My Cut-Rate Grand Tour, Day Twenty-seven

Sunday, 1 January, 1989
New Year’s Day

WIEN, HOTEL DREI KÖNIGE-- I was rather surprised this morning that I was awake in good enough time to make it to church, and that I couldn’t get back to sleep, despite only having been in bed for four hours or so. So I got up and put on the dark gray dress I should’ve worn last night (thanks again, Rollo*) and beat it up towards the Stephensdom.

Turns out I could have saved time by taking the U-Bahn but I’d forgotten there was a stop close to the Stephensdom. So I hoofed it and got there a fuzz late and had to sit way back. But at least I could sit. Lots of people there.

They were nice enough to provide song sheets for the responses, so I was able to participate to a decent extent in that, even in German. Still, it would be nice . . .

Went and found some breakfast afterwards at the Aida Konditorei. Very crowded, but I got a sausage roll and a pastry and found a place at a stand up counter whereat to eat them.

After that it was back to the Schleifmühlgasse and the Hotel der Drei Könige.

Changed into my gray flannels, oxford shirt, and sweater; took my camera (Minolta) and headed back out. To be perfectly honest I would just as soon have gone back to bed-- the weather was pretty overcast and gray anyway-- but considering how little time I have here I whipped myself into action.

Paid my respects to Schiller at the Schillerplatz in front of the Kunstakademie, along the Elisabethstraße. But my object was the Kunsthistorische Museum a bit further to the west. Got there and yes, just as I’d feared, the place was closed for New Year’s, like everything else, practically. I didn’t feel quite as dumb as I could’ve, when I saw some other people, who looked like locals, going up and unsuccessfully trying the doors. I wasn’t the only over-optimistic idiot!

So I diddled back to the Opera, looking in store windows, including one of a lighting store (closed, of course) that had some really nice modern type fixtures. Myron’s* office would probably be interested to know if there’s anything there that can be had in the States.

Something that’s to be had here is Mozartkugeln and the shops selling that sort of thing were open. Shopped around and found a good deal on a box of eighteen on Tegetthoffgasse. I learned there’s more than one kind. Amazing. There’s the Salzburger kind and the Wiener kind. The Salzburger kind are cheaper. I shall have lots for tea parties at Coverdale*.

I’d shot out the rest of the film by then and hadn’t brought more with me. So it was as good a time as any to find something to eat, even though it was only around 4:00.

Ended up at a place that was nice in that it seemed aimed at the locals. Menu all in German and German language newspapers hanging on poles for people to read. The trouble is, I hadn’t brought my little German-English dictionary. I didn’t want it for the papers, no, but for the menu.

I should’ve been ok. Should’ve. I hate sauerkraut, can’t abide the stuff, and so I ordered a meal that didn’t include it, but rather Linsen, which I was pretty sure was lentils.

But when the meal came the waiter (who also seemed to be the proprietor) brought sauerkraut! And then pretty much disappeared. And without the dictionary to make sure, I didn’t feel confident in complaining. So the bowl of kraut just sat there untouched.

Had a bottle of beer with it all. Funny, but by the label it appeared to be the original Budweiser brand, from Budwar, Czechoslovakia. Similar logo and everything.

Didn’t say anything about the kraut when I paid. The cashier was different and didn’t seem to speak English.

Trotted back to the hotel and got back into my gray dress for the Beethoven concert. Decided this’d be a great time to inaugurate the burgundy red purse I bought in Florence a couple-three days ago.

Well, sort of. It started spitting rain as soon as I left the hotel and now the front of the bag has all these charming raised spots on it. Lovely.

The Ninth was being done at the Wiener Konzerthaus on the Lothringerstraße, and I took the U-Bahn the short hop from Karlsplatz to Stadtpark. Lots of other people were making their way to the concert hall, too, and I was glad I had my ticket already.

It seemed like the coat check facilities were just acres of tables in the main lobby. More than one piece was extra so I economised, so to speak, by stuffing my sweater and my scarf up the sleeves of my coat.

From the numbers on my ticket I was pretty sure I was in the balcony. And besides, that’s where I was directed by an usher. But when I got up there, I found there was no such seat. Finally I figured out that my seat was in the second row of a bank of chairs that ran parallel to the sides of the hall on the main floor, perpendicular to the orchestra seating. This meant my view of the stage was a little oblique, but not anything you could call bad.

The hall was packed for tonight’s performance, which featured the Wiener Symphoniker and the Wiener Singakademie under Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, with Brigette Pascher-Klebel, soprano, Margarita Lilowa, alto, Robert Schunk, tenor, and Robert Lloyd (a Brit!), bass.

De Burgos didn’t purport to do anything new or clever, as Whatsisname (Glenn Block?) did at UMKC a few years ago. The performance was great because it was Beethoven’s Ninth. Conversely, it could’ve used more heart or something . . .

Oh, well. Most of the people there thought it was standing ovation material.

The rain had stopped when the concert let out. And I was not hailed by any Egyptian newspaper vendors during my walk from Karlsplatz back to the Schleifmühlgasse.

My Cut-Rate Grand Tour: Day Twenty-three

Wednesday, 28 December, 1988
Firenze [Florence]

Tired, so I slept till nearly 10:00. Got up, hit a pastry shop/snack bar for some breakfast (Italian pastries aren’t as good as French ones) then a bank for some Italian currency for some traveller’s cheques.

Then, since my main personal reason for coming to Firenze (apart from the external feeling that I "ought" to see it) was to do a bit of shopping, I hit the open market.

After about three hours of wandering up and down the Via dell’Ariento I came away with a brown leather belt for 15,000 lire (the man put a different buckle on for me), some four-button-length silk-lined black leather gloves for around 22,000 lire (to replace the pair I lost the left hand to in Lyon), a dark wine red leather dress purse for 35,000 lire, and a large (120 cm square) wool navy, gray, and red scarf for 27,000 lire.†

The young man who sold me that might be going to Philadelphia in the next year-- to study at Wharton. Ye gods. That’s where Mort Levi* [one of our best architecture clients back in the States] went. He’s not sure he wants to leave his friends and family, though, since he feels that if he goes to America he goes for good.

This city is funny for the language. I’ll be struggling along in Italian and the Florentine will inform me he or she speaks English-- and so they do, often better than I.

Bought some dates and some black olives in the adjacent covered market. Interesting thing about that place. I’ve seen nudie posters in machine shops and car repair garages, but I’d never thought to see a picture of an all but naked woman hung up as an inducement to buy vegetables. Maybe I’m silly but I gave such stands no consideration.

My shopping accomplished, I went over to the Duomo and went inside. Very much a tourist church, though some people were managing to pray in a side chapel or two.

Paid the fee to go up Brunelleschi’s dome. The inside of it was covered with the omnipresent scaffolding so I have no idea how it’s supposed to look from the floor of the cathedral. But you can go up to a gallery around the springing point and then on up over the dome itself (someone had chalked on the upper surface of the inner dome, in English, "BRUNELLESCHI IS GOD") then up and outside onto a deck around the cupola.

Damned shame it was so blasted foggy today. The view must be magnificent when it’s clear.

I’d gone through most of my Italian currency at the markets and I still had to pay the hotel for tonight. So I went back, paid the lady, dropped off my purchases, and got more traveller’s cheques out of the money belt. Changed those at a different bank than before. Better exchange rate at the second. Oh well! Bought a very good hot proscuitto ham and mushroom sandwich at a snack bar and ate it on the way there.

Went by Santa Maria Novello to look at the façade but didn’t go in. Headed down to the Arno to look at the river from the Ponte S. Trinita. Ponte Vecchio to the east there, all lined with shops. Went and half-crossed it as well. This place is unbelievable like Toulouse and Paris. Jewelry and fashion and other high priced shops all crammed in one after another. Who buys all this stuff?

