Cheap eats

Posted on May 6, 2011 by Parisian Fields

The very first time we went to Paris as a couple, we took along a book called Cheap Eats in Paris by Sandra Gustafson. This was in the days before the Internet and iPhones made restaurant recommendations easy to find, and we used the book to find inexpensive cafés and restaurants (we had used the companion volume, Cheap Sleeps in Paris, to find our hotel).

Years before, when I was a student in Paris, cheap eats meant the student cafeterias dotted around the city, run by an organization called CROUS (Centre Régional des Oeuvres Universitaires et Scolaires) de Paris. I had a meal ticket that entitled me to a lunch at any one of several cafeterias, and from time to time I would investigate a different campus to see if the student engineers or doctors got better food than the foreign students (not really, I concluded).

The meals were basic, but typically French, and although there was considerable variety from day to day, seldom did one have much choice on any given day. The servers behind the counter simply added things to one’s tray as one moved through the line, and at the end, one would assess the whole and make the best of it.

Most meals began with some sort of starter (which the French call an entrée) – usually something like crudités (raw vegetables such as grated carrots or sliced cucumbers prepared with a bit of vinaigrette). Then a main course, which included some protein and a certain amount of bulk (lentils were often featured in large quantities). Then a small green salad. Finally, a choice of cheese or dessert. Copious amounts of bread were available to eat alongside the meal.

A few dishes were unappetizing. I remember the day tripe was served. I didn’t really get a good look at it until I was sitting down at one of the long tables, and when I did, it seemed to be looking back at me. This was not tripe à la mode de Caen, slowly braised in Calvados; it had been boiled, and it was pale and flabby. I took another plate and covered up the dish so that I could eat the rest of my lunch without having to see it.

Mind you, I don’t suppose it would have been much worse than some of the cafeteria food I ate during my Canadian university years – things that we called mystery meat or Syncrude pie, or that perennial feature, fried bologna.

These days, we rent an apartment when we go to Paris, and we save money on food largely by shopping at markets and cooking for ourselves. Yet we still love discovering cheap eats in the form of little cafés when we are out and about. If you want to find them yourself, there is really only one guideline: get away from the tourist areas. No, there may not be much English spoken, but if you can read enough of a French menu to point at your choices, you’ll be fine. And be prepared for places to look unprepossessing from the outside. Money saved on decor can be money spent on food, and that is a good thing. Spot the cheap eats in the following photograph.

The menu may be written up on a board rather than printed on paper, and you may have a limited range of choices. But chances are all the food is simple but flavourful, and it will probably be a prix fixe arrangement that offers several courses. Even with wine and coffee added on, it will come in at a fraction of the price of a fashionable café. Usually with excellent people-watching opportunities thrown in, and often conversation with the waiter or diners at nearby tables.

One that we recently enjoyed was just outside the city, in the suburb of Malakoff. We found it after strolling through the flea market at the Porte de Vanves. It was decidedly no-frills – formica tables, bare floor – but a few euros bought us each a generous lunch. Most of the other diners were regulars or market stallholders. At one table, a group of men compared ornate knives. People came and went for a quick coffee or glass of wine, consumed standing up at the bar. In the following picture, its orange awning is just visible on the right.

Another time we found a little place near the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont. It had the traditional zinc counter and the tables were crowded together very tightly, but the food was splendid. There was also a tiny place in the 14th, now closed, that offered only three choices at lunchtime, prepared on a little stove in the back, and featured the work of local artists on the walls. We chatted with the waiter, who introduced us to one of these local artists. We ended up buying an ink sketch, which he signed for us. I can see it on the wall as I write this.

I was telling a friend about these discoveries, and we found ourselves talking about the days of workingmen’s cafés and Chinese noodle houses and those London chophouses that feature in the novels of Charles Dickens. All part of a range of cheap eats that were once available to single people living in rooms without kitchens, when masses of people lived in lodgings where cooking was impossible.

These eateries often had large common tables and benches rather than small tables and chairs, just like the university cafeterias. There wasn’t much choice, but you could get a reasonably nutritious and often very flavourful meal of several courses for a nominal sum. They were cheap because of the economies of scale possible by feeding lots of people at the same time with a set menu offering limited choice.

Today, food has become individualized and people equate “cheap eats” with fast food, which isn’t, in fact, cheap relative to its quality, and – as Morgan Spurlock showed in Super Size Me – is not healthy for day-in-day-out eating. Say what you will about university cafeterias, but students can eat there every day, three meals a day, without developing liver damage.

The university cafeterias are still dotted around Paris – when we stayed in the hospital district, there was one down the road – but the equivalent of the workingmen’s café or the cheap neighbourhood joint serving a few simple dishes at limited hours is an endangered species in the central city.

That’s too bad, and I don’t just mean for tourists like us. Students, artists, shop assistants and a whole range of people of slender means once relied on these places as a way of surviving in an expensive city. The very people who made Paris the place it is were nourished in cheap eateries. In these cafés they met their friends, argued about politics, fell in and out of love, and planned their futures. And not just in Paris, but in many other cities.

What will it take to bring back the cheap lunch at a long table in a crowded room where the choices are few but the food is plentiful and conversation is free?

Text by Philippa Campsie; original photographs by Norman Ball and Philippa Campsie. Thanks to Wayne Roberts for the inspiration: visit his website for more inspiration on local food and sustainable food practices.

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The photograph I didn’t take

Posted on April 29, 2011 by Parisian Fields

It was winter and we were walking back to our rented apartment in the 14th arrondissement from Monoprix, with a borrowed buggy filled with basics – toilet paper, dried pasta, yogurt. We traipsed down a road called rue Campagne Première. Norman stopped to take a photograph of some ceramic tiles that had caught his attention. I dawdled along, and found myself looking at this plaque on the wall.

Hey, I thought, here are some names I recognize. Erik Satie who wrote those Gymnopédies for the piano (I can sort of play some of them). Louis Aragon, who wrote Paris Peasant (which I can sort of read in the original French). Marcel Duchamp who made toilets into art (which I have seen in a retrospective). And Man Ray, that surrealist photographer from the United States.

