!)

At first, the former emperor did have plenty to do, and spent much of his time dictating his memoirs to one of his associates. He was allowed to walk freely in the grounds during the daytime and he had a large bathtub in which he took long, hot baths every day. He could, and did, receive visitors. He ate and dined quite well, although he rarely spent more than twenty minutes at table for a meal. At one point, he cultivated a garden (or oversaw the cultivation of a garden). But as time wore on, he became more and more inactive.

William Kingsmill, a junior officer and a married man with a growing family (he and Hannah had three children in St. Helena), chose to remain on the island when other members of his regiment returned to England. The Kingsmills apparently knew the members of Napoleon’s circle quite well. This is clear from an incident described in Napoleon in Exile: St. Helena (1815–1821) by Norwood Young, published in 1915:

Napoleon was so pleased with his new gardens that he was jealous of any intrusion upon them. One day he perceived a goat and two kids in the outer garden, and learning that they belonged to Madame Bertrand, who was much out of favour, he sent for his gun and shot the goat. To save the kids Madame presented them to Mrs. Kingsmill, the wife of Lieut. Kingsmill, of the 66th, the officer in charge at Longwood Guard (p. 183).**

Madame Fanny Bertrand*** was the wife of Henri-Gratien Bertrand, one of Napoleon’s associates who had accompanied him into exile. The family lived in a house near Longwood. Fanny was “out of favour” for a variety of reasons (tempers often flared in the claustrophophic atmosphere of captivity and Fanny was headstrong), but partly because Napoleon disapproved of her association with the wife of the governor, Sir Hudson Lowe. Napoleon loathed the governor, who was strict in his supervision and regulation of Napoleon’s activities.

William Kingsmill’s name appears in a list of people who supported Lowe in a feud with Dr. Barry Edward O’Meara, Napoleon’s Irish-born physician. Although O’Meara was part of the British contingent in St. Helena, he came to sympathize more and more with his patient, and he wrote letters to officials in England that criticized Lowe’s actions. O’Meara left the island in 1818, but the feud continued when he published an account of his time there that offended Lowe; those who had been there at the time had to take sides. Kingsmill sided with Lowe.

How far from St. Helena to the Gate of Heaven’s Grace?

That no one knows—that no one knows—and no one ever will.

But fold your hands across your heart and cover up your face,

And after all your traipsings, child, lie still!

Napoleon died at Longwood on May 5, 1821, probably of stomach cancer (opinions differ on the cause of death). Of his friends, two had left the island by then, but Bertrand and Fanny had remained. The former emperor was buried in a valley near Longwood with full military (but not imperial) honours.

The members of the 66th Regiment prepared to return to England. The Kingsmills went back with them, and a fourth child, a son, was born in Sunderland, England.

The battalion then went to Ireland, where two more Kingsmills were born. In 1827, the battalion was sent to Canada; two more Kingsmill children were born in Québec. William Kingsmill eventually resigned his commission and he and his family went west to what is now Ontario. The youngest son, Nicolas, known as Nicol, was born in Port Hope in 1834. This son is the great-great-grandfather of my friend in Toronto.

About this time, popular sentiment in France changed. Napoleon was remembered with fondness and pride. This change led to a petition for the repatriation of his remains. In 1840 his body was exhumed from the valley in St. Helena, transported to Paris, and entombed with great ceremony in Les Invalides. This event is called “Le Retour des Cendres” (literally, the return of the ashes, although Napoleon had not been cremated and it was his body that was brought back).

One of those chosen to oversee the transfer from St. Helena was Henri-Gratien Bertrand. He was now a widower, Fanny having died in 1836. This image of the casket arriving at Courbevoie was painted by Henri-Felix-Emmanuel Philippoteaux in 1867:

Meanwhile, William and Hannah moved to Niagara-on-the-Lake. William, who had reached the rank of lieutenant-colonel in the Canadian militia, became Sheriff of the Niagara district. This is a portrait of him in later life.

Hannah died in Niagara-on-the-Lake in 1860, William died 16 years later in Toronto, at the home of his son Nicol. His body was taken by steamer back to Niagara-on-Lake for burial beside Hannah (not quite as grand as Le Retour de Cendres, but a solemn boat trip nonetheless). A plaque hangs in St. Mark’s Church in Niagara-on-the-Lake.

In 1840, news of the Retour des Cendres probably reached William and Hannah Kingsmill in Canada. How did they feel about their experience in later years? Perhaps they wondered: Did we really meet a former emperor on an isolated island in the Atlantic? Did he really shoot that goat? Or was it all a dream?

No-one thinks of winter when the grass is green.