The Piazza Signoria next. And the woman at the lecture last night was right (not the Canadian I spoke to, but another Toronto native who either works for or lives with or is married to-- or all three!-- Mr. von Durer)-- the place is dripping with scaffolding. You can just see Cellini’s Perseus standing above it in the southern arcade. Nevertheless, this was the artistic reason I’d come to Firenze. Berlioz stood here, about where I was standing, and saw that statue. He was inspired by it and by the memoirs of its sculptor to compose his opera Benevenuto Cellini. He saw all this, that I was seeing (sans scaffolding), and he gazed on these very buildings and sculptures-- oh God!

OK, then, time to go home!

No, at least one museum had to be done and I chose the Uffizi. Saw everything there (that wasn’t being cleaned). I love the way they can afford to let all these Roman copies of Greek sculptures just sit out unlabelled in a dimly-lit corridor. Hell, they’ve got more where those came from.

When I was still in the early period galleries a girl came up and asked me if I spoke English. I said yes and she said, "Are you Blogwen*-- I forget your last name." I looked and it was Melissa* from the program in Oxford. Well.

We stood and talked for awhile. She’s travelling with Lucy*, another of the OOSC people, and is heading for Greece tonight. She, too, was in Paris the 18th and saw Darrell* and Harriet* [two more of our Oxford American contingent and fellow-lodgers at Coverdale College*] at the Louvre. They were looking for the Impressionist paintings . . . †† And if I think I’ve been having problems with French, they were really in difficulties. Melissa told me they knew none at all.

It was nice to see a familiar face like that. Very encouraging.

She'd been at the Uffizi for awhile already and was getting ready to leave. Me, I still had a lot to see. And so, dutifully, I did. I know it’s blasphemy to say it but, on this trip at least, I find myself unmoved by great paintings per se. Oh, it was nice seeing all the famous art history slide subjects in person, such as the Giottos from last night and the Botticellis and then the Raphaels and the Titians. But after awhile my eyes just glaze over. I got a pounding headache from staring at things and playing the intellectual. I ought to be more heart-stirred by these but . . . I don’t know. I did enjoy them, yes, but after awhile it’s like ticking off a checklist.

There was a Visitation scene that impressed me, by Mario-- damn, now I can’t recall his name; begins with an "A," I think‡-- anyway, I liked it for the originality of the facial expressions of the two women, neither hyper-humanistic nor "unco gude." Mary looks as if she’s wordlessly saying, "Oh, cousin, it’s all too wonderful for me, I don’t know how I can express it or even bear up under it!" And Elizabeth’s expression replies, "That’s all right, little one, you don’t have to try to tell me, I know!" This Mary looks as if she has an appreciation of the long centuries of Jewish prophecy leading up to this moment that now find their fulfillment through her. She has a happy lack of that sense of being herself the pivot of history so obnoxiously present in so many pictures of the Virgin Mary. I’ll admit the effect was more 19th Century Romantic than 16th Century classical Renaissance, but that’s the Renaissance’s problem.

I still can't get over how badly-lit the art is in that place. What with that, sensory overload, and maybe my feat of Alpinism earlier at the Duomo, by the time I left the Uffizi I had a raging headache. I’d thought I’d find a restaurant and sit down for a meal, but no way. I bought some cheese at a shop and ate it for supper with the olives and dates and more of a chocolate bar I bought in Dijon.
______________________
†As far as I can figure it, the exchange rate was around 1,230 lire to the dollar.
‡Mariotto Albertinelli.
††Oh, dear. Those had all been moved to the Quai d'Orsay.

My Cut-Rate Grand Tour: Day Twenty-Two

Tuesday, 27 December, 1988
Löhenthal* to Firenze [Florence]

10:36 train from Olten. Frau Renzberger* packed me a nice lunch and Lukas* took me to the station. He was gracious enough to wait with me till the train came but it seemed a real strain for both of us. I’ve been trying to figure out what I could’ve done to make him act like this and can come up with zip. But something’s happened to make him act like a вопреки and it’s really too bad. I need to make some good friends at Coverdale* this next term and I’d thought he’d be one. But apparently not. I’d thought we’d get to know one another better on this visit, but now he seems like a permanent stranger.

This was so frustrating and depressing I could’ve cried right there in the compartment. But instead I wrote a long letter to Janie*. Had cause in the course of it to think about Nigel* and that made me feel a lot better.

The Alps were quite lovely. Sun came out and showed them up beautifully. And I enjoyed looking at the little Tuscan churches in the Italian part of Switzerland.

Funny thing at the border crossing. Italian customs man came in and asked the guy opposite me a question in Italian. He answered, and then the official addressed me. Out of habit I said, "Pardon?" in French. At which the customs man rolled his eyes, lifted his hands towards heaven, and departed, without asking for passports or anything.

Train change in Milan. Found a first class compartment this time. Second is supposed to be so much more atmospheric and authentic; I just found it tiring. Seats are too shallow.

Hit the closest Frommer selection for places to stay in Florence. Unfortunately the city was pretty thick with students on holiday, like me, and I ended up renting a double room for around $24 a night. Couldn’t deal with schlepping bags any farther. So the Locanda Marcella it was.

In the Frommer book I’d read of a nightly lecture on Renaissance art given by a American art historian in Florence. It’s being on for this evening was confirmed by a poster in the railroad station, so as soon as I’d dropped my bags in the room on the Via Faenza, I headed over to the Borgo San Lorenzo.

Paid my respects to the Duomo first-- what I could see of it in the fog.

Streets of Florence are frequently narrow, darkish (yet people are on them anyway), and have very narrow sidewalks. The pavement is blocks of stone, cut rectangular maybe 12" x 15", and laid diagonally. Sidewalks usually have cars parked halfway on them, making it quite a game to walk along, what with the cars coming, and especially with the motorscooters whizzing by.

Quite a few people around the cathedral (at 8:00 PM) but still I didn’t feel comfortable going around back of the chevet. Too dark.

The Borgo San Lorenzo was lined with black men, apparently North African, selling belts, jewelry, and other souvenirs off mats and blankets spread out on the pavement. I wondered that they don’t worry about the motorcyclists coming along and destroying their goods.

There were also a lot of different languages to be heard there, including American English. Seemed quite odd, after France.

Waited for 8:30 and time for the lecture. It’s at the top of the house at No. 20 and given by a Kirk von Durer, who also runs a gallery at that address.

It was worthwhile going, more from a social than from an art historical standpoint. There was Chianti on the deck (view of Duomo) beforehand and I talked with a couple from Toronto, also students on Christmas break, about travels in France (she’s a student in Grenoble) and other things . . .

They mentioned it and I’ve become conscious of it, too, that my accent (English) has changed and become less "American." I honestly think that has intensified since last weekend with Lukas’s family. I knew they'd learned British English so I felt I should modify my speech with them so I could be understood (Lukas told me that at Coverdale he could understand me almost all the time and ditto Sam* [another compatriot in our year abroad program], despite his broad Oklahoma accent, because he speaks so slowly. It’s Darla* he could never make out. This surprised me as she seemed the most cosmopolitan of any of us. And now I can’t listen to her and discover what he means, because she’s returned to America).

In style the lecture, which was on the late Gothic/early Renaissance Florentine and Siennese painters, such as Massaccio and Giotto, was kin to Ed Eglinski’s Art History for Non-Art Majors at KU, but with even more of the stand-up comedy. I felt von Durer could have done with rather more content but I’m coming from an art historian’s viewpoint.

Not that I didn’t appreciate the humor; I did. When showing Giotto’s painting of the Stigmatization of St. Francis, he quipped, "For living such a holy life, St. Francis received the same wound marks that Christ had on the cross. Wouldn’t you rather have a Ferrari!?" "Well," think I, "only if Tom Selleck is driving it!"

The greatest thing I got out of it substantially was a realization first of how Italy was ripe for the Renaissance style, its Gothic being largely held-over Byzantine, and then of where many of the trademarks of the "Pre-Raphaelite" movement style came from. For here were the original preRaphaelites whose work inspired it.

The lecture got out at about 10:45 and I thought, I’ve heard this town is not too big on nightlife and no telling what the streets are like this time of night. So let us get back to the hotel presto.