I photographed the plaque (alas, it isn’t a very good shot). And because Norman was still busy, I photographed the building it was attached to, the Hotel Istria, with its line of lamps hanging from the wall. That made a better shot.

Dang. If I’d known then what I know now, I would have photographed the building next door – 31 bis rue Campagne Première. The one with the interesting ceramics. Because that is where Lee Miller met Man Ray for the first time in 1929. It was an important meeting for both of them, and for the history of photography. I won’t miss my chance next time.

I had become interested in Lee Miller years ago after seeing a photograph of her by Man Ray in a book called The Women We Wanted to Look Like (St. Martin’s Press, 1977). The text said that she had gone from being a model to being Man Ray’s student/muse/companion, and later a war photographer, and that after the age of 53, she had not taken a single photograph, because, as she said, “You can’t be an amateur when you have been a professional.”

And here was the building where it all began – well, some accounts say they met here, others that they first saw each other in a nearby bar – but this was where they worked and collaborated and where Lee learned to be a professional photographer.

Only recently did I read a biography that filled in the details that earlier book had hinted at.

Elizabeth (Lee) Miller was born in 1907 in Poughkeepsie, New York. She was the indulged daughter of a wealthy businessman whose hobby was photography. Over the years, he got into the habit of photographing his daughter in the nude (her biographer, Carolyn Burke, does not speculate on his motives, and neither will I).

He continued this hobby even after the day that his seven-year-old daughter, who had been briefly left in the care of a friend of the family, was sexually abused. And, if that were not bad enough, she contracted gonorrhoea from this single episode, which required ongoing and painful treatment for years thereafter. One cannot even begin to imagine how she felt.

Elizabeth Miller grew up something of a troublemaker and was expelled from nearly every school she attended. In 1925, aged 18, she was sent with a chaperone to a finishing school in Nice, in the south of France, but she never got there. After a few days in Paris at the beginning of the trip, she decided this city was where she belonged. The chaperone went on to Nice without her.

Elizabeth enrolled in a school for stage designers, lived in a chambre de bonne (a maid’s room on the upper floor of a typical Parisian apartment building) – I did the same when I was a student – and spent a blissful few months steeped in bohemian Paris culture. But when her course was finished, her family decided that enough was enough and her mother firmly escorted her home.

Back in the United States, Elizabeth did some theatre work, and became a model for Vogue. Did I mention that she was amazingly photogenic, with a graceful figure, an impossibly long neck, and deep-set blue eyes?

It took a few more years for Mr and Mrs Miller’s daughter to leave the nest for good. She changed her name from the prosaic Elizabeth to the androgynous Lee and went back to Paris in 1929. She made her way to 31 bis rue Campagne Première, found Man Ray, and announced that she was going to be his new student/apprentice. He said he didn’t take on students and was about to leave town anyway. She said she would accompany him, and she did. They spent the next three years together.

It probably wasn’t quite that simple, but that is the story Lee told people later, and stranger things happened in the 1920s. In 1930, she moved to her own studio on rue Victor Schoelcher, opposite the Montparnasse Cemetery, but she remained Man Ray’s muse and lover – at least for a while. She broke Man Ray’s heart, in the end. But during the three years they were together, she absorbed enough knowledge to become a reputable photographer.

Man Ray had two sides to his career. He photographed the rich and fashionable (anyone who was anyone in Paris in the 1930s had a portrait taken by Man Ray). And he was part of the surrealist group, pushing at the boundaries of representation and artistic convention.

Lee Miller had more than two sides to her career. She modelled for French Vogue (known as Frogue). She took portrait photographs, and she photographed street scenes and landscapes that were not exactly surrealist, but were not realistic either. She does not fit neatly into any category.

She earned surrealist credentials, however, playing the part of a statue that comes to life in the Jean Cocteau film Le Sang d’un Poète (The Blood of a Poet). Cocteau painted eyes on her eyelids and told her to walk with closed eyes across the set, wearing a sort of armour that made her look armless and was applied to her body with butter and flour, which cooked itself under the intense lights. On top of all that, the old mattresses that were being used as soundproofing rained down bedbugs on the cast and crew. Nobody ever said it was easy being a surrealist. Still, the film became something of a cult classic. (If you have ever taken a film history course, you will probably have seen it.)

Lee went back and forth between Paris and New York in the 1930s, married an Egyptian in 1934, and lived briefly in Cairo, but it took a world war for her to find something really meaningful to do. She became a war photographer, photographing everything from London during the Blitz to the opening of the death camps in Germany after the war. (Amazingly, Vogue published her realistic photo journalism – not the sort of thing one can imagine in today’s version of the magazine.) There is a famous photograph of her in Hitler’s bathtub in Munich in 1945: the house had been commandeered by the American army, and she was invited to stay for a few days.

She was one of those people whose wartime experience was so intense that everything afterwards seemed inconsequential. After the war she divorced, remarried, and went to live in England. She did some work for British Vogue (aka Brogue), produced a few pieces of photojournalism, and achieved renown as a gourmet cook, but nothing ever lived up to her wartime experience. Nothing ever could. I have encountered other Second World War veterans like that. They used up all their emotion and adrenalin in the war and postwar life never came close to that feeling of immediacy and importance. In 1960 Lee Miller gave up photography, and in 1977, aged 70, she died of cancer.

And it all began, really, on the rue Campagne Première, a few blocks away from our rented apartment, in a building that I didn’t think to photograph, beside the Hotel Istria.

Further reading: Carolyn Burke, Lee Miller: A Life, New York: Knopf, 2005.

Text and original photographs by Philippa Campsie; additional photograph by Norman Ball.

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Jules Verne in the Métro

Posted on April 22, 2011 by Parisian Fields

As a young boy, I longed to live in the fantastic worlds of Jules Verne, to explore the depths of the ocean in the Nautilus with Captain Nemo. I had not told Philippa this, but as we set off to visit the Musée des Arts et Métiers (Museum of Arts and Trades) in the 3rd arrondissement, she suggested an intriguing possibility. “You’ll love the Jules Verne Métro station.” She was dead on – but don’t look for it by that name on a map.