Text by Philippa Campsie. Orchardson painting from the Tate Gallery website; David painting from Wikimedia; image of Longwood from Saint Helena Napoleonic Heritage website; photograph of grave on St. Helena from Wikimedia; Philippoteaux painting from L’Histoire par l’Image website. Thanks to Christian Kingsmill and Joseph Cairns for images and information about William and Hannah Kingsmill.

For more on Napoleon’s time in St. Helena, see Brian Unwin, Terrible Exile: The Last Days of Napoleon on St. Helena (London: I.B. Taurus, 2010).

* This part of the story reminds me of my grandmother Dora. She was preparing to travel from her native Yorkshire to Vancouver, where her fiancé had settled, when the First World War broke out. Like Hannah Pinnock, she chose to brave the Atlantic rather than wait. I am sure both Hannah’s and Dora’s families pleaded with them not to go, but they made up their minds and that was that.

**The same story appears in William Forsyth and Hudson Lowe, History of the Captivity of Napoleon at St. Helena, 1853, volume 3, page 206.

***Françoise Elisabeth (Fanny) Bertrand, née Dillon, was the daughter of another Irish-born military man, General Arthur Dillon, who served in the French Army, fought in the American War of Independence, and was executed during the French Revolution because of his loyalty to the king. She spoke fluent English, hence her friendship with Hannah and Lady Lowe.

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The missing link

Posted on September 10, 2023 by Parisian Fields

Angers. My first term at university in France. Breakfast with my roommate Anne Marie (still a close friend after all these years). She mixed coffee with scalded milk in a bowl, put butter and jam on a piece of baguette sliced lengthwise, dunked it in the café-au-lait, and chewed the result as we tried to make conversation with my still-limited French over the breakfast table. I watched, fascinated, as the crumbs floated on the milky mixture. Whatever fell to the bottom of the bowl she finished with her last mouthful of coffee. As culture shock goes, it was mild, but it gave me something to think about.

I never acquired the habit myself. I even eschewed the bowls (provided by the landlord) for a large mug with a handle (bought with my meagre spending money at the Nouvelles Galeries in Angers), reckoning that those who were accustomed from childhood to drinking hot liquids from bowls probably had hardened fingertips by the time they were of university age. My fingertips were not up to the task.

Things might have turned out differently had I had the benefit of l’art de tremper : manuel à l’usage des Français et des étrangers qui trempent (The art of dunking: A manual for French people and foreigners who dunk) by P. F. (Patrice) Roy (Creaphis Éditions, 2023) to guide me in those days. Patrice recently sent us a copy of his elegantly written book with his own line drawings. It brought back memories of Angers and Anne Marie and my failure to acquire a quintessentially French skill.

And it is a skill or an art, I now realize. The solid ingredients must be sufficiently cohesive to soften without disintegrating in the liquid. The length of time in the liquid must be enough to allow the solids to remain solid while taking on enough liquid to flavour them, but not so long that they fall apart. The moment at which the solid-plus-liquid is conveyed to the mouth must be judged precisely, to avoid disaster.

Patrice’s l’art de tremper not only contains valuable how-to instructions on these and other crucial matters, but provides etymological and historical background on the art and science of trempage. There are footnotes about the origins of pumpernickel bread and the croissant, and the connexions between cups, bowls, and women’s bras. He also includes a mention of a painting in the Musée d’Orsay, one of the few he has found that depicts people dipping food into a liquid.

It is called “Romans during the Decadence” and was painted by Thomas Couture in 1847. The act of “trempage” is occurring in the dead centre of the canvas. How decadent is that?

Patrice was inspired to write the book after a visit to an Irish friend with a Korean wife who has a house in the Eastern Pyrenees. His friend, George, asked what Patrice and his wife Noëlle would like for breakfast. Coffee, in a bowl, they replied. Patrice and Noëlle, as usual, dipped their breakfast pastries into their coffee (their hosts were accustomed to drinking tea for breakfast and eating toast and jam separately). George remarked on the French custom and asked Patrice if anyone had written a book about the practice of dipping solids into liquids. No, said Patrice, and immediately decided to write one.

Patrice, a restoration architect, carefully breaks down the art into its component parts: the receptacle (cup, bowl, or mug), the liquid (coffee, tea, chocolate), the support (usually but not necessarily a baguette), the stabilizer (butter is best), the topping (sweet or savoury), and the assorted props required for effective practice (napkins, tablemats, and a floor mop for novices).