So I set off walking very fast in what I thought was the right direction. But after awhile I realized that I’d walked for much longer than I had coming over and was nowhere that I recognised. I was using the map torn out of the Frommer book and couldn’t find the street I was on listed. And up ahead was a group of young guys who may’ve been perfectly innocent but I wasn’t taking any chances.

So I cut over to the right (after backtracking at a run) and came to a street called after St. Catherine d’Alessandria. Started heading up it, trying to get to the Via Nazionale, but decided maybe I should ask the desk clerk in a nearby hotel for his advice.

I ducked into the lobby and inquired where I was in my limited Italian: "Dove io sono?" He said something obviously contemptuous about the map I had and pulled out a better one. Turns out I hadn’t taken the radial layout of Florentine streets into consideration and was an appreciable distance away from where I wanted to be. He gave me to know I could keep the map-- grazie-- and I hoofed it back to the hotel, allowing the effect of two glasses of wine on no dinner to deceive me into thinking I could do that much running. Made it back safely but the experience was a little surreal.

My Cut-Rate Grand Tour: Day Sixteen

Wednesday, 21 December 1988
Dijon to Autun and back to Dijon

Last night as I was getting ready for bed a scene from Hector’s L’Enfance du Christ kept running through my head. It’s the part in the Flight into Egypt section where Joseph is trying to find lodging for the Holy Family in the town of Sais.

"Ouvrez, ouvrez, secourez-nous!
Laissez-nous reposer chez vous!
Que l’hospitalité sainte soit accordée
À la mère, à l’enfant!
Hélas! De la Judée, nous arrivons à pied!"†

Mon Dieu! did that fit! I about felt like I had come all the way from Paris on foot!

Train to Autun this morning. Was onboard and rolling before it occurred to me to see when I’d have to return.

Oh, great. I had just under two hours there, total, or else not be back in Dijon till 10:00 PM. Not quite.

Day was acting rather like the one when I went to Conques, but the fog settled into Autun and stayed. Meaning I couldn’t follow the steeple to St. Lazare because I couldn’t see it. And the signage wasn’t as good as in some other towns I’ve visited. I knew where the cathedral was supposed to be, generally, and kept walking up and up through the fog. I soon knew I was in trouble--I was exhausted and it was not my arms or back, it was my legs. First sign of rebellion there.

Finally made it and thought I’d come to the wrong church. Hadn’t realized how Gothicized the exterior is, especially the east end. But I proceeded around and down to the west front and, fanfare, please! there it was: Gislebertus hoc fecit. Good.

I was able to spend seventy minutes or so, only, with Maitre Gislebertus’ work, and of course there was no way I could absorb or commit to memory all of it. It must be fun sitting there on Sunday mornings, contemplating those capitals during Mass. Though of course the best ones are towards the side aisles.

Climbed up the tower stairs to the Salle Capitulaires to see the originals of many downstairs. I love that Adoration of the Magi, with the Baby Jesus reaching out to touch the one gift. It’s sweet in all the best ways.

And of course there is the wonderful tympanum, with the otherworldly Christ disposing all and the angels sheltering and aiding the little saved souls, who hide in their skirts like children.

What must it be like to live in a town that has such things in it?!

Milk run back to Dijon. Beaucoup des estudiants again. So odd looking at them. Miniskirts on the girls, long hair on the boys; they could be my crowd sixteen years ago. I feel as if I were caught in a time warp.

Back in Dijon, I found that the train I wanted to take Friday to Bern is booked solid. And that the only possibility of my getting there before 11:00 PM is to get up for one that leaves at 5:58 AM. Ouch.

And that the train and bus connections to Cluny are impossible, considering how eartly I’ll have to get to bed tomorrow night. Never mind the way to Vezelay. It’s only by bus and I could never discover which ones.

So regrettable as it may be, I think tomorrow we are going to punt. We do not want to be the world’s worst bitch with Lukas’s* family.

Took myself to dinner this evening. First time I’d sat down for a meal since Toulouse; about time I did. After wandering around a bit, I came back and ate at the restaurant across the street from the hotel, the St. Jean.‡

75F menu. Had escargot for the first time ever; I recalled Miss Manners says you order escargot for the sake of the garlic butter, but the butter for these had parsley. Oh well. I learned it is expected that one will dip bits of bread into the melted butter and thus get it all.

As for the little boogers themselves, in that juice they’re just another mollusk. I prefer oysters but they’re good enough.

The entree was trout in a wine sauce with whole mustard grains. Waitress did a decent job of deboning the fish, though of course eating trout is always an ossic adventure-- which I always forget.

Service was attentive, almost too much so. Server kept wanting to talk but I disliked feeling that my eating habits were being inspected.

Ordered a demi bottle of white wine with the meal, of the same sort as was in the fish sauce. An aligote, I think it was called. I probably didn’t need 35cl of wine but I drank it anyway. I can’t say I was drunk thereafter but I was glad I only had to cross the street to return to my hotel.

Dessert was pears in cassis juice, aka the omnipresent blackcurrent. Pretty and nice.

So. There, I have Dined.

Back to the room and wrote postcards, including one to Prof. Kay [my Medieval history professor] at KU.

And listened to French radio. They played a new cut of The Band’s "The Weight," which I’ve been singing in my head, among other songs, since Moissac:

"I pulled into Nazareth,
I was feelin’ 'bout half past dead.
Just needed a place where I could lay my head.
‘Hey, mister, can you tell me
Where a man might find a bed?’
He just grinned, shook my hand,
‘No’ was all he said."

Sounds familiar!
____________________________
†Roughly translated, "Please open the door! Help us! Let us come in and rest in your house! For holy hospitality's sake, be kind to a mother and her infant child! Alas! all the way from Judea we have come on foot!"
‡This establishment continued with a good reputation presumably till sometime after the turn of the millenium, and was reopened in 2007 as "Pourquoi Pas?"

My Cut-Rate Grand Tour: Day Fifteen

Tuesday, 20 December, 1988
Paris to Reims to Paris to Dijon

PARIS-- Was supposed to get the 8:30 for Reims from the Gare d’Est this morning. But due to not figuring in Paris rush hour on the Métro and having to figure out a strange railway station, I just missed it. First time I’ve missed a train so far. Funny, as I discovered later, I might’ve made it if I’d remembered to look for the train on the board for "Grands Lignes" instead of trying to find it on the one for "Banlieu." The difficulty was that there was an 8:30 to the suburbs, too.

Nothing to do at that point but use the time I had. So I reserved a place on the TGV for Dijon tonight.

Then I boarded the Métro and almost went out to see the abbey church of St. Denis. But the word was that the Métro there was running at 50% only and I had two more transfers to make. And if I was going to Reims today I needed to make the 11:05 train and it was heading towards 10:00 as it was.

So I stayed on the subway to the Invalides stop and walked over in the Paris sunshine to the chapel of St. Louis des Invalides.

This church witnessed the first performance of my Requiem. They were about to hold a funeral service so I couldn’t linger, but it was good to see the place and wonder exactly where Berlioz had placed his four brass choirs.

I could see the Eiffel Tower’s top over some buildings near there. Closest I’ll get this trip . . .

Shocking, isn’t it? But this trip to Paris has primarily been a Berlioz pilgrimage for me. And even though I couldn’t find the Conservatoire day before yesterday and didn’t get the chance to visit his old street in Montmartre to see where he lived or go and "eat bread and salt on the Pont Neuf" as he did in his poor student days, I found he was more present here than he was in La Côte St. Andre. It’s given me real perspective on why I felt so empty about things there.

Paris was the city he flew to, to do and dare and struggle and use the talent God had given him. Even when Paris put him down and refused to rightly estimate his brilliance and talent, it was still the crucible where his musical skill was refined, the fertile field where his mind was sown with the strong seed of Gluck and Spontini and Beethoven and von Weber, the arena where he fought his battles for his music and for the music of the great ones who rose with him.

Whereas La Côte was the place he had to escape from, the place he feared being stifled by.

