FrenchKate

Dec 30: More on spiritualism

Today, of course, we think of spiritualism--the notion that the dead reside in a spirit world parallel to ours and can communicate with us via a medium--as completely guffaw-worthy, an proper fraud.

But in its heyday--roughly 1850-1920--Spiritualism was considered very modern, the scientific answer to religion. It was a religion for reformers! Believers supported charity, the abolition of slavery and the vote for women but had none of the baggage, none of the rules and none of the props of standard religion. Tissot was just one of many  highly respectable people who took part in seances. Others included Abraham Lincoln, William Gladstone, chemist William Crookes,  socialist Robert Owen, Alfred Russel Wallace, several Nobel-laueates (Pierre Curie, for example) and even Arthur Conan Doyle and Queen Victoria.

Spiritualism got its start in 1848 in that hotbed of weird religious ideas, upstate New York. (Joseph Smith lived in upstate New York in 1823 when he "saw" the angel that inspired the church of the Latter Day Saints.) The three Fox sisters began to "communicate" via taps with the spirit of, they said, a peddlar who had been murdered and buried in their basement. The rumour spread from there.

It helped, of course, that hundreds of thousands of sons, brothers and husbands had been killed senselessly in the devastating wars of the late 19th century. This was an era when traditional religious beliefs and reassurances were collapsing (as Matthew Arnold wrote in the 1867 poem, Dover Beach: "The Sea of Faith was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.But now I only hear its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar.") Those who were bereaved sought comfort. They wanted to believe that they could still communicate with their children, husbands, or brothers.

Traditional religion, its authority undermined by Science, could no longer comfort with the "sure and certain hope" of the resurrection. Unlike faith, science actually could cure the sick, heal the wounded and provide food for the hungry. But what about Life after Death? What comfort could science provide? Spiritualism, which proposed that the dead are among us still, turned to photography to convince the doubtful. Photography was science, and photographs didn't lie! An industry grew up to provide spirit photos such as this one of Abraham Lincoln (owned by  Mary Todd Lincoln.) Tissot's mezzotint of his vision of Kathleen Newton, though not a photograph, was regarded another piece of "evidence."

So one way to think about Spiritualism is as an intellectual and emotional stopgap. As the certainties of traditional religion crumbled before scientific truth, people sought ways to replace that which had comforted them in the old way of knowing. Maybe religion was bogus, but life eternal...they could still believe in that.

 

Nov 14: Speaking of Mary Cassatt

In the book I am reading right now--"France, Fin de Siècle'--author Eugen Weber described the fashion in turn-of-the-century France, at least among the upper classes, to cultivate sensitivity.

Weber writes, "The higher social classes, or at least their sensitive offspring, knew that tender nerves were evidence of refined sensibilities." One of those who evidently exhibited this nervous sensitivity was Mary Cassatt. According to Weber, she was described by novelist and art critic Joris-Karl Huysmans (one of the first to appreciate the impressionists) as  "a whirl of feminine nerves transposed into her paintings." This was in Huysman's series of essays on art, L'Art Moderne (1883).

 

July 3: More on Abbaye de Jumièges

The first picture, taken from a sign at the Abbaye, shows the buildings and gardens of the Abbaye de Jumièges at its full extent (in the 18th century). The bits in red are all that remains of this once rich and formidable abbey.

2. To reach the terrace gardens, you climb a grand double staircase.

3. From there, you can look across the fields and trees that grow now where various buildings once stood.

4.  While we were there, we admired several "natural" art installations.

More old photos

I also found this old photo on ebay (searching for arts & crafts chairs) which I found very sweet.

I'm always touched by these old photos, taken to preserve the image of somone who was loved by those who loved her. And now, 100 years later, it shows up as "anonymous" on an ebay auction. One immediately wonders what became of this little person, standing so attentively, her eyes fixed on someone standing next to the camera.

Other pleasant images & memories

We spent a pleasant sunny afternoon in Rodez. Among the pleasant sights was a market selling all sorts of bric-a-brac, including these two chairs.

Housekeeping note: pretty places blogging

The next five days are going to be crazy-busy for me, gearing up for the Final. 

You may see more of these pretty places over the next couple days.

This, I believe, was in Aveyron in June 2011.

Tuesday regrets

In August of 2006, my husband and I made a trip to Toulouse to equip the apartment we had rented there. Our furniture was going to take about 6 - 8 weeks to reach France, and my husband needed to be able to camp out in our apartment until it arrived. We bought the essentials--silverware, pots and pans, a bed and bedding, towels, Ikea Pöang chair and side tables, but we hadn't found a table.