As the train slowed to a stop at the Arts et Métiers station on line 11, we entered a magical world. My youthful Jules Verne world was that of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea: heavy machinery and gears, smooth glistening metal and tiny round portholes looking out on new worlds. Everything was neat and orderly, unlike the messy work area where I built model planes that crashed and boats that listed.

Aside from the glistening copper and rivet heads, the first impression is simply vastness and a curious sense of disconnection from being on the Métro line.

Then more details begin to emerge. In the image above, it is easy to miss the overhead equipment but not in the image below.

The large gear and a drive wheel protruding from the ceiling are powerful images of 19th-century heavy machinery and industry. More hidden than exposed, they invite onlookers to create their own meaning and story.

On the Nautilus, portholes opened on to the mysteries of the depths. In the Jules Verne station at Arts et Métiers, portholes reveal a technological past that includes everything from steelmaking and ancient buildings to dreams of flight and astronomical instruments.

I lingered longest at this porthole because I like bridges. The fact that the designer chose to show the bridge under construction with falsework still in place was a lovely touch. Later I learned that the Pont Antoinette was built in 1883-1884 near Vielmur-sur-Agoût, Tarn (81) in the Midi-Pyrénées region of France. It was the first major project by Paul Séjourné (1851-1939) who was to become one of France’s eminent bridge engineers.

But why the name Pont Antoinette? Who was this lady? In a romantic touch that I admire the engineer Paul Séjournè dedicated his first major work to his wife Antoinette Lesueur de Pérès.

Even the seating in this wonderful Métro station is a world away from the institutional look.

We lingered in the station, then visited the Musée des Arts et Métiers and talked excitedly about the range of exhibits. (We also had a fine lunch in the Musée.)

When I left the Arts et Métiers station, it did not leave me. I kept thinking about it. How had such a wonderful station come about?

The long-wished-for Métro was part of the Paris created for visitors to the International Exposition of 1900. Not everyone liked the idea. The first line from Porte Maillot to Porte Vincennes opened officially on 19 July 1900 to monumental press indifference. Le Figaro gave it a paragraph, stuffed between an apoplectic fit of the Czar and a local charity sale.

The Métro grew and on 19 October 1904 the Arts et Métiers station opened on the third line. Ninety years later, Belgian artist François Schuiten redesigned the connecting station on the No. 11 line to evoke the Nautilus of Jules Verne. It was a perfect choice and one must commend all who had a hand in choosing this designer.

Why 1994? The redesign celebrated the 200th anniversary of the founding of the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers (National Conservatory of Arts and Trades) in 1794. The museum attached to the Conservatoire is a fine place to wander, contemplate, and be fascinated by the work of many centuries of inventive minds. And why Jules Verne? He was chosen to represent two centuries of French science and technology.

François Schuiten was the ideal choice to unite Jules Verne and the Arts et Métiers. If the prolific Jules Verne is best known for one work, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, the still very active and equally prolific François Schuiten is perhaps best known for his Cities of the Fantastic (Les Cités Obscures). His graphic novels portray a love of cities and the potential of architecture to build a better future that combines the work of other greats such as architectural visionaries Victor Horta and Étienne-Louis Boullée, and the early science fantasies of Jules Verne.

While portraying better worlds, Schuiten and Jules Verne also portray the dark side of technology. And quite regrettably, the opening of the original Arts et Métiers Métro station came hard on the heels of a tragedy on the Métro.

On 10 August 1903, a catastrophic fire started by an electrical short circuit in the Métro left 84 people dead: seventy-five at the Couronnes station, seven at Menilmontant and two in the tunnel. As with many such disasters, a number of factors contributed: the electrical systems were ill-conceived and later changed; varnished wooden cars were tinderboxes waiting to be ignited; there were no clear procedures for communications and what to do in the event of a fire; exits were not marked and bodies were found piled at the wrong end of the platform; and for some reason, passengers who had already been evacuated earlier and put on a different car refused to leave unless their ticket price was refunded – they chanted “nos trois sous” (we want our three sous) and pounded on the rattan seats and the sides of the cars until it was too late.

Critics of the Métro had a field day. It was technology gone horribly wrong, perhaps in part because the construction of the Métro had been so rushed. But even before then, Jules Verne was already writing about the impact of too much technology in our lives. (For an excellent introduction to the ideas and writings of Jules Verne click here.)

In 1863 Jules Verne wrote a novel titled Paris in the 20th Century. His publisher rejected it as too unbelievable, too far from what the public was willing to accept. Paris in the 20th Century was set aside only to be rediscovered in 1989 by the author’s great-grandson. It was published in 1994, first in French and is now available in English. Set in the 1960s, the book has been described as “a novel about a young man living in a future world with skyscrapers of glass and steel, high-speed trains, gas-powered automobiles, calculators, and a worldwide communications network. The hero cannot find happiness in this highly materialistic environment, however, and comes to a tragic end.”

As with all “discoveries” of lost or unknown manuscripts, there is controversy over who really wrote it. However, to date no one has attributed it to William Shakespeare or even Christopher Marlow. Oh, and the artist who did the cover for the French edition? None other than our friend François Schuiten.

In case you are wondering, I am a great fan of the Paris Métro: it works very well, is clean, I love the design of so many of the stations, even the ads. Moreover, it goes where I want to go. In terms of safety, reliability, and atmosphere it has come a long way since one critic described it in 1900 as “a badly ventilated cellar, recalling at times a sewer.” (Benson Bobrick, Labyrinths of Iron: Subways in History, Myth, Art, Technology, & War, p. 157)

Whether you see it first from a Métro car or by walking down to the platform, the Arts et Métiers (Jules Verne) station is a world you should not miss.

Text and photographs by Norman Ball.

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Nine minutes, twenty-one seconds

Posted on April 15, 2011 by Parisian Fields

A recent New York Times article pointed out that the traditional division of Paris into Left Bank / Right Bank might be giving way to a more East-West distinction. (Some people will say that has long been the case.) And where would the dividing line fall? Presumably the Paris Meridian, which splits the city in half, indeed the whole country in half, from top to bottom, anchored by the Paris Observatoire.

Now you know and I know that time and longitude are supposed to be measured from Greenwich, which is two degrees and twenty minutes to the west, but the Parisians have their own meridian, thank you very much, and that Greenwich business is just a typical bit of British double-dealing.