You know what it reminds me of? La Côte, I mean? Especially seeing the substantial, upper middle class house where Hector was raised, it reminds me of Mission Hills, with all those respectable and prosperous doctors and lawyers and stockbrokers, all proudly expecting their firstborn sons to grow up and become doctors and lawyers and stockbrokers just like them. That’s what Dr. Berlioz wanted Hector to do. He wasn’t a hick country practitioner. Dr. Louis Berlioz was a scholar and a scientist of note. He published esteemed medical papers and had a name among his colleagues. He always thought his eldest would follow in his footsteps, that playing the flute and scribbling music for local string and wind ensembles as Hector did was just a civilized pastime for after hours. For his son to throw over medical school and tell his parents to hell with it, he was going to the Conservatory of Music and become an opera composer, was like a kid from Mission Hills informing his folks he was abandoning Harvard to play in a rock and roll band.

There was so much inertia pulling Hector to accede to his father’s wishes! It was always expected that he'd get his medical degree and return to La Côte and join the family practice and become as respectable and prosperous as his father. It went without saying that he'd inherit that fine house and live out the rest of his days as the esteemed physician of the Isere region! The only thing that could break that inertia was the musical fire within him and his conviction that he had to let it blaze forth and Paris was the only place he could begin to do that.

And that is why I couldn’t find or feel mon cher Hector in La Côte St. Andre. He wasn’t there. He left. He came to Paris and got away.


REIMS-- Made the 11:05. Contrarily, the weather clouded up again as the train travelled east. Of course.

The sculpture on both the west front and the north transept portals of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Reims was being restored. Scaffolding everywhere. So for this one I spent the most time circling the flanks and the chevet. I do like the angels up in the buttress piers. And of course anyone who’s anybody is featured up on the west front.

They don’t have much of the medieval glass left at Reims. What they do have is the axial chapel windows by Marc Chagall (interesting place for a nice Jewish boy) and some very harmonious but quirky windows by Jacques Simon. The latter included one dedicated to the making of champagne.

It’s a pity so much of the cathedral sculpture has been destroyed. It’s very effective the way it continues around to the screen on the interior of the west wall. One of my favorite scenes there was of Abraham offering a tithe of the spoils to the priest-king Melchizedek after the battle of Sodom. Abraham is dressed in full chain mail like a medieval knight!

It looked as if the weather might-- just might-- break enough for me to get some sunlight on the west front sculpture this afternoon. So I decided to go get something to eat while I waited for it to do it. As I wandered through the streets of the town, I found a shop that actually had little busts of mon cher Hector, in alabaster on a marble base. The one on display had the sculpture and the base a little out of kilter . . . In a good cause I can be pretty bold, so I asked the clerk in my best fractured French if they had any more to choose from. He got a ladder and reached down a couple more from high off the shelf above. Examined them . . . ah, yes, one of these was definitely better.

This set me back 72F but I’ve done so little souvenir acquiring so far (books don’t count). Had the store pack it in a box so it won’t get hurt in transit.

The skies did clear up so I returned to the cathedral and took some more photos of the statuary, with the west front all golden. It was a fun getting angles where the scaffolding was least in the way. Thanks to the telephoto lens on the Olympus I think I was able to get some good shots of the kings on the archivolts. Then I popped back inside and admired the sunlight streaming through the medieval glass, especially the west end rose window. What a blessing the sunlight can be!

I thought I’d read that the tomb of Hughes Libergier, a medieval architect, was in Reims Cathedral. But I couldn’t find it. And I didn’t ask the man at the bookstall. This is dumb, because on the train back to Paris I read in the guidebook I bought that it is there somewhere . . . and now it’s too late to see it.

Before I left Reims, since I was in one of the major cities of the genuine Champagne region, I decided to do something gracious for a change. I bought a bottle of champagne for a hostess gift for Lukas’s* family. I think I can carry that bit more . . . Have no idea if the vintner is any good. It’s just what they had on Christmas special at the Monoprix. Really wanted one of those pretty Art Nouveau bottles from Perrier but at upwards of 220F there was no way.


PARIS AGAIN-- After the return from Reims got off the subway at the Bastille stop to admire Duc’s column and see the place where the Funeral and Triumphal Symphony was first performed. There were a lot of other places here I wished I had time to see but there was no way-- I had to find something to eat and pick up my bags from the hotel and make that train for Dijon.

Around that area, though, I found something else I was interested in-- one of the famous Art Nouveau Métro stops, by another Hector, M. Guimard. Glad I caught that.


DIJON, THE HÔTEL MONGE-- Not a good time getting here. First of all, I cut it a little short on time in Paris. Second, with the bust and the bottle and the books and all, and with me being in general fatigued, the bags were miserably heavy to carry. And then the lady at the hotel, who’s known nothing about it so far, so why did I take her advice now? told me (in English, since she had no patience with my French), oh, the slowdown strike is still on, don’t take the Métro, take the #63 bus to the gare de Lyon.

So instead of schlepping one and a half blocks to the Métro stop I lugged everything, feeling like the Ride to the Abyss, four long blocks to the corner where, according to the concierge’s sage advice, I could get the right bus. But when sweating and panting I arrived there, I found that no one on that corner had any idea where any such #63 bus stopped.

So I took the Métro anyway. And yes, it was a bit slow, not being full service, but at least I did get to the station and onto the train with ten or so minutes to spare.

I feel like I spent most of the short time on the TGV catching my breath. I pulled into Dijon, feeling about half-past dead. Blessedly, a man, a fellow-passenger from the train, carried my blue and heavy bag for me from the platform to the outside of the station.

Well, it seemed that since I had to use my Visa, being short of cash, and not liking to check into hotels sight unseen anymore, I thought I could just walk into town and check a couple of possibilities. The distance didn’t seem far on the Michelin Guide map.

It was excruciatingly far. It was 10:00 PM and Dijon isn’t as well populated at night as Paris or Toulouse. The streets were dark and empty and I thought, wonderful, someone could come right now and bang me over the head and steal me blind. But I was so close to the end of my rope, only able to stagger a few more steps before I had to set the bag down and rest, that I didn’t care. I couldn’t hurt worse than I already did. I almost wished someone would come along and run off with my luggage. I’d be free of it then.

Fortunately, one of the Let’s Go hotels , the Hôtel Monge, did take Visa. And they did have a room. And it’s actually not decorated too badly. Usual chenille bedspread but the wall paper is good. And it overlooks a charming courtyard and has a view of the steeples of two churches.

Also has a view of the apartment opposite, whose occupants were engaging in something I’m sure was its own absorbing reason for their forgetting to pull the shades or extinguish the lights. That’s all right, we’ll assume they’re married and leave our own curtains closed. MYOB.

My Cut-Rate Grand Tour: Day Fourteen

Monday, 19 December 1988
Paris to Amiens and back to Paris

Did not get up for the 8:48 train to Beauvais. Sure, I wanted to see la Cathédrale de St.-Pierre de Beauvais, but not while I was feeling like hell and not caring all that much.

I’ve figured out by now I’m suffering from intestinal troubles, not That Time of Month. No other sign of flu, so I guess the laws of sanitation or physics or whatever you want to call it do operate in France after all, and that unrefrigerated coquille au saumon the night before last got me. If it’s food poisoning there’s nothing I can do but wait for it to blow over, so I went back to sleep.

When I did get up, I went through my things to make sure I had everything ready to go to Amiens. I was also searching to see if I could find my NatWest checkbook-- last night I discovered it was missing. I made another search of everything this morning and still couldn’t find it. I know I took it out of my purse at Toulouse to lighten the load there; I must’ve left it at the hotel.

So what morning I had was spent trying to get ahold of the National Westminster number in Oxford (a very trying experience) and then calling them to cancel my remaining cheques. They said ok and they’ll have a new book waiting for me in Oxford.

Kept having to feed the payphone francs. Ate them like candy.

Caught the 1:12 train to Amiens from la gare du Nord. Looking out the window at the landscape made my stomach feel better. It reminded me of Kansas. Isn’t that stupid? Anyway, the sun was peeking out now and again and the wind was blowing the clouds along like 70.

