FrenchKate

Feb 25: Fountain Goudouli, Place Wilson, Toulouse

Back to fountains in Toulouse...this marble fountain honors an Occitan poet, Pèire Godolin (his name becomes Pierre Goudouli in French) who lived in Toulouse from his birth in 1580 to his death in 1649. Carved by a French sculptor, Alexandre Falguière (himself born in Toulouse in 1831), the fountain was installed in 1898 in the middle of a pleasant park in Place Wilson.

Godolin's life mirrors the troubled times in which he lived--the latter years of the wars of religion and the period when the Bourbons strengthened their hold over the kingdom. 

He wrote in and defended Occitan, the ancient language of poetry and troubadours, during the period when--Cardinal Richelieu having dictated that French would be the  language of official documents--Occitan began to its long decline to obscurity. Though it would continue to be the everyday language for much of rural southern France until the early 20th century, today only about 100,000 people in France--mostly elderly--still speak it.

Godolin was also Catholic at a time and in a place when tensions between Catholics and Protestants were high. Though protestant Henri IV converted to Catholicism to become king in 1589, the loyalty of Catholic authors such as Godolin remained suspect. This would cause him some trouble later in his life when Godolin published a poem that was required to celebrate Henri IV's triumph over the rebels, but Godolin only celebrated spring and the return of peace.

Godolin's poetry was bawdy, full of double entendres and inventive word play (verbal tricks enabled by Occitan) and although the freedom of his style fell out of fashion over the course of the 17th century, it was highly influential. His works were regularly published (20 editions in his lifetime) and his writings inspired Molière and the author of Cyrano de Bergerac. During his best years, he had powerful patrons--Adrien Montluc, Baron Montesquieu, and Henri, Duc de Montmorency--who employed him to create poetry, plays, drinking songs, carols, and so on to enliven carnivals in Toulouse. Then Monluc and Montmorency were accused of plotting against the King: Montmorency was beheaded in the Capitole in 1631, and Montluc spent seven years imprisoned in the Bastille. Godolin spent the last years of his life in a Carmelite monastery.

A bust of Godolin was sculpted by Toulousain sculptor, Marc Arcis, around 1677 for the Salle des Illustres in the Capitole. Today it is part of the collection of the musée des Augustins. It looks to me as if Falguière used Arcis's representation (done thirty years after Godolin's death) as his model for the fountain.

Feb 24: Random thoughts on photography

This photo came up on my photo stream yesterday, and both my husband and I were stumped as to when and where it was taken. Though everything about this scene is so French--the classical building on the right, the lawn chairs, the streetlights, the plane trees, the loose gravel surface at our feet, the hint of construction at the rear--it could have been taken almost anywhere in France. Nothing makes it distinctive. There were distinctive things around us, but this particular photo missed them.

By searching, I was able to place the photo; it was taken on September 3rd, 2018, in Auxerre, France. We were standing inside a small place on rue de lycée Jacques Amyot in front of a school.

The second image--a screenshot from google maps--shows the same location from a slightly different angle a year later. Note the very distinctive bell-tower of the Cathedral Saint-Etienne in the distance. My photo managed to miss that completely!

Another distinctive landmark was across the street from us: a stone tower (called Tour des Prison) and crenellated walls constructed in 1320, remnants of the fortifications that once protected the monks of the abbey of Saint Germain.

The photo that was so French and so not distinctive at the same time seems to me to hint at some profound metaphor about not seeing what is right in front of you because the photographer was directing your attention to something else.

 

Feb 22: The flood of 1875, aftermath

I'll let the New York Times correspondent continue his report,  June 28, 1875:

"...the moment the disaster became irreparable the greatest courage and devotion were displayed...When the water reached the first story the work of saving life began; the solders of the garrison and the gendarmes making heroic efforts in this direction, and they were joined by the citizens of the other parts of the city. When trying to save a family crying for relief, the Marquis d'Hautpoul lost his life. He went out in a boat with a gendarme, but the force of the current whirled them against the buildings and boat was upset. The Marquis clung to the top of a lamp-post for a few moments, but this soon gave way, and he was drowned. The gendarme saved himself by clinging to a floating plank. Several soldiers were killed and wounded by the fall of buildings from which they were trying to get the inmates. Artillery wagons and caissons were taken from their wheels and used as boats...."

