April through October visitors can tour the grand, medieval castle where the early romantic writer, François-René de Chateaubriand (1764-1848), spent part of his youth. Later he would recall those times in Mémoires d’Outre-Tombe. Hours are listed on the Château de Combourg website.
I was to accompany my sisters to Combourg: we set off on our journey in the first fortnight of May. We left Saint-Malo at sunrise, my mother, my fours sisters and I, in a huge old-fashioned Berlin, with lavishly gilded panels, exterior footboards, and with purple tassels at the four corners of the canopy. Eight horses, decked out like Spanish mules, bells round their necks and smaller ones on their bridles, with housings and woollen fringes in various colours, drew us along. While my mother sighed, and my sisters talked breathlessly, I gazed with both eyes, listened with both ears, and marvelled at every turn of the wheels: the first journey of a Wandering Jew who would never find rest. It would be fine if a man only changed place! But his days and his heart change too.
Our horses were rested at a fishing village on the Cancale shore. Afterwards we travelled through the marshes, and the busy town of Dol: passing the door of the college to which I would soon return, we drove deeper into the countryside.
For ten mortal miles we saw nothing but heath land encircled by woods, fallow tracts barely cleared, fields of sparse, stunted black corn, and scanty oats. Charcoal burners led strings of ponies with lank, tangled manes; long-haired peasants in goatskin tunics drove gaunt oxen with shrill cries or walked behind heavy ploughs, like labouring fauns. Finally we discovered a valley at the end of which not far from a pond rose the spire of a village church. At the western extremity of this village the turrets of a feudal château lifted above the tall trees of a wood lit by the setting sun.
I have been obliged to pause: my heart was beating to the point of shaking the table on which I write. The memories that awaken in my mind overwhelm me with their multiplicity and force: and yet what do they signify to the rest of the world?
Descending the hill we forded a stream; after a half-hour drive we left the main road, and the carriage rolled along beside a quincunx, in an avenue of trees whose summits met above our heads: I can still remember the moment when I entered that shade, and the fearful joy I experienced.
Leaving the darkness of the wood, we crossed a forecourt planted with walnut-trees, adjoining the steward’s house and garden; from there we emerged through a gateway into a grassy court, known as the Green Court. On the right were a run of stables and a clump of chestnut-trees. At the end of the courtyard whose ground rose imperceptibly, the château stood between two stands of trees. Its severe, gloomy façade displayed a curtain wall surmounted by a machicolated covered gallery. The curtain wall linked two towers of differing periods, material, height and thickness, the towers ending in crenellations surmounted by a pointed roof, like a bonnet set on top of a Gothic crown.
Here and there barred windows showed in the bare walls. A wide staircase, straight and steep, of twenty two steps, without banisters or parapet, crossed the filled-in moat, in place of the old drawbridge; it led to the doorway of the château, cut in the centre of the façade. Over this doorway one saw the arms of the Lords of Combourg, and the slits through which the beams and chains of the drawbridge once passed. – from Mémoires d’outre-tombe, by François de Chateaubriand
The Secret Life of the Seine, by Mort Rosenblum (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2001; first published in 1994)
Mort Rosenblum, "journalist, author, educator, and eater," invites readers on a tour of the Seine, from its source “on a limestone hill in a forest glade…thirty miles northwest of Dijon” to its mouth at Le Havre. Traveling primarily on “his 54-foot wooden boat,” usually moored in Paris, Rosenblum’s descriptions of the geology, history, people, and beauty of the Seine brings the river to life.
My original idea had been a single journey, from first trickle to final rollers, in some form of conveyance. Paul Theroux suggested a kayak, the way he’d do it. Another old pro urged something more French, like a rubber Zodiac. Had I talked to Mark Spitz, I probably would have considered the butterfly stroke. But the seine, often submissive, needs a minimum of conquering. To live her secret life, you’ve got to take it slowly, in various ways at different times. My exploring would take me among old books, into rusting engine compartments, and, as far I could go, into the thoughts of river people. More than a journey, this was a quest. I was after the soul of the Seine. Scrapping all plans, I simply set out. – from The Secret Life of the Seine, by Mort Rosenblum
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Mademoiselle Benoir: a Novel, by Christine Conrad (Boston: Mariner Books, 2007; first published in 2006)
A summer treat – readers are transported to France’s Lot Valley when Tim, an American, leaves his teaching position to pursue his art in a farmhouse he’s purchased in the “region of Quercy, department of Lot.” Letters tell his story of adapting to a new way of life and the drama that ensues when he falls in love and decides to marry a beautiful woman twenty years his senior. Based on a true story, Mademoiselle Benoir is a romantic and pleasurable read, one that will make you want to pack your bag and head to this rugged, lesser know, region of France.
So I now live in the country of France, region of Quercy, department of Lot, city of Cajarc, commune of St.-Jean d’Olt. France is so 'orderly' – a big surprise – not what I expected at all, given some very uninformed notions concerning the French reputation for passion and sensuality. And boy, do these people love ‘forms,’ a form for this, a form for that, I must have filled out dozens.
In any case, my commune of St.-Jean d’Olt has sixty-four official inhabitants, but I think that includes M. Meyrac’s three goats. And this is not counting the ghosts of thousands of years who still make their presence felt. The imprint of the past is so strong here that some days I feel as if I can actually see men and women of centuries ago, standing at the stone water troughs or drawing water from the stone wells.
Many people find the Lot Valley desolate, but for me it has a very human scale. The landscape unfolds bend by bend, layer upon layer, field by field, gorge by gorge. The stones and trees show marks of habitation since the beginning of mankind. Goths, Vikings, Romans, Celts, you name it. This place just naturally pushes you to see the bigger picture because here time has both stood still…and moved on. – from Mademoiselle Benoir, by Christine Conrad
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Adèle & Simon, by Barbara McClintock (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006) ‘Please try not to lose anything today,’ Adele implores her little brother, Simon, as they begin their walk home from school.’ Along the slow route home, Barbara McClintock’s charming story and lovely pen-and-ink drawings pull young readers ‘through the streets and scenes of early-twentieth-century Paris,’ with, of course, Simon losing his belongings along the way. What will they tell their mother?
(Happy Birthday Parker!)
France honors American Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) with a plaque on the building where she lived from 1903 until 1938 at 27, rue de Fleuras. Even though it's a private residence, travelers should make the pilgrimage to the famous Montparnasse apartment, gaze through the gate, soak in the atmosphere of rue de Fleuras, and imagine Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas (1877-1967) greeting the famous guests arriving at their salon.
Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas are buried in the same tomb at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.
The home at 27 rue de Fleurus consisted then as it does now of a tiny pavilion of two stories with four small rooms, a kitchen and bath, and a very large atelier adjoining. Now the atelier is attached to the pavilion by a tiny hall passage added in 1914 but at that time the atelier had its own entrance, one rang the bell of the pavilion or knocked at the door of the atelier, and a great many people did both, but more knocked at the atelier. I was privileged to do both. – from The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, by Gertrude Stein
