FrenchKate

October 19: Random photo by Cartier-Bresson

This evocative photo by Henri Cartier-Bresson was taken in Hyéres in the south of France in 1932. I came across it while sorting out details of the Gondi de Retz family. Albert Gondi de Retz, the first Marquis de Belle-Île, was also count of Hyéres.

Hyéres is a town on the Mediteranean in southeastern France, basically kitty-corner across France from storm-washed Belle-Île. One of the warmest cities in France--so warm that palm trees grow--Hyéres is a favorite destination of modern French "snowbirds."

Personally, I suspect the Gondi de Retz family spent more time in Hyéres than in Belle-Île, if they spent any time at all in Belle-Île.

I post this photo simply because I think it is very appealing. 

Walking the ramparts of St Malo, part 4 (actual date, April 24)

The western section of the ramparts walk--from the Bastion of Holland past the Beach of Bon Secours to the Tour Bidouane --dates to the 15th century. The walk rambles.

In the southwestern corner, the ramparts widen, creating an open, level space, almost a treeless park. The size of a football field, the space was still on the level of the ramparts above the city streets. This space, the Bastion de la Holland, was built after the earlier city sea walls collapsed in 1674. I was surprised to find such an open space in a medieval town, but evidently, the openness is thanks to three windmills that had operated on this site since the middle ages. So windmills make sense. Today, the space is very restful: lawns, park benches, cannons (installed in 1696), lovely 18th century mansions, incredible sea views and fresh sea air, and, at one end, the statue of Jacques Cartier (1491 - 1557)--the Saint-Malo native who claimed Canada for France.

Its name, "de la Hollande" dates to the Franco-Dutch War, when Saint-Malo was the target of several military actions. The cannons were installed in 1696. 

The walk meanders past several gates providing access to the Beach of Bon Secours.

At the other end, the horse-shoe shaped Tour Bidouane was built in the late 15th century.  Transformed into a powder magazine around 1696, it survived bombardment during another of Louis XIV's wars. An Anglo-Dutch ship tried to blow up the city ramparts by blowing up the explosives stored in tour Bidouane, but crashed on rocks submerged near the tower instead.

You can access the top of tour Bidouane by a narrow internal staircase. The views from there over the bay are spectacular, and an orientation table allows you to identify distant landmarks.

 

Walking the ramparts of St Malo, part 2 (fantasy trip, day 1) actual date: April 22, 2020

I learned a few things today that will enhance our ramparts walk. The first image is a map from 1715 that answers some questions.

First, as suspected, the Grande Porte--formerly the Sea Gate--used to be the main entrance to the city. It was the oldest gate; the quay was right in front of it. The ships would dock at the quay, and their goods would be carried through the Grande Porte's imposing twin towers to warehouses in the the city. Now "bassins" have been created from what was once open harbor, and the Grand Sea Gate faces a marina of pleasure boats.

Second, as suspected, the St Vincent gate and the château guarded the only land route to St Malo. St Malo (originally St Malo Island) was built on a small rock island bound to the mainland by a spit of sandy beach. This beach protected the harbor created by island, mainland and beach. Over time, land has been reclaimed and filled in and St Malo has been bound to the mainland.

Third, the southern ramparts and the surrounded quarter were reclaimed from the sea in 1715. If you look carefully at the map I posted a couple days ago, you will find a street called "Vieux Remparts"--old ramparts--that marks the former south wall of the city. The regular layout of this area  is a big clue that I missed until now. Over the course of the 18th century, rich ship owners and merchants built their splendid houses and warehouses in this reclaimed quarter. It was known as "La Californie" quarter, possibly because those wealthy inhabitants were adventurers who made their fortunes with "the silver of Peru and the gold of California." 

So, on our snail's pace tour of the ramparts of St Malo, we enjoy the views as we walk the southern ramparts from the Bastion of St Louis on the SE corner to the Bastion of St Philippe on the SW corner--from enclosed modern harbors to open sea--past the lovely houses reconstructed after 1944 on ramparts built in 1714.