I’m finding it’s generally easy to find where the cathedral is in a town like Amiens. One heads out the front door of the station and heads in the direction of the largest visible steeple. Standard Operating Procedure here.

I liked the Cathédrale de Notre-Dame d’Amiens. I liked its height and its variety and its black and white marble floor, which you could see because the chairs were all pulled back. I even liked the fact that it’d lost a lot of its stained glass-- the clear kind lets the light in.

And maybe I liked Amiens because the skies made a strong effort towards clearing up there. It had been actively raining on my way from the station and now I went out the northwest portal and stood there, watching the sky which was full of blowing clouds, to see what it would do. There was a thin greenish strip of blue sky over to the north which looked like it might get bigger. Meanwhile I could enjoy the sight of gargoyle waterspouts actually in operation.

Went back inside and wandered around the nave some more. Some workmen were repairing the metalwork on the north transept chapel and I noticed they had some music going. I hoped it wasn’t secular. But then I listened better and realized it was a tape of Mass being sung, and then I discovered it was emanating from speakers in the nave itself.

More restoration work was going on in the apsidal chapels. One of these had wall paintings that were covered up by scaffolding and drop cloths to the shoulders of the saints depicted. But the light was very bright on the heads, which I could see. Which was good.

Stepped outside to check on the skies again; much better. The sky had turned blue and the white clouds were racing by towards the east, so that if you looked up at the west front it looked as if the entire facade were tipping down on you. Vertiginous and exhilarating, all at once.

No direct sunlight on the sculptures yet but one can admire anyway. That Beau Dieu is so wonderful. I wish I could get up and look at it straight in the face, though. Though I suppose looking up to Jesus is most appropriate.

No card stand in the church so I went up the street to a librairie and bought some cathedral postcards and got some change for the guidebook the church did have (honor system). Went back and got that just before the cathedral closed for the afternoon.

The southern portal is the one with the Vierge Dorée, which is up again after recently being restored. (Some of the postcards for sale show the doorway without it.) I didn’t spend much time contemplating that ensemble, though, because there was a drunk hanging around there being rather obnoxious.

(Interesting, how I thought of him as simply ‘a drunk,’ and not as a ‘drunken Frenchman.’)

Train back to Paris at 5:57. In the meantime I wandered around Amiens a bit and stopped for supper provisions at the usual patisseries. Bought a cheese crepe affair that apparently is a specialty of Picardie.

Back in Paris, coming from the Luxembourg Métro stop, I noticed that Penguin has an English language bookshop along there. Pity I didn’t notice it sooner. I’m dying for something besides Geoffroy de Villehardouin to read.

My Cut-Rate Grand Tour: Day Thirteen

Sunday, 18 December, 1988
Paris

Woke up around 7:00 AM with a stomachache. It was either food poisoning, indigestion, the flu that’s going around, or the approach of the wrong time of month. I chose to believe the last, having pills on hand to throw at that condition. So I took them then went back to sleep.

Nevertheless I did not feel too wonderful all day. Considered not getting up for Mass (à la Mexico City, 1970†) but decided I’d regret it if I didn’t.

So I put on my gray dress and went to Mass at Notre Dame. It’s rather odd-- the organ plays and they have readings and so forth between services. Meanwhile people are walking around taking pictures-- with flash-- and it’s a real zoo. Fortunately things calmed down for the service itself.

There was a copy in French and in three other languages of the readings. What I need is that and the actual eucharistic liturgy, in French. A copy of the sermon wouldn’t hurt, either. The priest spoke, I believe, on not making Christmas a surface thing. Very edifying, I’m sure, if I could’ve understood it.

I still did not feel at all well and hoped to gracious I would not have one of my famous Raging Hormonal Imbalances right in the middle of the service. But I survived to go up and take Communion (one kind only), and to come back to my seat and lose it.

Emotionally, I mean. It wasn’t being there, per se, that did it. It was more the feeling of oh, God, what am I supposed to be doing with my life, and if You don’t let me know, who will? I asked Him to give me some kind of sign as to what He wants me to do . . . somebody bringing something up in a conversation, maybe. I don’t know. What did He give Jim Leffel*‡ when he was struggling over accepting the call to Wilkes-Barre*?

Outside afterwards there was a rather ragtag group in front of the cathedral singing Christmas carols-- in English-- for the Armenian earthquake relief (and that’s what happened there, on top of the delicate political situation).

I headed north and had a bottle of Perrier at the first café I found open. I needed the bubbles. Stomach lousy. Between the Pompidou Center and Les Halles I made myself buy a crepe and eat it, but I wasn’t too happy about it.

Still, there were things I had to do today so I pushed myself. Had to find a florist to sell me some real flowers, for one. And as long as I was fairly close, I thought I’d go up to the Boulevards and see where Berlioz went to music school.

Found the fleurs first, near the rue Montmartre. I had to decide what he would like. I settled on a bunch of those small tulips, yellow and white and dark pink and variegated, with their green stems and leaves. Freesias would’ve done well, too, but the only ones they had were all yellow and looked like cheese popcorn. Definitely wrong.

Walked on over to where the Conservatoire is supposed to be, but unless there is another place in Paris with streets named rue Bergère and rue Faubourg de Montmartre, they’ve demolished the building that was there in the early 19th century and moved the school elsewhere.§ Still, to think that he walked there once, on that pavement, and passed through that air!

Took the Métro to Havre-Canmartin, where I encountered a check. The #13 line, which I needed for both la Cimetière Montmartre and for St. Denis [to see the famous abbey church] was closed. Went on to Villiers to at least reach the former and discovered the #6 line wasn’t going today, either. Transit strike on. So I went back to the Place Europe stop and walked it from there.

The cemetery is under the Rue Calincourt overpass, unlike what is shown on my map. Found the entrance down below, though, and inquired of the uniformed porter where to find it . . . Hector’s got a lane named after him there. And he’s not under the viaduct, thank God.

French urban cemeteries aren’t like American ones. They don’t go in for green grass and well-tended plots. They tend to be little necropoles of miniature chapels and temples all jumbled in cheek by jowl with only drear, sandy soil between.

But thank God, somebody has done something about that ghastly Beaux Arts horror of a tomb that Hector originally had, the picture of which I saw in a book in the Philadelphia Free Library. It was all redone in 1970 in black Andes granite (or something similar) with gold in the incised lettering. The portrait on the medallion isn’t as beautiful as it should be, it doesn’t properly convey his character, but everything is very well tended, there are cyclamens, the pretty dark pink kind, and healthy-looking shrubbery growing in pots that are an integral part of the monument, not like the desiccated chrysanthemums on some nearly tombs, and-- oh, God, Berlioz! Berlioz! I can’t-- I wish-- Oh, Lord, I-- and he’s-- I can’t express it!

One doesn’t go to pieces totally. One mustn’t. There are other people around every so often. And it’s not like he died recently or anything . . . let us be sensible.

I could take refuge in activity. I could at least give him what I brought him. Someone who came earlier had left him a bunch of white chrysanthemums (I was glad to see that); I unbound my tulips and laid them across the other flowers. And I knew I’d chosen the right thing. They’re like him, in a way. Straightforward, unpretentious, colorful in their way, but still sensitive to the rigors of the mundane.

There’s a tree there . . . its roots probably grow down into his grave. It’s very handy when you have no other shoulder to cry on . . . Though I’ve cried on his shoulder often enough, figuratively, singing his songs and reading his memoirs and his letters, taking comfort in knowing there was one who has been through it himself, who could express it all so as to draw it up into ineffable poetry and beauty, one who despite his sins and failings took the gift that God gave him and used it, sublimely . . . I couldn’t help it, I prayed again the prayer I’ve said for the past eleven years, that please, God, in Jesus’ Name, if he can’t actually be saved-- and if there’s any proper way he could be, please effect it!-- please allow his faithfulness to his gift and all the good he’s done through its fulfillment speak grace and amelioration for him in the judgement! Please!

There’s a cross engraved above his name on his monument. I hope it is not there for naught. I wish I could believe the Roman Catholic doctrine that you can be saved by being baptised as an infant. I cannot, but it would be a comfort.