It goes back to 1884 and the International Meridian Conference in Washington when the Paris-vs.-Greenwich feud was finally thrashed out. A year earlier, the French had succeeded in getting the international community to agree to use the metre as the standard for measuring distances. The French had defined the metre as one ten-millionth of the Paris Meridian as it passes over the distance between Dunkirk and Barcelona. (It is defined more precisely now, but that’s how it started.)

So now the meridian itself was up for grabs. And the British weren’t going to let the French have it their own way again. As Mike Parker, in his entertaining book Map Addict puts it:

There had evidently been some anglophonic stitch-up going on behind the scenes between the host Americans and their British cousins… After all, they cried, it’s someone else’s turn! You got the metre, now be a jolly chap and leave go the damned meridian, won’t you? Of course, the irony should not escape us that this Anglo-American pincer movement, so much of which depended on their reminding delegates of the recent French victory in measuring the world, came from two countries who have had as little to do as possible with the metric system ever since.

The French were out-manoeuvred. They abstained from the vote, to avoid looking like poor losers. But they dragged their heels as long as they could, and the Paris Meridian was still marked on French maps as 0˚ longitude until well into the 20th century. They also took to referring to Greenwich standard time as “Paris Mean Time minus 9 minutes, 21 seconds.”

And they still celebrate Their Meridian. In 1994, they commissioned Dutch artist Jan Dibbets to create an artwork to commemorate François Arago (1786-1853), who had calculated the meridian. Dibbets cast small bronze medallions with Arago’s name on them and embedded them in the ground along the line of the meridian through central Paris.

In 2000, as one of the country’s millennium projects, the French planted trees along the meridian line from the north to the south of the country. You don’t see the British doing that with their meridian.

Moreover, the Paris Observatoire is older than its counterpart at Greenwich. Construction began on the day of the summer solstice (June 21) in 1667. The architect was Claude Perrault – the brother of Charles Perrault, author of Cinderella (Cendrillon), Sleeping Beauty (La Belle au bois dormant), Little Red Riding Hood (Le petit chaperon rouge) and other fairy tales. Make of that what you will.

It was finished in 1672, three years before the English got around to laying the first stone of the Greenwich observatory. The Observatoire sits on top of a deep quarry, which means that the underground part of the building is roughly as deep as the building is high. Lurking in the depths are various high-tech clocks and other bits of sensitive equipment that need to be kept at a constant temperature.

Above ground, the building is oriented with its northern façade positioned exactly facing due north. There are two octagonal towers on the south side facing the garden, one of which now has a dome for using a high-powered telescope. When the building was under construction, the royal astronomer, Giovanni Domenico Cassini, asked for a proper viewing pavillion for a telescope, but Perrault ignored him. The architect was more interested in symmetry and views, and couldn’t be bothered with requests from the actual users of the building (there are still architects like that). Cassini had to cobble together a homemade viewing platform on the roof when he finally got into the building. The dome was added in the 19th century.

In 1951, Jean Prouvé was commissioned to create the Meridian Room, which traces the Paris Meridian (oh, hey, let’s just call it The Meridian, we’re among francophiles) the length of its floor.

The building is still in use, and we walked around it in December. The garden was closed to allow the grass its winter “repose.”

We spotted some odd, falling-down buildings on the south side from the boulevard Arago. The closest one, which is almost a skeleton, seems to be made of metal and has at one time been heavily insulated. We wondered if it had been used for cold-temperature experiments.

That and the rather-worse-for-wear sign on the Institut d’Astrophysique suggest that perhaps French astronomy is not keeping up with the times.

But The Meridian, by gosh, that they have, and that they will keep. That Other Line is just Paris Mean Time minus 9 minutes, 21 seconds.

Text and photographs by Philippa Campsie; additional photograph by Norman Ball.

Further reading: The story of the Paris Meridian vs. the Greenwich Meridian forms a chapter of Map Addict by Mike Parker (London: Collins, 2009).

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Notre Dame du Travail: more than meets the eye

Posted on April 8, 2011 by Parisian Fields

If I had to pick only one place to visit on a trip to Paris, it would be Notre Dame du Travail. What makes it so special? It starts with the eye, but there is more than meets the eye.

Philippa and I had rented a flat on rue de Gergovie in the 14th. On a beautiful mid-December day, I took a walk with no purpose other than to breathe in Paris. The entryway seen above struck me as beautiful, but not in the usual Paris way. It was not a grand entryway for those coming to worship or for tourists “doing Paris churches.”

Quite inadvertently, I had entered Notre Dame du Travail on the path taken by community members seeking a variety of services offered by a living church with a history of strong community involvement. It was a comforting and welcoming entrance. Only later did I understand it a bit more.

I am a historian of technology and design. So naturally some things caught my eye more than others. The rugged details and construction that I associate with industrial buildings were exciting, but at the same time reassuring. As I entered the sanctuary, I felt as if I were coming home, or coming to somewhere I belonged. It was a curious feeling.

I was alone, not in a rush, and the views and details did not intrude too quickly.

Had I come through the grand entryway of the front door, this magnificent scene would have welcomed me. Many things caught my eye, but most of all the strength and grace of the exposed structural steel.

Unhurried, I walked into the church. As I looked back towards the nave, I was captivated by the elegance of all that I saw.

Here I am looking towards the aisle and the front of the church. Details slowly crept up on me as I focused more closely. The elegant lectern held my attention, as did the quiet side chapels with their beautiful artwork.

I grew aware of an art nouveau organ cradled between stone and structural iron. I have a fondness for art nouveau, but it was if I was seeing art nouveau for the first time.

I have since learned more about the church that so captivated me.

When the Montparnasse Railway Station in the Plaisance quartier opened in 1840, it marked the beginning of rapid growth and change in this part of Paris. The local parish was known as Notre Dame de l’Assomption de Plaisance. When the quartier became part of Paris in 1860, the parish was renamed Notre Dame de Plaisance.

Montparnasse was a gateway to Paris, and the parish struggled to help meet the needs of an ever-increasing number of working-class residents.