For his part, George contributes a mention of the Dunkin’ Donuts chain in North America, but omits to mention Clark Gable’s role in establishing the practice. In It Happened One Night (1934), Gable taunts the French-born Claudette Colbert, who is dipping her doughnut into her coffee in a leisurely way, “Where did you learn to dunk?” and insists that speed and timing are essential, “A dip…and sock! Into your mouth.” He demonstrates as he speaks.*

Well, that’s one approach. Patrice’s is more measured.

Patrice talks of the Darwinian “missing link” between solid and liquid, between foodstuffs spread out on a table and the interior melting pot of our bodies in which what we eat is inevitably blended. It’s an important point. Norman’s father Wesley, who for a time prepared family meals when his wife Audrey was in hospital, used to dismiss his children’s anxiety about cooking different foods in the same pan by reminding them, “It all goes into the same stomach.”

So why not dip the baguette with butter and jam into the café-au-lait? Why not mop up the sauce with the bread? It’s all going to end up in the same place anyway.

Dipping, dunking, mopping, trempage…the practice takes many forms. The bread topped with cheese on French onion soup, eaten with a spoon. The baguette used to mop up a delicious sauce from a dish of rabbit or lamb while cleaning the plate for the salad course. The North American fondness for salsa on corn chips or for crumbled crackers in soup. And the oh-so-English trifle with ladyfingers soaked in sherry lining a bowl full of custard and fruit. Every national and regional cuisine includes instances of blending solids and liquids.

Early on in the book, Patrice quotes George, who asks if trempage is not considered “low class.” I am not a sociologist, and I cannot possibly comment, but frankly, I don’t care. Norman and I have long since adopted the habit of mopping up our plates with bits of baguette to make the most of the time and effort a chef has spent on creating a lovely sauce. We consider this a mark of respect for the chef.

We are going back to Paris in the next few months. Finally. We have paid the airfare, rented an apartment we have not stayed in before, and made plans to get together with friends. Perhaps this time one of them can teach us the “art de tremper” and we will add to our appreciation of the French way of eating breakfast. And now that one can buy large bowls with handles, we needn’t risk our fingertips.

Text by Philippa Campsie; line drawings by Patrice Roy; Couture painting from Wikimedia; film illustration from The Kitchn blog; bowl with handle and saucer by Gien.

*I cannot resist mentioning here that some fiction writers have interesting ideas about what constitutes breakfast in France. Not long ago, I read a bestselling novel by a young American writer, set in Paris during the Second World War, in which the heroine tucks into a meal of oatmeal and eggs – in wartime! not even powdered eggs! – for breakfast. As I understand it, wartime breakfasts in Paris were skimpy, to say the least. But novelists make their own reality. This is why I prefer non-fiction.

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Silent witnesses

Posted on August 6, 2023 by Parisian Fields

Early one morning, Norman and I dropped off our car for servicing at a local garage. We had breakfast at the Goat Café and then took a walk for an hour or so until it was time to retrieve the car. We were in a part of Toronto we don’t often visit, and were pleased to note two massive plane trees on our stroll. When we later mentioned them to our neighbour, artist Jane Hunter, she said, “Just like in Paris!”

Exactly. The Paris plane tree we know best grows just outside the apartment we have rented several times. We have seen it in all seasons with its maplelike leaves, its patchy multicoloured bark, and its bobbly seed pods. It grows out of the pavement, surrounded by those lacy iron rings common to Paris street trees.

Here it is, on May 1, 2019, just before the May Day parade, which accounts for the lack of traffic in the intersection and the heavy police presence. If trees are silent witnesses to history, our plane tree saw a bit of history that day, when the parade and the gilets jaunes were particularly lively.

We hope it has survived. More than 10 years ago, blogger Susan Walter of “Days on the Claise” documented the incursions of a fungus that has killed many plane trees across Europe. She wrote:

The deadly fungal disease was introduced accidentally in 1944 when American troops disembarked in Provence. The wooden munitions boxes made from American Sycamore P. occidentalis that landed with the troops were infected, and the local French plane trees were unable to resist this invader.

The thousands of plane trees lining the Canal du Midi, planted on Napoleon’s orders, were particularly affected and many had to be cut down. The good news is that scientists have bred a disease-resistant version to replace the lost trees. But replacing a 200-year-old tree with a new one is still a loss.

Disease is not the only threat. In 2022, an arborist called Thomas Brail hoisted himself into a plane tree on the Champ de Mars that was due to be cut down under a plan to expand tourist infrastructure around the Eiffel Tower in anticipation of the 2024 Paris Olympics. Forty trees in the area were eventually granted a reprieve, but individuals and environmental groups still need to be vigilant to alert the public when development clashes with the city’s green canopy.