In the 1714 map, the Bastion of St Louis is identified as the Bastion of St Francis and the Bastion of St Philippe is identified as the Bastion of St Michael. I wonder when the names were changed and why?

A pier or sea wall, Môle des Noires, was constructed in 1837 at the foot of the Bastion of St Philippe. Designed to protect the outer harbor, it extends 520 meters and affords splendid views of St Malo, the Bastion St Philippe, and, especially, the sea.

The wind whips your hair, the sun beats down, the sea surrounds you, and seagulls are everywhere.

 

May 26: Random views of Diderot's birthplace in Langres, France

Denis Diderot (1713 - 1784) was born and raised in Langres, France; the town opened a museum dedicated to the Enlightenment and their native son in 2013 (the tricentennial of his birth.) 

We stopped to scout Langres en route to Auxerre in Sept 2018, and while  I wanted to visit the museum--and the fine old hôtel particuliére that houses it--we just didn't have time. I'll have to go back to this lovely little town. It is well worth a return visit.

I found the first photo on wikipedia. It's a postcard from 1905 showing Langres--"the new Siberia"--during a particularly harsh winter.The building on the right in the background is Diderot's birthplace. Note the statue.

The second photo, showing roughly the same view, is from google maps.

I took the third photo on our breeze through Langres. I am facing the back of the statue, so Diderot's birthplace is on the left. It is astonishing to see how little place Diderot has changed in 100 years.

 

Dec 18: History of Mothe-Chandeniers

The château Mothe-Chandendier is not as old as it looks although the original château was built in the 13th century. But by the 18th century the original château had been abandoned, and it may have been pillaged during the Revolution.

In 1809, a wealthy businessman purchased Mothe-Chandendiers and restored the property in the medieval style, with canals and a lake. His grandaughter, Baroness leJeune, transformed the château in the romantic, renaissance style, inspired by some of the great châteaux of the Val de Loire: it has a Renaissance staircase like the famous François I staircase at Blois and, sitting in its small lake, it resembles Azay-le-Rideau.

For approximately sixty years, the château served as the country home for the Barons leJeune--think parties, hunting, amusements. But in 1932, a fire, ignited by a newly installed central heating system, destroyed the château. Only the chapel, the pigeoniére and the outbuildings were spared. The destruction was complete: valuable old tapestries, rare objet d'art, furniture, precious paintings and a priceless library were all consumed by the flames. 

Despite the loss of the château, the property had value. The estate included five thousand acres of land--of which about 3,000 were forested and good for hunting and 2,000 were farmed. The land and shell of a château was purchased in the 1960s by a philanthropist who used the land to resettle about 550 people repatriated from Algeria to France after the French-Algerian war. But that ambition fizzled out and in the 1980s the land was purchased and resold in lots by Bank Crédit-Lyonnais.

The photos are old ones of the exterior of the château and the Grand Salon with its magnificent fireplace plus a floor plan of the ground floor. Note the sequence of rooms: grand salon, billiard room, dining room and the galerie

 

 

Feb 19: Day 12--a small chateau

Our accommodations In Azay-le-Rideau were in charming B&B, Manoir de la Touche, currently owned by a Frenchman, Alan, who may have invented the souvenir machines that stamp souvenir coins at historic sites--we heard that from the Scotsman whose stay at the manoir with his wife lapped our stay. Alan told us that he had a machine tooling business that made custom parts for cars in Detroit. Both could be true.

According to our host, the manoir was built in 1530--online sources identify its builder as Nicolas de la Valette, Seigneur de la Touche. The property was an ancient fief--in feudal times, a heritable piece of land granted by a lord to his vassal in return for allegiance and military service. 

It was a pleasure to discover; unlike the grand château that we saw on this trip, the Manoir de la Touche was a comfortable and relatively small country house. While its details were ancient and its rooms huge, its basic layout was familiar to a modern eye: You entered a hall that ran from the front of the house to the stairs at the back. On your right was a sitting room; on the left the dining room. The kitchen was beyond the dining room.