"At Toulouse the solders of the garrison are engaged in tearing down the buildings that have been undermined, but which remain standing, the operations being conducted with the greatest care to prevent accidents. At every instant the noise of falling buildings is heard, and from time to time the solders come out with a wagon load of newly-found bodies...."

"MacMahon on the Spot"

"According to the precedent established by Napoleon III, who was always one of the first to arrive at the scene of any great disaster, the Marshal President, accompanied by his staff and a number of officials, arrived at Toulouse at 2:30 on Saturday. He began at once distributing the 100,000 francs voted by the Chamber, but it did not go far. The Marshal gave this in anticipation of the vote, but stated that the Assembly would vote the sum that day, but that it was so manifestly insufficient that many appeals would have to be made to private generosity. He made a number of visits, and was everywhere received with great enthusiasm, but it was remarked that the cries were all Vive le Maréchal and Vive la République. It is singular to note that the official and semi-offcial organs of the Republic received this fact with many expressions of satisfaction."

Feb 21: The flood of 1875

On June 23, 1875, after two weeks of rain, the the Garonne river (that runs through the middle of Toulouse) rose 27 feet in a matter of hours, surged over its banks, and washed away bridges, towns, buildings and lives along its course. The devastation was unimaginable: 209  lives and 1400 buildings were  lost in Saint-Cyprien alone,  and 25,000 people were left homeless..

The disaster had international coverage. The correspondent for the New York Times wrote:

"When I last wrote we were just receiving our first dispatches from the Midi, and no one had any idea of the extent of the great disaster that has fallen upon the country. We now know that the present inundations are  unparalleled, and that they far exceed those of 1855-6, of which we have heard so much. How many lives have been lost in this instance it is impossible to say at this time....since many missing people may have fled to the country for refuge, but near 1,000 bodies have been recovered up to this time. The stench arising from the ruined quarter of Saint Cyprien at Toulouse leads to the supposition that many bodies are yet lying beneath the stones of the fallen buildings.The towns and villages situated upon the immediate banks of the Garonne and Tarn have been nearly destroyed. Five miles from Toulouse is the village of Fenouiliat, which contained a population of between 800 and 900, and was composed of some 400 buildings of all sorts; but only three houses remain of all that was once Fenouillat. The whole town was swept away in a night. Comparatively speaking, the loos of life was small, the population moving out en masse at the approach of the flood, and taking refuge upon the neighboring heights. Scores of small hamlets were destroyed in a few hours' time, not a trace of them being left except a mass of fallen stones. The water carried away everything else....At Toulouse the whole quarter of Saint-Cyprien was overflowed in a few hours, and the water rose with such rapidity that those who failed to flee at once were speedily imprisoned in their houses....The Saint-Cyprien quarter of Toulouse had a population of about twenty thousand. Five hundred houses fell at once, and as many more are so nearly in ruins that orders have been given to have them pulled down. It is thought the the number of dead in this quarter will exceed 500, 215 bodies having been drawn from the ruins up to yesterday morning, and others are discovered every moment."

The Dépêche du midi, the local newspaper, sold a map of Toulouse to raise money (.75 ff) for the victims of the flood. Areas tinted blue show areas where flooding occurred. Red indicates destroyed buildings. A closeup shows that nearly all the buildings around what would become Place Olivier (Place du Chairedon ) were destroyed (including,I believe,the building housing the Frères  Olivier enterprise.)