Officially, the city has promised to plant 170,000 new trees by 2026 to reduce the urban heat island effect (that is, the heat that builds up in paved areas without green space – think the Avenue de l’Opéra in July). Between November 2020 and April 2023, the city planted 63,700 trees. Some are new; some replace dead or dying trees. That means 107,000 more to go in the next three years.

Plane trees are particularly favoured, as they tolerate air pollution, last for centuries, and send down deep roots. How deep? Here is an illustration from a City of Paris publication, showing the roots penetrating well below the level of the Métro and into the old quarries underneath the city.

It’s not just plane trees, of course. All kinds of species flourish in Paris, some of them in courtyards and private gardens, others along tree-lined streets and in parks. Recently, my niece Alex sent us a map called “Great Trees of Paris,” which showcases some of the city’s finest and most historic trees. The first one listed is the oldest living tree in Paris, the Robinia pseudoacacia in Square René Viviani in the 5th arrondissement. The name commemorates the man who planted it, Jean Robin, the king’s gardener, and the fact that it looks so much like an acacia that only a trained botanist can tell the difference. Robin had brought the seeds back from North America, so it is not a tree native to Europe.

This tree also features as part of a walking tour of trees on six sites created by the City of Paris, which also offers an interactive map of remarkable trees.

The walk starts with the horse chestnuts of the Place de Vosges that provide deep shade in summer…

…and leads pas the lilacs of the rue des Rosiers, the elm of the place St-Gervais – formerly the site of an enormous tree that served as a local meeting place for settling debts (the current tree is a descendant of the original and dates from 1935) – the poplars of the Ile St-Louis, the tamarisks and mimosas behind Notre Dame, and ending with the Robinia in the Square René Viviani.

The map Alex gave us contains 50 examples across the city, such as the four foxglove trees (Pawlownia tomentosa) in the rue Furstemberg. Foxglove trees are covered with lavender-coloured blossoms in spring. According to the information on the map, these four particular trees are protected with cosy little blankets in winter. (Update: the largest of the four was recently felled by the city, which claimed it was diseased and a security hazard.)

There is even a dawn redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides) in the Square de la Villa Sainte Croix in the 17th. This tree is familiar to us, as several of them grow in a nearby park in Toronto. It’s an odd-looking thing, with branches that emerge at sharp angles from the folds of the trunk (look at the tree behind the playground equipment on the right).

There are fig trees and hornbeams and ginkgos galore. A Judas tree in the Tuileries (shown below). Weeping willows trailing their leaves in the Seine. Persimmons and sweet gum in the Bois de Vincennes and a handkerchief tree in the Bois de Boulogne. Tulip trees in the Cité universitaire and a Kentucky coffeetree in Square Robert Schumann in the 16th (both of the latter are also trees that grow on our street in Toronto).

Adolphe Alphand’s massive Les Promenades de Paris contains detailed instructions on how to plant good-sized trees along avenues and in parks. Alphand was not satisfied with planting tiny little trees tied to a metal rod in the hopes that they would survive and grow up. He planted large trees with large root balls that were wheeled to their destinations using special equipment.

Once in place, Paris trees are not permitted to grow just anyhow. New trees may have a “corset” to keep them straight. These were in the Place Dauphine a few years ago.

Many are pruned to within an inch of their lives, maintaining rectangular canopies that remain within fixed limits. The trees on the Champs-Elysees are subjected to this treatment. It takes serious machinery to keep them in line.

Fruit trees may be espaliered, that is, flattened out or rendered two-dimensional. These ones are in the Jardin du Luxembourg.

Then there is pollarding, a very French fashion, whereby branches are cut back severely so that they become stubs from which new growth bursts out. Pollarding is done at regular intervals (about every five years) to keep the tree at a certain height. These ones were photographed in winter in the garden of the Observatoire.

And when trees get droopy, they are propped up with wooden beams or, in the case of the tree in the courtyard of the Musée des Arts et Métiers, held with a metal ring that is attached to the side of a building.

This elderly tree (a reader suggests it is a quince) in the garden of the Musée de Montmartre has a support shaped like a lyre.

When you see older trees treated with such respect, the proposal to cut trees down around the Eiffel Tower seems all the more shocking.

I wonder where those additional 107,000 trees will fit into the city. Given the new law in France that commercial buildings must have green roofs (or solar panels), some may sprout from the rooftops. Between now and 2026, Paris will get greener and shadier.

Text by Philippa Campsie; photographs of Robinia, Judas tree, foxglove tree and dawn redwood from Wikimedia Commons; photograph of Arts and Métiers by Norman Ball; all other photographs by author.