I tried to sing the Te Decet Hymnus for him but my voice broke-- "Ad Te caro omnis veniet!" Yes, but how-- and in what spirit?

There were some fuzzy cats roaming around (none of them black) and one approached now and sat a little ways off, preening herself. I went over and patted her, and, unusually for a French cat, she responded to it. If she’d been [my own cat] Didon I’d’ve picked her up, but she was not.

Then I went back and stood once more before la noire tombe-- mon pauvre Hector! Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine!-- kissed my hand to him, and departed.

Hélas!

Found la Square Berlioz after that, not far from la Place Clichy. The statue there is of him as a younger man than on the medallion of the tomb. It was not carved out of very high quality stone-- it has deteriorated badly. I dislike seeing that. And somehow, though I’m glad he is honored in public sculptures like that, somehow seeing them makes him seem more distant, unlike the portraits. I’ve read that his portrait by Courbet is said to be the only one by that artist that has a spark of life. If so, I’m glad it was Hector’s. Nothing can portray him that does not give you those piercing, wonderful eyes.

The square is largely given over to a large sandbox where children play, and sandy paths where the kids were kicking around a soccer ball. I wonder what he’d think of having his statue placed in a playground. He wasn’t much good at children, except for his son Louis.

Since going to see the abbey church of St. Denis was a bust and it was getting on towards 4:00 anyway, I took the Métro back downtown and got off at the Opéra stop. Had to look at the building which, while not the one that Hector knew, yet houses the institution that only opened its doors to him once.

Ironically, they did the Damnation de Faust, as I saw on a poster in the lobby, on the 8th. If I’d known that I could’ve come in from Chartres, no problem. Damnation, indeed.

They had tours but I just didn’t feel up to it. Browsed the gift shop; they had enamelled composer pins, even one of Hector. But they were just too expensive: 70F.

Over then to les Galeries Lafayette to see if maybe they were running the same sale on slips their branch in Toulouse was.

They weren’t; moreover the only suitable kind of slip they did have was running 225F each and was made in the good old USA. I think I’ll wait till I get back to Oxford.

Close one on the escalator there. It was full of people and as we rode upwards, a fairly good-sized man in his 60's lost his balance just ahead of me. Only my never-that-strong and presently very fatigued left arm and hand desperately clutching the rail kept him and me and everyone else from falling like dominoes. I don’t even think I was holding the righthand rail. I just stiffened up and hoped he’d get his balance before I gave way, too. When he made a grab for the rail he pushed into me worse and I had to step back, crunching the toes of the guy behind me (who wasn’t being any help, I might add). Fortunately the older man regained his footing at that point and aside from a little soreness, I was ok.

Still can’t figure out how I did that. I was feeling extremely yucky. Thank God I was able to, though.

The store was packed with Christmas shoppers and decorated to the hilt. (It’s the same all over, isn’t it?) And then it has that immense stained glass dome over the central court.

Back towards the hotel on the Métro (I might use the busses if I had a bus map. But I don’t, so I don’t). Really dragging by now. Figured I’d better find some food though so I got some junk at a croissanterie on Boul. St. Michel.

Got it and me up to the room-- and just couldn’t face it. Changed my clothes and climbed under the bedspread. Was not going to make it to the organ concert at Notre-Dame at 5:45. No. Listened to the radio, BBC World Service. They were airing their worldwide request program, and played the Hallelujah Chorus. And for the third time today I broke down and cried. Oh, Lord Jesus, come quickly!

Made myself work at train schedules for the next two days but other than that accomplished nothing but sleep all evening.
__________________________
†I was part of a high school group that took an Easter weekend trip to Mexico that year. On the Saturday, I, like an idiot, Drank the Water, and woke up the next morning too sick to go to the American church for Easter service. Happily, it was a mild case of MR and passed off by late that afternoon.
‡The immediate past pastor of my home church in Kansas City.
§Turns out I'd come up with the wrong address. The old Conservatoire building was and is still there, three or four blocks away from where I was looking for it.

My Cut-Rate Grand Tour: Day Nine

Wednesday, 14 December, 1988
Toulouse to Carcassonne and back again

Made the 9:06 train for Carcassonne this morning. It got in around 10:10. I bought a couple rolls for breakfast at a briocherie in the lower town then walked across the Pont Neuf over the Aude to the old city.

Reminded me somewhat of the village below the abbey at Mont-St.-Michel but with the cloudy weather the effect wasn’t the same. It wanted more people.

Went and saw the church of St. Nazaire first off, since I tripped over it. Romanesque nave and Gothic choir and transepts, almost all glass. Viollet-le-Duc hard at work restoring the vitrame, but at least that meant there was light coming through most of them. They had some rather nice large scale figure sculpture, too.

There were a man and three children in there hammering together the Christmas crèche. For that matter, all of Carcassonne, the Upper and Lower towns both, was decorated for Christmas.

They allow cars and trucks in the Cité. Rather anachronistic.

A great many of the of the shops were closed for the season but there were still an adequate number of tacky souvenir stands open. The forte here is hammered copper (or some facsimile thereof). I contented myself with a few post cards and a guidebook.

Took pictures of all the older-looking houses I could find, going on what I knew from Margaret Wood and that Wooden Houses book Eric* gave me. It was awfully cold and windy, though, and with no sun anyway I decided to take an earlier train than planned back to Toulouse.

But first I would make a circuit of the lists between the two walls. Went partway round before the cold north wind drove me back in to the shelter of the houses. But then the sun started trying to come out so I went back outside and walked along the outer fortifications, and looked at the countryside to the east, opposite from the city. Vineyards and hills, off into the distance.

Popped in and out as I saw a likely-looking gate. There were a few people around, mostly couples. Nearly saw an accident at the Tour St. Nazaire as two cars approached it from opposite directions at once. I could hear the car coming in through the single-lane gate and pointed it out to the driver of the exiting car and he stopped just in time. I can’t believe how closely the other one scraped by, though. Very French.

Back out into the lists, continuing clockwise around the citadel. It occurred to me how isolated it was through there and I mused that it would not be particularly romantic to "fall beneath the walls of Carcassonne," since for me at this time it certainly would not be in pursuit of some knightly deed.

Funny I should think of such a thing just then . . . funny-peculiar. Just about the time I passed this semi-circular cut in the earth (a drain of some sort?) just past the Tour de Cahuzac and the Tour du Grand Canisson I noticed a man, middle-aged, stocky and dressed like a workman in blue trousers and zipper jacket, standing looking over the battlements towards the lower town. From whatever conceit I decided to give him a wide berth. But as I passed him, he turned, came towards me, and demanded, "Donnez-moi votre main!"

Well, as far as I know this is not standard etiquette and I was having none of it. I said, "Non!" and drew away, but the creature tried to grab for my hand anyway! Over and over he babbled, "Donnez-moi votre main! Donnez-moi votre main!" Again I pulled away and began walking fast, whereupon the horrid person sped up, passed me-- and waited for me just inside the arch of the Tour Carrée de l’Evêque. The whole thing was unbelievably absurd and became even more so when, as I came opposite him within the tower, he again came at me and not only tried to grab my hand but also my rear end! I evaded contact and kept on going, while he started saying some other things that it’s just as well I couldn’t understand-- I wouldn’t want them rattling around in my mind.

I got out to the approach to the Tour de l’Inquisition, the creep still at my heels. I wasn’t scared, exactly, because the whole thing was so pointless. For what it was worth, I said sharply, "Laissez-moi tranquille!" as advised by one of the books I’d read on travelling in France. But he just grinned, kept babbling, and inside le Tour de l’Inquisition tried to grab me again.

No, I’m sorry. He did grab my hand. And began to pull it towards his crotch.

Well, that was enough. I was not being over dramatic, this was real and quite dangerous, especially considering the constriction of the lists just ahead between the Inquisition Tower and the Tour du Petit Canisson. Seeing it gave a whole new meaning to the expression "to be in a tight place" and I didn’t like it one bit. I snatched back my hand, gave out a shriek to show him I meant business and would really scream if his aggression continued, and took to my heels. I hoped my being younger would avail me if he came after; I couldn’t hear him following but I wasn’t taking any chances.