 

Feb 19: fountain Olivier in Saint-Cyprien

If the neighborhood south of rue de Metz was aristocratic, the neighborhood on the far side of the Garonne--you would take rue de Metz and cross Pont Neuf--was the other side of the tracks. This place, the charming, bohemian faubourg of Saint-Cyprien, lies on lower ground, and was repeatedly flooded. One particularly disastrous flood occurred in 1875 when 210 people were killed and many houses destroyed. The magnitude of the disaster can be understood from Henry James's observation--he travelled to Toulouse in 1882, seven years after the flood--that:

"The road runs constantly near the Garonne, touching now and then its slow, brown, rather sullen stream, a sullenness that encloses great dangers and disasters. The traces of the horrible floods of 1875 have disappeared, and the land smiles placidly enough while it waits for another immersion. Toulouse, at the period I speak of, was up to its middle (and in places above it) in water, and looks still as if it had been thoroughly soaked,—as if it had faded and shrivelled with a long steeping."

At the heart of Saint-Cyprien is a large, rather inhospitable place, Place Olivier, where another fountain, Fontain Olivier, was Installed in 1884 to commemorate the 209 victims of the 1875 flood. The fountain duplicated some of the cast-iron elements made thirty years earlier by the foundries of Val d'Osne for the fountain Pantaléon in Place-Roger Salengro. 

In a 2010 renovation, modern city planners chose to move the fountain, and they modified and lowered it. They also chose to pave the place in concrete aggregate--good for pedestrian traffic, not so good for nature--and the trees that were planted at that time have not had time to grow so the place is sun-baked and rather bleak. The fountain seems somewhat diminished.  

The place itself had existed as Place du Chairedon since at least the 16th century, but it was renamed in 1886 to honor Hippolyte Olivier, who sponsored the commemorative fountain. His family business, Olivier Frères, founded in 1780, was located on the north side of Place du Chairedon/Olivier, and specialized in confectionery, liqueurs and chocolates. The building in which Olivier Frères was formerly housed now appears to be a Crédit Agricole, but I see a Chocolats Olivier in another part of Toulouse so the tradition may have survived to the present day.

 

Feb 17: The fountain at Place Roger de Salengro

Think of Toulouse as being neatly divided into four quadrants defined by Rue Alsace-Lorraine (the red line running north to south in my first photo) and rue de Metz (the red line that runs east to west.)  The quadrants thus created work out to be

--north of rue de Metz and west of Alsace-Lorraine;

--north of rue de Metz and east of Alsace-Lorraine,

--south of rue de Metz and west of Alsace-Lorraine

--south of rue de Metz and east of Alsace-Lorraine.

The fountains I have written about previously have all been located south of rue de Metz. I've used red dots to mark their locations--two (Trinité and Roubaix) are west of Alsace-Lorraine and one (Sainte-Scarbes) is east.) During the ancien regime, the area south of rue de Metz was the posh neighborhood where all the noble parlementarians resided. This map, of course, is from google maps so other bits come with the screenshot.

Closer to the Capitole--the center of city government in the northwest quadrant--is one of the prettiest fountains in Toulouse, the fountain of Saint-Pantaléon in Place Roger-Salengro, installed in 1853. 

This pleasant place has undergone a number of name changes. Originally--and for the longest time--it was simply known as place Puits Verts--Green Well--after a well of that name located there.  It was briefly Place de la Concorde during the Revolution, but reverted to Place Puits Verts as soon as it was safe to do so. Then, in 1847-1849, the space, enlarged by knocking down some buildings, was renamed Place Saint-Pantaléon in honor of the destroyed buildings.

Since 1946, however, it has been Place Roger-Salengro in honor of a socialist politician who was hounded to death by right-wing media in the years preceding World War II.

Feb 14: Happy Valentine's Day

This photo was taken in Troyes on a warm summer's night in August 2018, back in the days when one could travel to France. 