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A convent education

Posted on May 28, 2023 by Parisian Fields

As I was leaving for the hospital, I grabbed a book from the bookshelf near the bedroom door. I chose it because it was a small paperback I could slip into my little bag of belongings.

Just as well. There were delays and lots of time to read. By the time I was wheeled into the operating room, I was already enthralled with My Convent Life by George Sand. It is a translated extract from her voluminous autobiography, Histoire de ma Vie, published in 1855. The events in the book take place between 1817 and 1820, when Aurore Dupin, as she was known then, was at boarding school.

This portrait of her by George Sully dates from 1826.

The informative opening sentence drew me in right away.

The English Augustinian Convent Rue des Fossés St. Victor is one of the three or four British communities established in Paris in the time of Cromwell, and the only one left unharmed by the French Revolution.

(I do like descriptions that provide precise locations.) I found an image of the cloister – the proportions are probably exaggerated – painted in the 18th century by Hubert Robert. The convent’s official name was Notre-Dame-de-Sion.

Interesting that Aurore went to an English convent. Even more interesting in light of the fact that her paternal grandmother, Madame Dupin, had been incarcerated in that very building during the Revolution, when it was being used as a house of detention for women. Here is a picture of Madame Dupin, painted before the Revolution, fashionablly dressed in the style popularized by Marie-Antoinette. Don’t let the milkmaid outfit fool you. She was tough as nails.

Another inmate during the Revolution was the woman who was to become Aurore’s mother, Sophie-Victoire Delaborde, imprisoned for singing royalist songs. Sophie-Victoire was an orphan and the grand-daughter of a bird seller. And no, that is not how Sophie-Victoire got to know Madame Dupin’s son Maurice. They met much later and married in 1804, a month before Aurore’s birth in Paris.

The aristocratic Madame Dupin was appalled by the marriage of her son, a handsome hussar, to the grand-daughter of a bird seller. Maurice and Sophie-Victoire went on to have a second child, a son who died in 1808. A week after his son’s death, Maurice himself died after a fall from his horse. His death left the widowed Madame Dupin, Sophie-Victoire, and Aurore on their own. I can imagine the two older women glaring at each other over the girl’s head.

It was an unequal struggle. In 1810, Sophie-Victoire gave custody of her child to Madame Dupin in return for a pension, and moved out of the family house in Nohant in the Loire Valley (although she kept in touch with her daughter).

Boarding school may have come as something of a relief to Aurore, after life with Grandmother Dupin. She was there for the better part of three years. Her grandmother did not even let her come home for extended vacations, although she received occasional visits from family members.

The nuns at the convent presumably still wore the distinctive English Augustinian habit shown here, in an 18th-century painting. (I could find nothing much later than this, but nuns’ habits didn’t change much over the years in those days.) A thin black veil over a white coif, a heavier black mantle over a full and pleated white garment coming down past the knees, wide cream-coloured sleeves, and a plainer skirt underneath.

Most of the teaching, however, was relegated to laywomen of varying talents and dispositions. Sand provides little information about the curriculum, if there was one, although she mentions in passing music, English, and Italian. An early conflict in the story is between Aurore and Miss D–––, one of the lay teachers. Sand describes her as “harsh and often cruel, sly and vindictive, ill-tempered and ill-mannered,” yet Sand tries to be fair-minded – “I must say that she seemed really devout and austere – a sort of intolerant, detestable fanatic, who might have had a certain grandeur about her if she had lived long ago in the desert with the anchorites whose faith she emulated.” Eventually, the two are somewhat reconciled.

The school was officially divided into two groups by age and 13-year-old Aurore was placed in the lower division with the younger children. Her education to that point had been patchy, and she spoke no English. But the most meaningful distinctions in the school were made by the girls themselves: good girls (les sages), stupid girls (les bêtes), and devils (les diables). Aurore was immediately drawn to the last group, girls who delighted in doing whatever was forbidden.

Their mischief consisted largely of exploring out-of-bounds areas of the convent, an establishment that Sand describes as “mysterious and labyrinthine – in all its ugliness not devoid of a certain poetic charm.”

This drawing shows some of the buildings from the garden side, as well as two interior views.

It was really a collection of buildings, a main building and

several other constructions, very ruinous, a perfect maze of dark passages, spiral staircases, little detached buildings, connected with one another by flights of worn and uneven steps, or by boards thrown across… There were galleries that led nowhere and passages that you could hardly squeeze through to strange edifices… This part of the convent baffles description, and the uses to which these buildings were put were as various as their grouping.