At some point someone replaced the circular stairs in the tower with a straight staircase with a half landing. These led to two splendid chambers above the dining room and sitting room. More recently, stairs were added to access two rooms in the high-ceiled attic.

I admired the Renaissance doorway, the French ceilings, the massive fireplaces, the extensive, pretty grounds. It was excellent.

After the bill was paid, goodbyes made, and we were walking to the car to depart, I discovered a plaque on the wall of the square tower.

It commemorated a reunion of the Collet-d'Escury family in 1985. Their ancestors--Daniel Collet d'Escury, his wife, Anne Catherine de la Valette, heiress of the manoir de la Touche, and their children--had fled from the manoir to the Netherlands after the revocation of the edict of Nantes in 1685 threatened French Huguenots.

Daniel Collet d'Escury enlisted in the army of William of Orange--later the English King William III--and participated in the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688 when Protestant "King Billy" seized the throne of England. Daniel and Catherine  died in Dublin (in 1699 and 1714), but their children remained in the Netherlands. 

It was fairly easy to find the Collet-d'Escury descendants in the Netherlands--their names morphing over time from Henri and Jean to Hendrik and Johan--still noble, and recognized as barons by the 19th century. In the 21st century, the Collot d'Escury are chemical engineers, hockey players, business tycoons.

One source said that Audrey Hepburn was a Collet-d'Escury descendent, but I couldn't verify that.

Anyhow, it was a lovely place to stay, and I was thrilled to discover this tie to the religious conflicts that tore France apart in the 16th and 17th century. I've said you can't go anywhere in France without finding its trace, and the unexpected plaque certainly supported that claim.

 

Sept 24: Fontainebleau introduced the Renaissance style to France

A quick reminder of Renaissance style. The postcard of the François I wing of the Château de Blois--its Renaissance wing--is from around 1900, but the scene looks just the same today. The trees are taller.

Renaissance architecture-here I quote my Michelin guidebook--"under the influence of Italian culture, favoured a return to classical themes: columns with capital imitating the Ionic and Corinthian orders; facades decorated with niches, statues and roundels; pilasters flanking the windows....Quadripartite vaulting was replaced by coffered ceilings and barrel vaulting."

I had to look up" roundel"--"A roundel is a small circular decorative plate used extensively in Renaissance courtyards and arcades often a niche containing a bust. A roundel window is a small, ornate, circular window." Thank you, google.

I came across this floor plan of Fontainebleau from 1927. You can make out the donjon in the Cour Ovale--the U-shaped wing to the right. The donjon is the squarish building just to the left of the lettering. 

Finally I came across the travel poster of Fontainebleau from around 1890.

Feb 21: Silk industry..."the glory of France"

In 1891, roughly 2% of the French population was involved in the silk industry--around 600,000 men and women--and the industry was valued at about one hundred and forty million dollars (roughly $3.5 billion today.)

Around one hundred and fifty thousand persons, chiefly women and young girls in southeastern France, were employed during the six weeks that it took to raise the silk worms. Silk worm eggs--"graine"--were preserved in "hatcheries" during the winter in a cold, dry room. Gradually, the temperature of the room was raised from 62º to 78º and in late April or May, the caterpillars would emerge from the egg, placed on the branch of a mulberry tree and housed on a shelf in an well-aired rearing room. Approximately 30 days and four skin sheds later, the little caterpillar would spin its cocoon with a single thread of silk approximately 1,000 to 2,000 feet long.

Another fifty thousand workers were engaged in reeling and throwing. Before the caterpillar could develop into a moth, the caterpillar would be "stoved" --subjected to heat high enough to kill it. The cocoon would then be soaked in hot water to melt the gum that bound the silk filament, and the silk thread unraveled and reeled unto a wheel. When one filament ended, another would be twisted onto it to make one continuous thread. Eventually, the raw silk threads would be bound into skeins, then five-pound "books" made from skeins, and 133-pound "packages" made into books and sent to the next stage of production--where silk yarn is created, dyed and finished.