The lousy part was up the incline towards the Porte d’Aude. It’s rather demoralizing-- not to mention potentially petrifying-- to realize you can’t run like Thomas Magnum. I mean, if my accoster had really been trying I could’ve been lost right there.

Fortunately I knew exactly where I was, having entered through this gate in the first place. I doubled to the left and back into the cité to where the open shops and restaurants were. I have no idea if he meant me serious harm or if he’s just the kind of slime who likes scaring girls, but I wasn’t sticking around to find out.

My intention was to find a gendarme, or maybe report the guy at the post office. But the post office was closed for lunch and no policemen were to be seen. And my French isn’t good enough to make a random passerby understand what the problem was and help me do anything about it. So I decided to make myself scarce. I still didn’t feel safe-- what if he had followed me in? I didn’t want to hang around. So I found some other people, a couple, and began to follow in their wake. Fortunately they were going in the same direction as I’d decided to take-- towards the Porte Narbonnaise, opposite the side where the creep was hanging out. The carpark is there, and other people, and traffic. So I emerged there and circled round outside the citadel to where I found the way back over the river to the lower town. So help me, if I’d seen that jerk again you could have heard me all the way to Oxford.

Back towards la gare, bought some pizzas for lunch-- by which you may deduce that I was not terminally frightened. But I was impressed by the presence of evil in this world-- and moreover of the utter purposelessness of so much of it.

But it was "while we were yet sinners that Christ died for us" . . . And He knew about all this crap ahead of time!

Back to Toulouse by the 1:29 train. The sun actually decided to stay out so after resting at the hotel a little I took the camera and headed back to St. Sernin to see what I could see.

Much better than yesterday. I do seem to be having better luck with my Romanesque churches than with my Gothic. And today somebody went up and began practicing the organ! Maybe it was the composer chosen--Vierne or Messien or the like, but the playing didn’t seem as fluid and composed as that at Bourges. Still, it was a good thing to hear it. And it was audible out in the place at the west front, too.

Made a Decision and walked over to the rue Alsace-Lorraine and bought Marian*† a cloisonné box shaped like a quail, for Christmas. Around $13 US.

Got some orange juice and a chocolate bar at the Monoprix and came back to the hotel. Consumed much of that and the third 5" pizza from Carcassonne while playing with train schedules for the next week. Spent entirely too much time on that and didn’t get around to washing my silk blouse till after 10:00. Had it in the sink when I noticed the rules and regs notice saying that doing laundry in the room is "interdit." Oops! Well, tant pis, and if it’s not dry by morning I’ll hang it in the closet and no one’s harmed by the enterprise.

Wrote Mom and Janie*‡ postcards. I told them the gray weather is depressing but I didn’t admit I’m homesick-- for England. Kept singing the Simon & Garfunkel song "Homeward Bound" in my head today . . . Wish certain parts of it fit more than they do . . . and certain parts, less.
__________________
†My younger sister
‡The friend who was subleasing my apartment back in the States

My Cut-Rate Grand Tour: Day Eight

Tuesday, 13 December, 1988
Toulouse

HÔTEL GRANDS BOULEVARDS, 11:30 PM-- When I woke up at the Hôtel St. Antoine around 8:00 this morning and it was still almost totally dark in my room, with only a sickly glow filtering in from the dirty rippled plastic over the inner courtyard, I decided I definitely had to change hotels.

Spent a good part of the morning doing that. Looking for another hotel, I mean. And had one or two interesting experiences in the process.

At one place they were letting little rooms for 100F with little windows high in the wall, up under the roof. I was trying to decide if I could deal with that and asking questions about whether the front door is locked at night to see if that would tip my decision one way or the other, when suddenly the previously amicable patronne changed her countenance, began to go on about how it was all "trop complique" for her, and summarily showed me the door! I wondered what God thinks of such behavior. I know that if I behaved in such a fashion I wouldn’t expect His compliments . . .

Anyway, I ended up in the first place I’d inquired into, the Hôtel Grands Boulevards in the rue de Austerlitz on the other side of Place President Wilson from where I was last night.

Unfortunately, I have to change rooms again tomorrow. Where they're moving me I'll be paying 135F for a chambre avec douche. Very nice, that will be, but the room I have now, with only a sink and bidet, is quite sufficient and has a (nonoperating) fireplace besides. But it’s booked for tomorrow night, it seems . . .

This room is 90F a night, only 3F more than what I paid at the St. Antoine last night, and it has a large window, on the street. That other place was too quiet.

All that settled, I headed for la gare and got my couchette reservation for Friday night’s run to Paris taken care of.

Then I found there’s no bus to Conques so I checked into rental cars. Hertz has the best one-day deal. 490F. If I do that I go to Aurillac the same day. Depends on if I’m up to wrestling with French road signs.

Saw the basilica of St.-Sernin . . . too bad the sun didn’t stay out. But it was still a lot brighter inside than was Chartres. All a very pretty delicate pink. They laid the brick with a tinted mortar, then flattened the excess over the brick, then raked out a V-groove horizontally.

I hadn’t realized how much of the old polychromy is left. Most of that is in the transepts.

Visited the ambulatory and the crypt. They have quite a fine treasury. And it’s impressive to see the plaque commemorating the fact that Charlemagne helped the church obtain many of its apostolic relics.

The choir is pretty well Baroque. Woodwork, mainly. And it’s true-- the piers for the crossing tower do rather interrupt the flow of vision. But the tower is wonderful from the outside.

The west front is obstinately homely, especially compared with the liveliness of the east end chevet. The odd thing is why it’s so much higher than the nave itself. Were they planning on western towers?

Bought a copy of the book that Dr. Gendle† gave me to study from, and a number of postcards. I seem to have lost all but one of these, having held the bag upside down while consulting my map on the street. I noticed I was doing that, stuffed the one card back in, and figured the rest were all inside. Wrong!

At that point I was wandering around trying to find the laundromat. Finally did, and went and fetched the dirty clothes. Did the wash, so, but sitting in laundries in strange cities is, well, strange.

Blew 91F on dinner, around the corner from the hotel on the rue de Strasbourg. Oysters and other mussels on the half-shell for starters and then a compendium of salmon, carrots, potatoes, and mushrooms in a sauce. Had a carafe of Sauvignon blanc which I didn’t finish.

I dined at one of a line of two-person tables, ranged close together along one wall with a long banquette on one side and chairs on the other. The man seated at the table next to me engaged me in conversation. He looked to be in his late 40's or early 50's and reminded me of the guy who played Manolito in High Chapparal. Seems he was born in northern Italy but moved to France at an early age and has been here ever since. Lives in Rodez but comes to Toulouse on business. A certain amount of chitchat ensued, allowing for my downhill French, but I did not take him up on his offer to go somewhere else for a drink (I’d had enough, anyway) or to a discotheque. There’s probably a difference between being company and being a pickup, but until I learn the dividing line I’d better avoid any semblance of either.

Gave the patron of the hotel a good laugh when I returned. Was thinking so intently about what had just happened at the restaurant that I didn’t process the fact that I had an open door and not a sidelight there in front of me. Kept trying to operate the inoperable leaf and wondering why the man, sitting in the lobby watching the tube, didn’t come and let me in . . .
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†My Medieval architecture history tutor in Oxford

My Cut-Rate Grand Tour: Day Four

Friday, 9 December, 1988
Chartres to Bourges to Lyon

ON THE TRAIN, BETWEEN BOURGES AND LYON-- Most of the day on the train today. The kid is very tired. This business of waiting till late to eat breakfast is not such a hot idea, is it? One begins to make a fool of oneself when one can’t manage locker keys. Or to become desperate and settle for mineral water and synthetic flan. This you call French cooking?

That gourmet repast happened in the Tours station, one of two train changes before Bourges.