For anyone who grew up either on the stories of Enid Blyton or those about Nancy Drew (or both), the appeal is immediate. Sign me up as a would-be diable!

Les diables penetrated the gloomy cellars, opened doors to disused rooms, and in one memorable episode, found themselves trapped on the roof. From her perch up there Aurore feels a shoe fall off, but later recovers it, unnoticed, in the garden.

The garden was vast, shaded by superb horse-chestnut trees. On one side a high wall separated us from the Scotch convent, and on the other stood a long row of small houses tenanted by pious ladies retired from the world. Besides this garden, there was also in front of the new building, a double quadrangle planted with vegetables, also bordered by houses, all occupied by old matrons or by boarding-pupils who had quarters to themselves.

I finished the book as I was recovering at home (doing nicely, thank you), and then went in search of the building. First, I had to find the Fossés St-Victor. A modern map of Paris did not include it, although there are three other streets named Fossés – St-Bernard, St-Jacques, and St-Marcel, all in the fifth arrondissement. Eventually, I found the street on Turgot’s map. It was part of what is now the rue Cardinal Lemoine. You’ll see it at the bottom of this image. You can see the gardens, the high wall separating the Augustinians from the Scotch congregation on the right, and the little houses on the left.

Gallica even provides a plan of the jumble of buildings composing the convent. The rue des Fossés St-Victor is on the right.

The convent moved to a new building in Neuilly* when its land was appropriated and the rue Monge created in the 1860s. The buildings that took its place date mostly from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But in the process of carving up the block to create the new street, something else emerged from underneath those vast gardens: the Arènes de Lutèce.

Imagine if the diables had discovered that during their nocturnal explorations!

George Sand, in a drawing by Alfred de Musset, 1833.

Text by Philippa Campsie, Turgot map and convent plan from Gallica; drawing of convent from Musées de Paris; postcard of Arènes de Lutèce from http://photos.piganl.net/2017/lutece/lutece.php; all other images from Wikimedia Commons.

George Sand, My Convent Life, translated by Maria Ellery McKay (Chicago: Cassandra Press, 1978).

* After the 1901 law that put restrictions on religious orders, the nuns gradually dispersed and the Neuilly building was sold in 1913. The former convent is now home to the Lycée Sainte-Marie on the rue Victor-Hugo, Neuilly.

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Astérix and the lost streets of Montparnasse

Posted on April 23, 2023 by Parisian Fields

I am a latecomer to the adventures of Astérix, the hero of more than 30 bandes dessinés – comics, or perhaps “comix” à la René Goscinny, the creator of Astérix and all those other “x” characters.

There’s Obélix, the pigtailed menhir* delivery man. And Getafix (Panoramix in the French original), the bearded druid. Cacofonix (Assurancetourix in French), the mustachioed bard with his bagpipes. Vitalstatistix (Abraracourcix), the chief of the tribe. And, of course, Dogmatix (Idéfix), the dog. All brought to life in the colourful drawings of Albert Uderzo.

I got all the French puns except Abraracourcix. I had to look that one up. It comes from “à bras raccourcis,” which literally means “with shortened arms” to indicate someone assuming the stance of a boxer, with arms up and bent, ready to attack.

Meanwhile, the Roman encampments are called Aquarium, Laudanum, Compendium (Petibonum), and Totorum (Babaorum).

When I read an article about the Astérix books by Martin Sorrell in Slightly Foxed, I decided it was high time I took a look, and got a couple of the books from the library. One in English, one in French. I enjoyed the bits of random Latin sprinkled here and there (Sic! Ipso facto! Alea jactus est!) or fake Latin (Ave Crismus bonus!) and the general silliness.

But what I found myself thinking about was not so much ancient Gaul as a part of Paris in which Norman and I once stayed. Here is the bit from Sorrell’s article that got my attention:

Goscinny’s inspiration for Asterix was Vercingetorix, chief of the Arverni tribe, who, towards the end of Julius Caesar’s Gallic Wars, united what remained of Gaul’s tribes in an uprising against the Roman occupiers. In 52 BC, under Vercingetorix’s leadership, the Gauls won a famous victory at Gergovia…but shortly after they were defeated at the battle of Alesia.

Oh, those familiar names. I was reminded of the times we stayed in a friend’s place on the rue de Gergovie in the 14th arrondissement, not far from the rue d’Alésia. I have written about the villa d’Alésia in a previous blog. As for the nearby rue Vercingétorix, it parallels the railway lines coming from the Gare de Montparnasse, and our favourite Paris church, Notre Dame du Travail, faces it.