Perhaps no one was better suited for the task of leading this growing parish than the abbé Soulange-Bodin, who was appointed vicar in 1884. Twelve years later (1896), he was appointed parish priest (curé) of the parish of Plaisance. Father Soulange-Bodin was clearly a compassionate man with great love for his often poverty-stricken parishioners and a reputation as a crusader for social justice. More important, he could hold a large vision and combine it with a canny understanding of the times.

He asked questions. Why should the 35,000 parishioners who lived and toiled in the centre of industry not have a church befitting them? In a faubourg of 35,000 workers, why not have a church inspired by their workplaces and the materials—iron and wood—that they handled daily? Why not, in anticipation of the rapidly approaching Grand Exposition of 1900, have a church to welcome the many workers who would come first to build it and then to visit it? Why not a national campaign to build a church to honour the workers of France in a parish composed almost entirely of workers?

Indeed, why not? Money came from many quarters.

What about the design? Although the Eiffel Tower, built in 1889, was still controversial in the late 1890s, it had advanced the image of Paris as a city of iron. It had also highlighted those who erected great works in iron. The well-chosen architect, Jules Astruc (1862-1935), spoke the language of inspiring structural ironwork. He embodied the strong links between French architecture and engineering (one reason why Paris has such wonderful bridges). Above all, the new church had to show respect for those who worked with their hands and were often ill-rewarded for their strengths, skills, hard work, and dedication.

Perhaps I was taken by the church because of my background and upbringing (my father was a miner, then later a carpenter and construction superintendent). But that is a small part of the story. It is less about me than about Father Soulange-Bodin, architect Astruc Jules, and the people they served.

Here the dramatic lighting makes an homage to strength and beauty.

From another point of view, the same material seems so soft and welcoming to the warmth of the art nouveau stencil work.

Notre Dame du Travail is much more than 135 tonnes of iron and steel leavened by respect for workplace materials and forms. Father Soulange-Bodin also wanted to elevate and inspire parishioners through other means. Thus the much-admired art work such as that below.

As I walked out of the church, through the door that one might normally enter, I was struck once again by this church as part of a real, living community. From the front door I could see children playing in a playground and I thought of continuity. Yes, these were the children of more prosperous families than those who had once lived here. Many poor families were displaced when the 4,400 lodgings around the Gare Montparnasse were torn down in the 1960s in a bout of “urban renewal.” But new dwellings were built and Notre Dame du Travail still serves many who need help.

As I stood outside the front of the church I wondered how many people walked by its traditional front façade and failed to realize the drama inside. How close did I come to missing it? I had been attracted by a different and, to me, more interesting entryway.

On a later visit to Paris, Philippa and I were at the Gare St. Lazare. As usual, I was wandering about in dreamy contemplation of design, materials and details. As I gazed at the geometric patterns of the dramatic glass and iron roofs I wondered how many of those who built and maintained them had lived in the 14th.

I thought back to another roof and thanked Father Soulange-Bodin and Jules Astruc for giving me the privilege of seeing the material embodiment of his respect for others and me a new way of looking at the roof of a grand railway station.

It was not easy being poor and we should not glamorize it, but nor should we say there is no place for beauty in poverty. In a wonderful railway station, the memory of a church reminded me of the important place that the quest for beauty and dignity occupy in my life.

Let me end with the roof on the inside and the clock (a gift of emperor Napoleon III to the parish for the previous church on the site) on the outside of something I love and I think I understand.

Text and photographs by Norman R. Ball

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Leeks Vinaigrette

Posted on April 1, 2011 by Parisian Fields

I have my favourite French food writers, but among my best-loved cookbooks are those by Canadian food writer Lucy Waverman and the English Nigel Slater. Recently, I came across the following words by Slater that got me thinking:

Sourness in the kitchen is underrated. It took me years to realize this. A bite of sharpness in a sauce or a salad dressing can bring food to life, making it sing in the mouth. … what is especially useful is vinegar’s ability to help adjust the seasoning of something that is too rich, too sweet, or too cloying. This alone makes it an essential kitchen ingredient (Appetite, p. 86).

It’s interesting that he took a long time to figure it out. I sense that French cooks know this secret from early on. Vinegar is an important staple in French kitchens.

After all, the guild of vinegar-makers (vinaigriers) received royal recognition in French in the 14th century. The trade was centred on the town of Orléans, but the rue des Vinaigriers in Paris (near the Canal St-Martin) suggests that there were vinegar makers in Paris too. Today, the one remaining traditional vinegar maker based in Orléans is Martin Pouret (founded in 1797).

Slater recommends maintaining a small selection of vinegars in the pantry, and singles out red wine vinegar as the best all-round choice, but he also makes room for white wine vinegar, tarragon vinegar, sherry vinegar and balsamic vinegar (the French take on balsamic, Banyuls, is hard to find outside France).

The Martin Pouret website also distinguishes between “Les Essentiels” (several types of wine vinegar, tarragon vinegar, plus cider vinegar and vinegar containing minced shallots) and “Les Tentations” (special wine vinegars made from Muscadet, Cabernet Franc et Chardonnay, citrus and raspberry vinegars, and – this I have got to try – vinaigre de vin aux coquelicots sauvages de Nemours/wine vinegar with wild poppies from Nemours). There are also some vintage vinegars aged five to seven years.

We go through vinegar pretty quickly in this household. There’s our favourite Pork Chops Piquant and a good chicken in vinegar recipe from Laura Calder’s French Food at Home (she says she got it from cooking teacher Anne Willan of La Varenne).

The Paris publishing house Editions de l’Epure has published at least two of their exquisite little cookbooks on vinegar. These cookbooks features ten recipes each, focusing on an ingredient (oysters, lavender), a food type (soups, risottos), a colour (pink foods, yellow foods), a local specialty (sel de Guerande, fromage St-Nectaire), or a theme (earth, air, fire, water). The vinegar books feature sherry vinegar and balsamic vinegar. The photograph below shows the interior of the Editions de l’Epure office at 25, rue de la Sablière in the 14th arrondissement.

We have the little cookbook on sherry vinegar, by Alberto Herráiz, the Spanish chef at the Restaurant Fogon in the 6th arrondissement. His chosen ten recipes include one for small chocolate cakes (cupcakes, really) made with sherry vinegar. I’ve never made it, but stay tuned.