Feb 13: Auguste Virebent

Auguste Virebent (1792 - 1857) was a Toulousain architect and entrepreneur who invented a method of mass producing architectural elements from clay. Though basically brick, these elements often appeared to be sculpted in stone. His factory produced such neo-classical pieces as caryatids, capitals, column elements, balusters, rosettes and medallions, and with these decorated the buildings of Toulouse. Sometimes the decoration was subdued and subtle. Sometimes it mimicked elaborate Renaissance sculptures.

The decorations were very popular. In 1834, 800.000 pieces left the furnaces of Virebent's factory. 

Here are some examples:

1) Caryatids of Spring and Summer on a building at 20 rue Lafayette

2) capitals and classical elements at 70 rue de la Pomme

3) caryatids at 28 rue des marchands

4) restrained neo-classical details at 63 rue de la Pomme

5) Renaissance details at 4 rue Baronie

 

Feb 12: Petite cloister at the Musée des Augustins

T he fountain in Place Sainte-Scarbes is a copy of an actual 18th century fountain in the musée des Augustins "petite" cloister (which dates to 1626.) I found two views of the fountain in the cloister from around 1900. I don't know if the fountain has been in place since 1626. Perhaps there was an earlier one? In any case, the decor was altered--my source says "disfigured"--in 1835. The ceramic bas-relief on the walls were added at that time. They cover 17th century religious murals of the life of David, and are probably the work of a Toulousain manufacturer, Auguste Virebent.

This cloister was for many years the main entrance to the musée des Augustins, but around 1975 a new entrance was created to provide access from rue de Metz. The Renaissance portal salvaged from the demolition of the chapel of the penitents noirs was used to decorate the entrance.

I was surprised to learn that the Musée des Augustins is currently closed for renovation work. When it reopens--no date is projected--we are promised that the museum will be more accessible (ramps, elevators) and better arranged for self-guided tours. A new entrance pavilion is being built because the existing one doesn't meet code for accessibility and lacks space for a gift shop. It should be good; Visitors will enter directly into the serenity of the grand cloister.

 

 

Feb 9: the Fountain at Place Saint-Scarbes, Toulouse

When you leave Place Saint-Étienne, take rue Pierre de Fermat (named for the amateur mathematician (1607 - 1665) who lived in Toulouse). This exits just south of the Griffoul fountain. You'll walk down a narrow street lined with the homes of 17th and 18th century nobles--it is still a posh neighborhood--and in about 100 yards you will reach place Sainte-Scarbes.

There's a fountain here as well, but unlike the previous fountains--at Place Rouaix, Trinité and Saint-Étienne--this fountain is new. It replaced a fountain designed by architect André Vernette that had been installed in 1989, the aesthetics of which displeased the neighbors. It was too high, too out of scale, the color was ugly. They didn't like the materials used (concrete and fiberglass) or the style. It looked like something Mussolini would build! The offending fountain was removed in 2003 and replaced in 2006 by what we see now (at a cost of €250,000.)

Today's fountain is a white marble, stone and resin copy of an 18th century statue found in the musee des Augustins: Diana the huntress stands on a plinth above a basin of water that spills into a second basin below.

I managed to find a photo of the earlier fountain. It does look a little like something fascists would fancy--stark and modernistic yet having reference to the classical past.

I have been unable to identify what was in the place when the fountain was installed in 1989. Maybe nothing grand though Place Sainte-Scarbes has carried this name since at least the 13th century. During the Albigensian crusade the citizens of Toulouse were recorded as battling Simon de Montfort in this place.

Legend has it that Place Sainte-Scarbes once held an elm tree and an oratory dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Local historian, Jules Chalande, speculated that the name, Sainte-Scarbes, derived from a custom of laying sheaves of wheat (carbes) at the oratory (sainte). These were gone by the 16th century.

Towards the end of the 16th century, two sisters--Soupects and Nantouillet, were murdered in Place Sainte-Scarbes, and the local residents erected a cross  supported on four pillars in remembrance. Who knows how long that lasted?