Much of the original rue Vercingétorix was destroyed with the redevelopment of Montparnasse around the station and the railway lines. But I know something of what it once looked like from a book called The Streets of Paris, by Richard Cobb with photographs by Nicholas Breach, published in 1980. The photographs depict five walks in the city, beginning with the quartier de Gergovie.

Richard Cobb’s introduction explains his choice of the neighbourhood in this way:

The quartier de Gergovie, the only interesting area in the otherwise sadly banal and often rather mean and hopeless – what could be more wretched than the rue Gassendi – XIVme, seemed to call out pathetically for attention, before its small houses and amazing courtyards were smothered by the spreading horror of Maine-Montparnasse.

I take exception to his remarks about the 14th arrondissement, where we have often stayed. Okay, some little houses and their courtyards are gone, but the rue Gassendi is far from wretched and the rest of the arrondissement is mostly leafy and pleasant. There are still many amazing courtyards in the area. Banal? Mean? Hopeless? I beg to differ.

In fact, the time we stayed on the rue de Gergovie, we occupied part of a small house, formerly a workshop, separated from the buildings fronting the street by a narrow courtyard. On the far side of this little house, separated from the houses by a wall, was an open area of grass and trees, containing what looked like an old country house that had become marooned in the city. There was also a newer building in this open area that served as an Evangelical church, and on Sundays we heard people talking quietly as they walked down the path before and after the service. It was oddly bucolic.

Not only does Cobb overstate his case, but the photographs seem intended to suggest that all is lost. Far from it. The very first photograph, depicts a boulangerie-patisserie at 124 rue du Chateau, a business that is still thriving, and looks much the same as it did back then.

And of the remaining 19 photos of the quartier, six are of the same courtyard in a complex at 9 rue de l’Ouest that was later demolished and another six are of a doomed courtyard at 3, rue Vercingétorix. That doesn’t seem to constitute enough data to support his gloomy dismissal of the quartier.

But I guess things seemed hopeless in 1980, when entire streets were disappearing. In search of the old quartier, I found a map from 1978.

Compare that with what is there now (this is from a 2010 Michelin map).

All those streets between the rail lines and the rue Vercingétorix are gone, replaced by green space. There is a circular place where the old rue Bourgeois met the rue du Chateau. There are small parks that were not there before, and in a densely populated area, that is a good thing.

When Cobb and Breach were exploring the area before its transformation, many buildings had already been abandoned. The Tour Montparnasse was there, completed in 1973, overshadowing the neighbourhood. Here is a typical photograph, showing a defunct café-bar, at 53 rue Vercingétorix. This is now an open area beside Notre Dame du Travail.

The caption mentions the faint vestiges of the telephone number on the wall, Suffren 2556. “Suffren, as a telephone exchange, has long since been overtaken, along with Danton, Odéon, Jasmin, Nord, Botzaris, Daumesnil, by computerized numbers,” Cobb notes. (Hands up those old enough to remember when telephone numbers started with the name of the exchange – mine in Toronto was “Hudson” and Norman’s in Hamilton was “Liberty”).

A postcard from Gallica shows how the building looked in better days (around 1910). It’s the one just this side of the church with its projecting clock on the left.

Another of Breach’s photographs shows part of the façade of the Hotel de l’Industrie at 65 rue Vercingétorix.

The caption reads, “The very faint and peeling reminder, in Second Empire lettering, Chambres au mois, Chambre à la journée at each end, of the past social history of the quartier de Gergovie, the home of immigrant Breton workers, settling near the old Gare du [sic] Montparnasse, most of them building labourers… The lettering is pale yellow on faded red.”

The hotel is just visible on the right in this postcard from Gallica. The two-storey building on the right beside the church survives to this day, as does the five-storey building on this side of it, but the rest have disappeared.

A tradition survives in this area, too. Although the Breton workers may have been displaced over the years, Montparnasse is still a good place to find a crêperie selling a traditional Breton meal of buckwheat galettes.

As it happens, some popular cookie-sized galettes in boxes have the image of Astérix on them, a tribute to the series, which is set in Brittany. We are back where we started.

*A menhir is an upright stone or standing stone from the prehistoric period. The word is of Breton origin.

Text by Philippa Campsie, images from Gallica and The Streets of Paris (New York: Pantheon, 1980). Cartoon image from Wikimedia, cookie box from eBay, and photograph of Notre Dame du Travail by Norman Ball.

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The boating party

Posted on March 5, 2023 by Parisian Fields

For Marnie, with thanks for many happy memories, and for your long-standing support of this blog. Sail on, silver girl.