And then, of course, are all the things you can do with vinaigrette. Salad dressing is only the beginning. It can be even better on warm veggies, such as leeks. Leeks vinaigrette (poireaux vinaigrette) can be served as an appetizer or a side dish. The simplest versions call for leeks, white wine vinegar, olive oil, shallots, and Dijon mustard, but you can add other things. Laura Calder’s version calls for lemon and grated Parmesan cheese, for example, and Molly Wizenberg suggests adding finely chopped bacon or crumbled hard-boiled egg.

That’s all very well, but the crucial thing is just to get the vinaigrette right, and that means experimenting. Some people swear by a three-to-one ratio of oil to vinegar, others favour two-to-one or even one-to-one, but it all depends on the ingredients. And choose your mustard carefully. Last time we used a bright green Maille mustard (it contains chives, parsley, and basil), and the taste and colour went wonderfully well with the leeks. Finally, choose slender leeks. Supermarket leeks can be as thick as a tennis racket handle and have as much flavour.

Here’s the recipe for two people:

1 to 1½ tbsp. white wine vinegar
1 tsp. Dijon vinegar
3 tbsp. olive oil
Minced shallot (about half a shallot)
6 slender leeks

Make the vinaigrette by mixing the first three ingredients. The easiest approach is to put them in a jar with a tight-fitting lid and shake it vigorously. Test, and make adjustments to the ingredients according to taste. Then add the shallots.

Bring a pot of salted water to a boil. Trim off the hairy ends of the leeks (but not so far up that the leeks fall apart) and remove the hard dark green leaves. Make one or two lengthwise cuts so that the leeks fan out at the top, but not all the way through, so they remain held together at the bottom. Wash away any soil or sand and boil in the salted water for about 10 minutes. Strain, then put the leeks in a bowl and toss with the vinaigrette. Serve warm.

With the green mustard, it tastes of spring. Here in Canada, we could use a little more of that.

Text by Philippa Campsie; photographs by Norman Ball. (The markets shown are Montorgueil and Beauvau.)

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Goosebumps

Posted on March 25, 2011 by Parisian Fields

One day, at a flea market, I bought an old board game called Le Jeu de l’Oie (the Game of the Goose). I was attracted to it because I had seen a reproduction of a similar board in a newspaper around that time and wanted to know what it was and how it was played. Here’s what my flea-market version looks like.

It’s a square 10 inches by 10 inches, on a thin cardboard backing, and the maker is shown only as “A.W – Paris.” I have no idea how old it is.

This version of Le Jeu de l’Oie is distinctively French-looking, with images of rural characters in traditional garb and lots of pictures of food. As in Snakes and Ladders, the players are trying to reach the final place on the board (No. 63) and are subject to snake-like setbacks (called “accidents”) or ladder-like advancement (you get two turns whenever you land on a picture of a goose). But there’s a difference, because you have to pay fines and put up some sort of “stake” – money or matchsticks or counters – that the winner collects at the end of the game.

Here is a fairly free translation of the instructions printed in the middle of the board.

For this game, you need two dice. Each player needs a distinct piece to mark progress around the board. The players fix the fines to be paid for different accidents and each puts up a stake. Each player throws the dice in turn and moves his or her piece forward the number of places shown by the dice.

Whoever arrives exactly at the 63rd box wins and takes the stakes, plus any fines. If the number shown on the dice takes the player past No. 63, he or she retreats the number of excess spaces.

Any player who lands on one of the geese placed at every ninth spot on the board gets an extra throw.

If a player, on the first throw, gets a 6 and a 3, he or she moves immediately to No. 26, and if he or she throws a 5 and a 4, to No. 53.

If a player, on the first throw, lands on No. 6, which shows a bridge, he or she moves to No. 12.

Accidents: If you land on No. 19, the inn, you have to stay, that is, pay a fine and miss a turn.

If you land on No. 31, the well, you have to pay a fine and wait until another player comes to the same place; at which point, he or she takes your place.

If you land on No. 42, the labyrinth, you pay a fine and return to No. 30.

If you land on No. 52, the prison, you pay a fine and wait until someone else lands on the spot; that person will replace you in prison.

If you land on No. 58, death, you pay a fine and return to the start.

If you land on a number occupied by another player, he or she pays a fine and takes the place that you had started from on that turn.

The flea market board is more detailed than some other versions, which have illustrations only in the places that matter – the bridge, the inn, the well, the prison, the labyrinth, death, the geese. I love the wealth of detail on this version, including the illustrations in the corners.

According to a website devoted to the game, it originated in the 16th century in Italy (although the Italians apparently got the idea from the ancient Greeks), and versions have been created in all kinds of countries, including China and Japan. It seems to have been well known in North America in the 19th century. There is even an example in Canada’s virtual museum.

So I wonder why I had never seen it before. Clearly, though, it persists in France, and modern versions are available in toy stores.

Le Jeu de l’oie is to French people what Monopoly is to North Americans. Most North Americans immediately understand what it means to “land on Park Place” or the implications of that immortal phrase “Go to Jail. Go directly to Jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.” Similarly, the French seem completely attuned to the perils of the goose game and the term appears in newspapers and magazine articles as a synonym for a game of chance.

If you search online for images of the French game, you will find versions pressed into service to make political points or raise AIDS awareness or teach children about everything from arithmetic to geography.

One can imagine collecting multiple versions of the game, and I’ve no doubt that somewhere out there, somebody does just that. There are so many iterations that one could spend a lifetime tracking them all down. I think I will just stick with my flea market version. We have, after all, only so much house room.

All I need now is some dice, some counters, some markers, and a partner. Norman, what are you doing this evening?

Text and original photographs by Philippa Campsie

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A tricycle built for work

Posted on March 18, 2011 by Parisian Fields

Head down and shoulders hunched, the lead cyclist pedals furiously through the streets of Paris. He is barely a cycle’s length ahead of his closest pursuers. Anxious onlookers line the streets. We are not witnessing the final moments of the Tour de France: these are tricycles racing through the streets of Paris in 1940.

This astounding photo from the Roger-Viollet Collection captures the energy, speed and grim determination one expects in bicycle races. On the image below, from the same collection, look at the expression of joy and agony combined on the face of the tricyclist crossing the finish line.