The afternoon before we had to return to the US, we walked the route through the twisty, narrow medieval streets that he would drive in and out of town, and then, we climbed in the car and drove out of town to an antique dealer west of town. We wanted to practice driving and navigating, but we also thought that possibly we would find an old French table there, and that would be cool. 

So we made our white-knuckled way out of town, managing one roundabout after another. It was a basically straight shot from Toulouse, and at the end we found ourselves parked near a small château on a romantically neglected estate. A small building near the edge of the property served as  the antiques shop.

We spoke no French. The stylish, helpful woman who came to help us spoke no English. But we managed. We found a charming walnut table there, traditionally Toulousain (which looks a lot like this). It was displayed with a set of eight side chairs--small walnut chairs with caned seats and carved flowers on the caned medallion back--for 1000€ or about $1,250 at that time. I had never seen chairs quite like these. We bought the table; we did not buy the chairs.

I have regretted this ever since. I mean really regret. Really seriously regret. I know this is disturbed, a first world problem, but I have searched for these chairs in museums, in flea markets, in antique shops, on ebay. It has become my quest.

It was the only decision we could make at the time. We had no room to transport the table and the chairs; It was 4:30 in the afternoon; it was too late to drive into Toulouse, drop off the table, and drive back for the chairs. Our plane left at dawn the next morning. Plus, I was uncertain...and there were EIGHT of them. Did I really "need" eight more chairs in a five room apartment?

So we walked away. I reassured myself that my husband could return and buy the chairs when he returned to Toulouse in a month. But I'm not sure he could have found his way back even if he shared the quest.Or if they were even there still.

But what was it about these chairs that made me so gaga? The shape? The wood? The caning? The slightly deeper narrower seat than usual. The carving? The vision of these chairs scattered  through out my house? Whatever. I keep searching.

So today, I give you images of some French chairs. I have never found anything quite like the Toulousain chairs again, but maybe some day.

Imagine something in lovely aged French walnut (the wood like the last chair here), with a caned medallion back, with a carved rose ornament, in shape rather like the first image of the gilted chair. Its seat was rather deeper seat than usual, proportioned more like the red velvet ones.

I don't know what I would do if I found a set like this.

 

 

 

We gather at this table, Lord...

I came across a series of thoughtful essays about the French  written by one of those international persons whom I find so awesome. Her father was Chinese, her mother, German (iirc) and she was reared in Australia. After falling in love with a Frenchman, she lived in Toulouse while obtaining her PhD in French, and now she teaches in England, in "Winter upon Myre."

In one, she describes how she and her boyfriend were having a terrible time renting a flat in England..."Quoth T., his eyes widening with horror "But... where do zey eat? Zis iss not posseeble! Zere iss no room for a dining table!" (except that as we were speaking in French he didn't have a funny accent at all; this is just a touch of cheap comedy for which I trust you will forgive me). The fact remains: these flats had been furnished, and very thoroughly furnished, with no remaining space for a dining table. "So... 'ow do zeze Eenglish people eat?" we wondered..."

She explicates, "Food is important in France -- you have all heard that before. Food is an art, sure. But what does that actually mean for the great majority of French people, who can't afford to eat in the Tour d'Argent? Well, in fact -- rather a lot. It is not just that they are capable of talking about food for hours on end; food is fundamental for the French. Food is a source of pleasure and nutrition; it also gives meaning and structure to life. Eating is an activity of high symbolic value.

Food is an inexhaustible topic of conversation. I have heard normal, healthy French people talk about vinaigrettes for as long, and with as much emotion, as English people talking about soap operas. Never mind the wine and cheese! It is also a daily timetable: people are reunited with their families, friends or colleagues at set times, each day, around a table. Arguably this is no longer as true in Paris as it used to be; there are more and more shops selling frozen food, and people have less time for the long, serious weektime lunches of yesteryear. But Toulouse, and the South-West of France in general, still claims the prize for the longest daily lunch breaks: about two hours."

The theme of today's post, then, is to provide supporting evidence to the question of where  one can eat in France?

#1: In Glanum, at picnic tables.

#2: The garden at Chateau de Roussan

#3: The garden at one of the museums in Avignon.

#4: A table set up outside a pottery showroom in St-Quentin-la-poterie

5. A table set up in Uzes.