I am thinking about boats today, for several reasons. One is the fact that a good friend of ours who has been a keen and competent sailor for much of her life has been diagnosed with ALS and has had to let her boat go to someone else. We have many memories of sailing around the Toronto islands in that boat.

Another reason is that I have inherited a trove of family documents that includes an album of photographs depicting a boating party in the waterways in and around Shanghai in 1911. The photograph below shows the houseboat on that occasion. I can identify my grandmother Dora, my great-grandmother Wilhelmina, and my great-uncle Gerald among the party.*

We have written about working boats and péniches on the Seine, but have not paid as much attention to pleasure boats. This was not true of French painters in the late 19th century. I’m not so much thinking of Renoir’s “Luncheon of the Boating Party,” which is all about luncheon and not so much about boating, but more of a print that hung on the wall in my bedroom from the time I was 10 to the time I left home.

It had been given to my father, along with several other reproductions of French paintings, and he had had them framed. My sister had Degas’s ballerinas, Van Gogh’s Church at Auvers hung in my father’s study, and Rousseau’s Carnival Evening hung in my parents’ bedroom.

I loved my Seurat. It was usually the last thing I saw before Mum turned out the light at night. I have never aspired to rowing, but I was always calmed by the sight of the man bent over the oars, and the sailboat moving on its own without human intervention (that I could see).

Mary Cassatt’s boating parties are less relaxing to contemplate, because I always worry about the fate of the children, who seem to be held rather casually and do not wear appropriate life preservers while on the water. I just have to hope they returned to shore safely.

There are dozens of paintings of boaters from the late 19th century. I find the clothing endlessly interesting. Some wear informal attire, as shown by Manet (although the remarkably relaxed lady appears to be wearing her Sunday best).

By contrast, Gustave Caillebotte’s top-hatted gentleman seems to have walked out of an office or a drawing room, thrown his jacket into the boat, and picked up the oars.

Sailing and rowing became popular in the 1830s and 1840s in France, following the lead of Great Britain, where messing about in small boats is a religion, at least for those who can afford it. According to one scholar:

The new French pursuit of pleasure-boating, modelled on the sport of the British upper classes, was … intended to form the character of national élites. The Yacht-Club de France, with offices in Paris, was sponsored by the Emperor and patronised by the Minister of the Marine, while clubs at Asnières and Argenteuil included British diplomats and businessmen among their directors and, through to the 1870s, were open only to the wealthy and the well-connected.**

By the time the Impressionists were painting in the 1880s and 1890s, however, pleasure boating was no longer just a pursuit for the wealthy, but was well established among the middle classes. Shoals of people headed downstream along the Seine on Sundays to rent a boat or lunch in a guinguette (a casual restaurant).

The only guingette by the river we can claim to have patronized was near the museum of porcelain in Sèvres, which we visited with our friend Mireille. Plastic chairs and take-out food, but a good view. On one riverbank, it was all greenery with a river path that led to the Parc St-Cloud, with a row of boats moored in the river.

On the other, very large buildings, also with boats moored in front.

The view today is less bucolic than it was in the days of Cassatt and Caillebotte, but the passion for boating appears unabated.

We also love to stroll along the Bassin de l’Arsenal, near the Bastille, to see the pleasure boats and their green-glass reflections and imagine a life in which we own one of them and could set off at a moment’s notice to explore the waterways of France.

Parisians’ love of boating stood them in good stead in January 1910. When the waters rose, and rose, and then rose some more in 1910, and Paris turned into Venice, a flotilla of skiffs and punts and rowboats appeared to ferry people through the flooded streets. Here is an example from our postcard collection.

Of course, the symbol of the City of Paris is a boat and the original inhabitants were island dwellers. Pleasure-boating of a certain style may have been imported from Great Britain in the 19th century, but boating itself is woven deep into the fabric of the city. Think of all those boats pictured in Turgot’s map depicting the city in the 1730s. Paris has always been focused on its waterways.

When we finally get back to Paris, I want to get out on the water, and feel the breeze.

Text and contemporary photographs by Philippa Campsie; photograph of the Bassin de l’Arsenal by Norman Ball. Postcard from our collection. Paintings from Wikimedia Commons.

*Great-uncle Gerald went to Shanghai before the First World War to work as a stockbroker. He married a teacher and lived there until the 1930s. His mother and sister visited him in the course of a trip around the world. This fact is quite impressive, given my grandmother’s disposition to dreadful motion sickness of all kinds, which I have written about before.

** Tricia Cusack, “Bourgeois Leisure on the Seine: Impressionism, Forgetting and National Identity in the French Third Republic,” National Identities, vol. 9, no. 2, 163–82, June 2007.

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