“At last I have come into a dreamland,” said Harriet Beecher Stowe after fleeing to Paris following the notoriety of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Thomas Jefferson, who lived in France while representing America during the Revolution, said, “Every man has two countries — his own and France.”
David McCullough wrote a fascinating book, The Greater Journey, about Americans who lived in Paris between 1830 and 1900. They went there to study, to write, to paint and sculpt, to absorb the culture, or to educate their children. James Fenimore Cooper, for example, wrote several of his books there. Samuel Morse lived there while trying to become a successful artist, but ended up inventing the telegraph. Elizabeth Blackwell studied medicine at the university and became the first American woman doctor.
Ernest Hemingway spent several years in Paris and wrote Paris is a Moveable Feast. Indeed, Paris is a feast! It has over a hundred museums and ten thousand eateries. It’s a place of green spaces, splendid memorials and churches.
It feels as if Paris exists for the enjoyment of humans. Skyscrapers are forbidden in the central city. Instead they developed an area with modern, architecturally significant buildings and an arch under which Notre-Dame could stand. Ever pragmatic, the French couldn’t call it an arch of triumph as they lost that particular war. Hence, it’s called “La Defense” in honor of the defenders of France.
We spend at least one day whenever we’re in Paris at the Musee d’Orsee, refreshing our spirits by drinking in the wonderful art of the great Monet and other Impressionists. We like to sit at a café across the Seine and look at the lovely Notre-Dame de Paris, saunter through the Left Bank’s narrow streets where one of the oldest universities in the world, the Sorbonne, is located. We enjoy making little discoveries, sipping wine and people watching at sidewalk cafés, visiting the open-air markets, perusing the menus displayed outside of restaurants or buying yummy, ham-filled crepes from a street vendor and eating the delectable bread that can be had only in France. Oh, oh, oh! So many memories when I rifle through my mental trunk of reminiscence.
And the people . . . Oh, the people! . . . Some say that the French are rude, cold-natured, unfriendly, and ungrateful for what we did during World War II. We have invariably encountered courteous and warm-hearted people. My French helps, but they are charming to Bill even though he doesn’t speak the language. I admire their joie de vivre — love of living — that others want to destroy.
I wonder how the people whom we encountered fared during the terrorist attack. Other attacks were planned for Montmartre where the desk clerk at a hotel where we stayed lived. I think about the gentleman who was in charge of the breakfast room of a hotel where we stayed several times. The last day we were there, he gave me the “embrassade” kiss on both cheeks when I said that we were leaving. Two stout women who were in charge of the restroom at Notre-Dame exchanged quips with me. The baker on the Left Bank whose lemon tarts were so delectable that we and our friends shrieked with delight when we bit into them came out of the kitchen to shake hands and give me the recipe for his pie crust. During rush hour when we got lost in the Metro, a woman probably missed her own train to guide us to ours. A young woman insisted that I take her seat on the Metro. When we and our twin grandsons ate at the restaurant next to our hotel they drank so much water that the owner brought two pitchers. “Ces garcons sont des buveurs, n’est-ce pas?” (“These boys are drinkers, aren’t they?”)
During the news about the attacks, Bill and I wished that we could be there to stand in solidarity with the Parisians. wclarke@comcast.net .