Two hundred and thirty thousand looms were involved in weaving silk cloth, ribbons, passementeries, and braid (mostly in the Rhone and Loire river valleys) and another three hundred and fifty thousand were involved in supporting trades--pattern-drawers, clerks, merchants, dressers, dyers, the workers who prepare the thread, the mechanicians.

Yes, that adds up to 780,000 people. I'm just reporting what my primary source says--(Albert de la Berge, translated for the Chautauquan, vol 12, 1892)--not questioning his math.

Albert de la Berge comments, "The work which exacts no strength, but great patience, activity, care, and precaution, is carried on by women and girls. As every one knows, it is not a work of the fields, but a sort of agriculture within doors."

The etching of sericulture--you can identify the rearing room--is from Diderot's & Alembert's Encyclopédie. The photo is English--silk weavers in Spitalsfield in 1885.

Jan 26: not French...

I have been reading the past week about the Jews of Baghdad. Around 1920--when the aerial shot was taken--Baghdad's population was about 25 - 30% Jewish, similar to modern New York, around 50,000 people. Today, this community, descendants of Jews carried to Babylon from Judea in the 6th century, is gone, dispersed around the world.

I am in way over my head. As I read the history, observe the old photos, I am keenly aware of how little I know of the world.

The photos are from wikipedia.

Sept 22: Truth and the Valley of the Shadow of Death

My constant reader asked if the photo of the desolation on the top of Mort-Homme was the "the one that one supposedly doctored, and raised all kinds of questions about the veracity of photo's, etc?" 

The short answer is no, that photo--Valley of the Shadow of Death, taken by English photographer, Roger Fenton, in 1854-- is posted here, or rather, both versions of that photo are posted here. This is often considered the first war photo.

Both photos show a road in Crimea near the site of the Charge of the Light Brigade during a bombardment. One version, the more frequently reproduced, has cannonballs on the road, and the second does not. This has raised all sorts of doubts. Which image came first? Was the photo with cannonballs on the road posed?

Errol Morris did an investigation of these photos a few years ago that I found fascinating. He was provoked by Susan Sontag's cynicism in her last book, "Regarding the Pain of Others":

Sontag wrote "Not surprisingly many of the canonical images of early war photography turn out to have been staged, or to have had their subjects tampered with. After reaching the much shelled valley approaching Sebastopol in his horse-drawn darkroom, [Roger] Fenton made two exposures from the same tripod position: in the first version of the celebrated photo he was to call “The Valley of the Shadow of Death”(despite the title, it was not across this landscape, that the Light Brigade made its doomed charge), the cannonballs are thick on the ground to the left of the road, but before taking the second picture – the one that is always reproduced – he oversaw the scattering of the cannonballs on the road itself."

No one actually knows which photo was taken first, so Sontag's assertion that Fenton was deceiving the viewers by tampering with the scene was based on an assumption. Morris set out to determine the order of the photos. In the end, he was rather disappointed to conclude that the cannonballs-on-the-road photo was taken AFTER the cannonballs-off-the-road one, as Sontag claims. However, he also concluded that no one--including Sontag--actually knows how or why the cannonballs were placed on the road. Why, he wonders, are people "attracted to conspiracy theories – even conspiracies of one – and to claims of posing, fakery and alteration. We look at data. It’s complex, hard to understand, but instead of trying to determine the meaning of the data, we leap to a simplistic conclusion: the data is not real data. It has been doctored. A group of people (or even one person) conspires to trick us, to give us false information, and we’re too smart to be fooled by such a conspiracy.

Isn’t Sontag’s theory something like that? She resolves a mystery simply by declaring it: a trick, a plan to deceive."

Morris goes on to observe that "the meaning of photography is contained in these two images. By thinking about the Fenton photographs we are essentially thinking about some of the most vexing issues in photography – about posing, about the intentions of the photographer, about the nature of photographic evidence – about the relationship between photographs and reality."