Between Chartres and LeMans the sun rose and it looked like the sky might actually turn out clear.  No such luck. It’d clouded up completely by Tours and by the time I got to Bourges it was mizzling pretty steadily.  Well, nothing to be done about it. Though I guess I could’ve taken the lens cap with me.

Bourges Cathedral was lighter and more impressive than Chartres, even with the same weather. But Bourges has more clear or grisaille glass (thanks to the Huguenots?) than Chartres and they seem to have gotten farther with their window restoration work. Many of those in the chevet had already been cleaned and looked stunning.

The most wonderful thing here today was totally serendipitous: when I arrived the organist was practicing and he kept it up pretty steadily the entire two hours or so I spent there. It was marvellous to hear Bach rolling through that soaring three-level space. The organ is at the west end and was new or restored in 1985. There’s a smaller one-- also real-- in the choir (I blush to relate the Chartres’ choir ‘organ’ seems to be an EKI ["Electronic Keyboard Instrument"]). The organists used all the stops; it was lovely, the range of dynamic effects.

The inner aisle is unbelievable in its soaring proportions. And I love the way the ribs in the vaults of the ambulatory sway and curve across the webbing after they spring from the pier colonnettes. It’s so lively. Those piers look like slender trees, like giant sequoias, perhaps, that just grew and grew and branched out above.

I was surprised to see how much of the west end sculpture still remained. Most of the trumeau figures and pretty much all the tympana and archivolts. In its drapery the Beau Dieu [the statue of Christ at the main entrance] reminded me a lot of pictures I’ve seen of the one at Amiens, but the face wasn’t as sensitive. I wonder if it’s original or a 19th Century replacement.

I regret to say I was so intent on getting outside to see the edifice as a whole that I didn’t think to turn around and survey the southern portal when I emerged from it. It wasn’t till I was on the train and looking through the booklet I’d bought that I learned it has some very fine early Gothic sculpture, à la the Royal Portals at Chartres.

It was almost by accident that I found the cathedral at all. They have signs up to a point, but then when you’re looking for the next one you glance from la rue Moyenne to the left up this little belgian-pavered street, la rue de Guichet, and mon Dieu, there she is.

The south flank is nowhere so coquettish. It can be viewed in full, across the municipal garden, which must look lovely when everything is in bloom. As it was, the rows of gingko trees with their cropped heads had a certain baroque beauty. They rather reminded me of the rows of piers inside.

Something to check at home: have the apsidal chapels always had full buttresses below the corbels, or is that a recent pis aller?

Left the cathedral grounds a bit after 4:00. Got some cheese pastries and a can of soda at a patisserie, to eat on the train. But when I was passing by a salon de thé on the street to the station I thought of how chilled and wet and hungry I was now and besides it was over an hour to the train. So I turned in and had tea and a croque-monsieur.

Funny, but in the States that’s a pressed and grilled ham and cheese sandwich. Here I received a kind of hotdog with cheese on a long hard roll. Or hadn’t I made my order clear? No matter. It was hot and it was good and I’m grateful. Felt much better thereafter.

Bourges was all decked up for Christmas, too. I think it’s nice to think of all those decorations up all over the world. It’s something in common. If only all the world had the Savior in common, too!

My Cut-Rate Grand Tour: Day Three

Thursday, 8 December, 1988
Chartres

I know it sounds like blasphemy†, but the cathedral was rather a disappointment.

It was a very gray, heavily overcast day today, and the church was so dark you could see almost nothing. The vaults were lost in the gloom and the windows badly needed cleaning. I kept praying the sky would clear up but that wasn’t in the divine plan.

I could see the importance of light in bringing about the proper effect here. Mont-St.-Michel was a religious experience. Here I had to play art historian and approach the cathedral intellectually. Not the best way.

Shot the south and north portals using the flash. Wouldn’t dream of using it inside. I did photograph some of the windows inside. We’ll see how they come out.

There was a plan with all the windows keyed on it posted at the west end. I found the one of the life of St. Nigel‡ and headed for that apse chapel. Not a particularly popular saint: it was quite dark, partly because the window was opaque with grime. N’importe. There were people-- or a person-- who deserved to be prayed for there and so it came to pass.

Chartres is definitely an urban cathedral. It’s in use daily by the townspeople who employ its nave and transepts as thoroughfares and as places to greet and gather. They treat it, it appears, familiarly if respectfully (most of the time). But oy, it needs cleaning! That familiarity is verging on neglect.

I’m afraid I didn’t throw all that much into the restoration coffer myself. The francs go awfully fast.

I greatly enjoyed going up the stairs and along the buttresses to climb the north tower. You can see all over Chartres from there and in the tower see the great bells and the late Gothic stonework details.

I think the cathedral looked best today early in the evening. And when I came by at 6:30 to bid it farewell before heading back to the Auberge de Jeunesse the bells began to ring. That was grand.

Bought Malcolm Miller’s official guide in the cathedral bookstore, along with various cartes postales. Blew 350F (£35 +/-; $70 +/-) on a book on the stained glass at a bookstore across the street. The things I’ll do to write decent essays!

There was a little problem at lunch, my first meal of the day, when I was so tired and hungry I couldn’t decide what I wanted at the restaurant. Problem really was, the only thing I could afford was an omelet-- again. This one was cooked through. The real problem came when I found I’ve been confusing five-centime pieces with five-franc ones. I went to pay and found I was 5F short. Fortunately, they didn’t call the gendarmerie to run me in. No, I was allowed to go across to the Credit Lyonnaise, cash some traveller’s cheques, and bring back the balance.

(Something interesting I noticed in the restaurant: People had their dogs in there with them, no problem, and the sign posted on the subject only asked that patrons not allow them up on the chairs!)

As far as emotional satisfaction goes, I think I liked the town better than the cathedral. The streets of Chartres are a great deal of fun. I wouldn’t mind spending several days there just exploring. They teem with interesting shops, most of them too expensive for me (will the French really pay around $60 or $70 for a little nine-color watercolor paint set?), and a myriad of boulangeries, patisseries, and confiseries. It was very lively and colorful, especially after dark with the windows lit up with a golden glow and the Christmas decorations festooning from facade to facade overhead. There were all sorts of people out and it was pleasant just to wander around with them.

It’d be even more pleasant to do it with less to carry. That camera bag is good for the long haul but during the days, walking around, it’s a pain. The new document case bag is better as of today, though. Not that the clasp is fixed, but I was directed to a place where they put some new holes in the strap. It hangs about five inches shorter now and is much more comfortable. No longer banging against my thigh.

I have discovered that useful as that satchel is (and how much in vogue here), it’s heavy even unloaded. Not a lot to be done about it.

At about 5:45, I had a cup of chocolate at a shop across from the north flank of the cathedral. Wrote postcards. Funny, I don’t realize how damn tired I am until I sit down. Then I absolutely vibrate. Being hungry and exhausted does nothing for my French, either. I don’t speak such hot English in such states, but the people around here don’t know that.

Otherwise, my French is adequate. Or at least good enough to make people think I speak it and so go right over my head.

Second night at the Auberge de Jeunesse. It’s a nice place, in a modern way. Reminds me of something a young, bright architectural firm would do. It is rather annoying, though, for the management to be so pointed about the low-budget basis of the place. I mean, at least they could put waste bins in the rooms. Even people travelling on the cheap generate trash.

I didn’t really expect them to provide towels, and they didn’t. I would love to travel light, she said, but it’s hard when you have to carry your own linens with you.

I almost think that if I get tireder and not stronger, I may blow the money to send a few things back, sacrificing one kind of comfort for another; that is, sacrifice comfort in place to comfort in motion. Like, I’m beginning to think I could do without my jeans. They’re not really right for the kinds of places I’m visiting. And the hairdryer won’t work in the outlets here, even with the adaptor.
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†I'd studied the cathedral of Notre-Dame-de-Chartres at KU under the great Prof. Lou Michel, and had conceived the sentiment, "See Chartres and die!"
‡Yes, I know there is no "St. Nigel"; at least, I doubt any such is commemorated in any French cathedral. Never mind, you get the point!