Now look more closely at the two photos. Those racing in the first photo look like everyday working delivery cycles. Whereas the cycle in the second photo (taken in 1939) looks built for speed, with its streamlined fairing and fenders. It does not take too much imagination to link this streamlining with that of some ultra-powerful prewar racing cars.

The furiously racing tricycles seem far from the more relaxed image below.

The word tri-porteur translates as a “delivery tricycle” and is usually spelled as one word. The triporteurs made by the Paris firm of Alexandre & Juéry appeared to be particularly sturdy, as did the cyclist who is dressed in traditional work garb. The company sold, rented, and repaired triporteurs in addition to manufacturing them. They also issued a catalogue – one I would love to see. Trade catalogues from this era and earlier are generally both colourful and informative. This one shows a splendid image of an important commercial vehicle.

If we regard triporteurs as pedal-powered workhorses, then the one I photographed in April 2006 in front of an antique store is a bit knackered, maybe only a few steps from the glue factory. But let us hope it has found a good owner who has restored it to former glory. It and the advertisement from Alexandre & Juéry show some of the essential features of delivery tricycles.

Both have a long, low-slung frame. The weight of the driver and the distance from the front wheels help stop the tricycle from pitching forward and upending if it hits a bump or if the box is unevenly loaded. Each tricycle has a box mounted on two wheels. While driving, the cyclist holds onto the handle attached to the box and for steering the carrying box and front wheels pivot as a unit.

In both triporteurs the box is mounted on leaf springs to which the axles are attached. This simple suspension system is an important feature that reduced the severity of bumping, bouncing and generally being jarred on cobblestoned streets or other rough surfaces. This made for a smoother, more comfortable, and safer ride. But what about stopping?

In the Alexandre & Juéry ad we see no evidence of a front brake nor do we on the triporteur I photographed. A front brake would be suicidal: with a heavy weight on the front if the front brake were applied the least bit hard the rear wheel would lift and the rest needs no explanation. Nor is there any evidence of an external rear brake in the ad; we must assume that it is a coaster brake and that one simply pushed back on the pedal to stop. It could be quite a task with a heavy load. Perhaps that is why the triporteur I photographed had the mechanically operated brake we see above on the back wheel. At the time it was a tad rusty but this was meant for heavy-duty work.

Recall that Alexandre & Juéry had their shop at 18, Rue Rambuteau. Not far away, number 79 housed the fishmonger shown in this wonderfully rich street photograph. The wealth of period detail gives us good reason to linger over this photograph. The two-wheeled handcart is a reminder of the hard physical work of getting things from place to place. But the triporteur used by the fish delivery boy remind us that triporteurs are work vehicles.

At the time, there were also pedal-powered wheeled vehicles called tricycles – the word is the same in French and English – but they were pleasure vehicles.

Where are the worthy successors to these Parisian delivery tricycles? Must they be pedal-powered? The 1912 photo shown below demonstrates there were early electric models as well.

Philippa and I were quite surprised this past December when we saw this BHV triporteur outside the store, but do not know how widely it travels. We have also seen other triporteurs in various parts of the city.

Perhaps the crown for continuing the early Parisian triporteur lineage goes to La Petite Reine.

When Philippa and I first saw it on a November day in 2007, just outside Notre Dame de Bonne Nouvelle on rue de la Lune, we wondered if it was simply a rolling billboard or a working vehicle. It was the latter and I am delighted to say the company is still in business and has grown since then. La Petite Reine was founded in 2001 with the aim of offering an alternative to using large polluting vehicles for urban deliveries.

The company has a variety of tricycle types ranging from strictly pedal to electric assist and operates in Paris, Bordeaux, Rouen, Dijon, and Geneva. With both electric and pedal powered triporteurs, La Petite Reine continues the tradition of tricycle deliveries in Paris and other cities.

Perhaps the final word on the fate and future of triporteurs might be from Mark Twain who, upon hearing that he had been reported dead, replied, “Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”

Text and original photographs by Norman Ball; historic photographs from Paris en Images, courtesy Roger Viollet Agency.

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The queen in the tower

Posted on March 11, 2011 by Parisian Fields

Last week, Norman posted his picture of a “melting bicycle” and it got me thinking about the place and time we saw it. Then a reader wrote in and asked about places to stop and sit in the Marais, and I included that particular location in the 3rd arrondissement because it was on my mind.

In fact, that day we were sitting in front the Café Crème on the rue Dupetit-Thouars, just where it intersects with the rue Dupuis. We’d just come from Goumanyat/Thiercelin, a wonderful spice shop on the rue Dupuis, and we’d stopped for a drink.

We sat in the shade and looked across the street. Immediately in front of us was the melting bicycle. To our right across the road was a Lycée Technologique, and in front of it was parked a Citroen with a child’s toy (Sophie la Girafe) in the back window.

To the left was an empty market building.

When we had finished our wine, we went across the street and took a closer look at the market. It had once been a market for clothing, but the booths were closed and the doors were chained up. Big posters announced that the place was to be renovated as a multi-functional community space (espace polyvalent – which sounds dully institutional compared to a market, but the pictures showed happy people doing happy things, as all architectural renderings do).

We noticed some wonderful paper graffiti showing stylized horses. If I had an original, I would frame it.

We took photographs through the gates of the empty market stalls – an evocative space that had once been lively and will be again, we hope.

It was only later when I took a closer look at Norman’s photos that I realized this was the Carreau du Temple, part of the vanished Temple complex, which exists now only in the name of a Metro station, a square, and a few streets.

The name comes from the Knights Templar, who built a church here in the 12th century. At that point, this area was outside the city walls, and the Knights created a little village of their own around the church.

The picture from the Turgot map of 1734 is a bit confusing, until you realize that north is to the left. The rue du Temple and the rue Charlot are still there, and so is the church of St. Elizabeth. There was a palace for the Prior about where the Square du Temple is now, and a forbidding tower with turrets stood approximately where the southernmost part of the market building is now.

The Temple tower! That grim fortress where Louis XIV and Marie-Antoinette were imprisoned! I was recently reading about them in The Fatal Friendship by Stanley Loomis. The book describes Marie-Antoinette’s friendship (and possible romantic liaison) with the Swedish count who orchestrated the royal family’s failed attempt to flee the Revolution in June 1791, which ended disastrously at Varennes.

The royal family was taken back to the Tuileries Palace after that attempt to escape, but in August 1792, when a mob attacked the Palace, they were moved to the Temple. At first, they did not realize which part of the precinct they were to stay in. As Loomis tells it:

When, as the light was beginning to fade, the French royal family arrived at the Temple that evening it never crossed their minds that their destination was to be the Tower, rather than the palace. They were served an elaborate meal – even in its worst temper, the Commune was never to stint on the food – in the Salle des Quatre Glaces [at the palace] … among those who presided over the fallen family’s supper table that night none could summon the courage to tell them that after the festivities they were to be taken to the Tower… [But] at one o’clock in the morning, under armed guard, they were conducted across the garden to the donjon that they were only to leave to go to their trials and death.

There were several more attempts to rescue them before the worst befell. But every plot seemed to run aground on someone’s blunder or indifference or greed (or the family’s steadfast refusal to be separated), and bit by bit, every hope was withdrawn.

Loomis is a particularly interesting guide through this story. You can tell that he didn’t think much of Marie-Antoinette in her glory days – self-absorbed, spendthrift airhead that she was during the years at Versailles. But as the Revolution took away her privileges and comforts one by one, and she endures with dignity, he clearly becomes more and more impressed in spite of himself.

Indeed, he has the same reaction that many of her contemporaries apparently did when they met her during this period. They were usually determined to hate her, and found themselves won over by her character and her calm demeanour under appalling conditions.

He concludes, “The Revolution destroyed her but it was the Revolution that lent to the life of this essentially uninteresting woman an interest that is spectacular…Through affliction the woman grew strong and out of physical destitution she carried that element of individual triumph that is inseparable from great tragedy.”

As for the Temple tower, it was demolished in 1808 on Napoleon’s orders – he didn’t want it to become a magnet for Royalist pilgrims. Part of the Temple precinct became a market for clothing and textiles in 1811. The final Temple buildings came down under Napoleon III and the cast-iron and glass building went up in 1865.

And now the market is to be turned into “une espace modelable et polyvalent.” You can see a little video about the building and the plans for it here. The grim old tower appears for barely a second, then gives way to pictures of the market buildings, including a good photograph by Robert Doisneau.

You can understand that nobody wants to remember the tower, the site of so much sorrow. Better to imagine happy people in colourful garb playing sports.

Text by Philippa Campsie; original photographs by Norman Ball.

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Still life with bicycle

Posted on March 4, 2011 by Parisian Fields

Paris has a long association with cycling. Consider the early 19th-century velocipede craze or Art Nouveau advertising lithographs by artists such as Alphonse Mucha. Since it began in 1903, the Tour de France always ends with a dash into Paris. The Velib’ bicycle lending program in Paris is known, admired and studied worldwide. But there are less obvious sides to Paris and cycling.

Much more than fashion, a sense of style pervades Paris. The elegantly turned-out man preparing to ride away on his folding bicycle on a November afternoon looks unmistakably Parisian. And the open-ended wrench (or spanner, as the British would say)? It’s a fine touch, the sort of artful prop one might find in a fashion shoot. But no, it was real, part of something I spotted during a flâneur’s moment on a Parisian street.

In December 2008 Philippa and I spent a relaxing couple of hours at the Musée de la Mode et du costume at the Palais Galliera (currently closed and undergoing renovations) We had been drawn there by the enticing title, “Sous L’Empire des crinolines 1852-1870.” Wandering amongst the exquisitely theatrical Second Empire gowns and accoutrements from the era of the Empress Eugénie left us feeling languid. We drifted outside; the bicycle at rest on the stairs seemed to fit the mood perfectly. It appeared to be slouching, languid and perhaps even rakish.

The louche bicycle lounging outside the Musée seemed a far cry from the carefully marshalled, almost official-looking picture postcard view of the Velibs. But look below and you see something decidedly less official-looking. For several days we had seen the child’s bicycle with its long-dead rear tire. Was it abandoned? A work of art? And the almost backwards seat on the Velib’ beside it? There is a story here. But you will have to make it up for yourself.

On a mid-October afternoon we walked from the National Library towards Bercy Park and lingered on the Passerelle (footbridge) Simone de Beauvoir to gaze at the Seine. It is still a working river that rewards those who take time to look quietly and slowly. In the near distance the barge Alternat drifted in front of the floating swimming pool anchored to the bank.

The Alternat was skilfully piloted and as we watched (in line with our general philosoply of “no schedule, no rush”), it pulled in and was tied up just below the bridge. There was another bicycle.

Because Philippa and I walk so much in Paris, our Paris is very much a city of slowly encountered vistas where bicycles often seem to complete the scene, somewhat like punctuation.

With so many bicycles, there is great variation, including states of repair or disrepair. In the image below, the deformed wheel seems to tell us something important about Paris and bicycles: it is sometimes a risky or precarious encounter.

On an August day the month dwindled away but not the heat; tired of walking, we sat outside at a small café in the 3rd and drank red wine in the shade. Even the bicycle opposite the café seemed to be feeling the heat, sinking into the earth and returning to nature.

We are so used to seeing locked bicycles in varying states of disarray, that they often earn only a passing glance. However, the assemblage shown below demanded a second look. It was not just a front wheel and forks locked to the pole. It was a unicycle locked to a pole and the owner had prudently removed the seat.

A Paris without bicycles would seem incomplete. Even though it was a raw, damp and grey December day when I took the photo below, the bicycles seemed oddly at home and so did we. They had been there for days, perhaps left behind by students who had returned home for the Christmas break. Maybe the cyclists saw that the snow was winning and were waiting patiently for the return of better cycling weather.

Less than a week later, it was Christmas Day and we were walking through the Jardin du Luxembourg. Sun-starved Parisians positioned themselves to soak up the rays, the ducks in the Medici Fountain paddled calmly, friendly snowball exchanges erupted here and there. And a bicycle wheel wondered if it would ever be reunited with its missing pieces.

Text and photographs by Norman Ball

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