Pierrick Bourgault is a bistro devotee and a steadfast reporter and photographer of such places. Author of dozens of books on bistros and bistro life, he has, in his latest little book (in French), written a love letter of sorts to a bistro and a bistro-keeper dear to his heart: Le Café du Coin in Le Mans, operated for 37 years by gruff, tender, pipe-smoking Jeannine Brunet, known affectionately as La Mère Lapipe. La Mère Lapipe spoke of herself in interviews as the fourth historical monument of Le Mans, after the cathedral, the 24-Hour race, and the shredded meat spread called rillettes. And well before she died, in 2022, at the age of 80, she was celebrated as such.

Pierrick Bourgault’s works about bistro life may be slight or filled out, personal or researched, scattered or focused, but in all he pays homage to the bistro as a gathering place and sanctuary for those who might otherwise never meet, a place that’s as indistinguishable from its overseer as the Vatican is from the Pope.

In this new book, a mini coffee-table book, the writing is sparse. In 50 snippets, each illustrated by a rudimentary cartoon drawn by Gab, Pierrick Bourgault sketches moments of drunkenness, silliness, humor, anger, quirkiness, joy, tragedy, temperament, wit, hope, despair, tenderness, raucousness, and vulgarity, and of loneliness momentarily set aside. This Café du Coin was a real place that could be any place that allows for the creation of a community of eclectic and diverse individuals. La Mère Lapipe was a real person who could be any bistro owner dedicated to maintaining such a place of character and conviviality over many years.

Pierrick Bourgault grew up on Mayenne, in western France, and studied natural sciences at the University of Le Mans. Though he made his home in Paris, he returned to Le Mans frequent enough to be a welcome regular at Le Café du Coin, both as observer and participant, with an admiration for Jeannine’s own devotion to bistro life. This book isn’t detailed, in-depth, analytical writing about bistros, but rather an affectionate broad-stroke portrait that reveals how one place and one person can bring together a diverse group of individuals simply by being as tolerant of them as they are of her. La Mère Lapipe’s Café du Coin comes across not so much as a business establishment as it does a home away from home, as the best bistros do.

La Mère Lapipe au Café du Coin by Pierrick Bourgault, published in April 2025 by Editions Ouest-France.

See this video portrait of Jeannine Brunet aka La Mère Lapipe filmed after its reopening in 2021 after Covid lockdown.

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That’s the perception that psychologist, author and feminist Edith Vallée sets out to rectify in Le Matrimoine de Paris (2018), a book that grew out of the popular Matrimoine tours inaugurated in 2015 that added a pinch of estrogen to the annual Journées du Patrimoine (Heritage Days), when heritage sights are celebrated throughout France and elsewhere in Europe on the third weekend in September.

While patrimoine now commonly refers to heritage of all kinds, its etymology leads back to the Latin word patrimonium, meaning heritage of the father. Hence the desire to infuse the notion of heritage with some gifts from mother by creating the analogous term matrimoine. To English speakers, matrimoine may be too close to matrimony for comfort and lead us to think of marriage, but French-speakers immediately recognize it as a feminist riff on patrimoine, as herstory is on history for English-speakers.

Her story is history as well

With a chapter (and a handy map) for each of the city’s twenty arrondissements, Le Matrimoine de Paris tracks the city’s female history-makers. Some of the names are familiar: Coco Chanel, Marie Curie, Simone de Beauvoir, Isadora Duncan, Françoise Sagan.

Sadly, all too many will draw blanks, such as ex-slave abolitionist Queen Bathilde (626 – 680), vengeance-driven pirate Jeanne de Belleville (1300 – 1359), poet/historian Christine de Pisan (1364 – 1430) and revolutionary firebrand Olympe de Gouges (1748 – 1793).

The stately Théatre du Palais Royal in the 1st arrondissement allows Vallée to tell the roller-coaster tale of Mademoiselle de Montansier (1730 – 1820), France’s first stage impresario, who parlayed a smallish stake (earned through gambling and the sex trade) and a friendship with Marie-Antoinette into an entertainment empire managing multiple theaters throughout France.

Montansier’s own acting abilities were not strong enough to convince the Revolutionary Council that she was anti-royalist, but in a melodramatic flourish, she postponed her final act when her arch-enemy Robespierre was beheaded a few days before her own date with the guillotine.

She made a fortune, lost it and did a stint in debtor’s prison before convincing Napoleon to build her a new theater. She died peacefully, a rich and successful self-made woman, at age 90.

Many of the stories have unhappier endings: Standing out from the crowd often got women burned the stake (Joan of Arc); beheaded (Olympe de Gouges); bundled into nunneries (author/investment capitalist Madame de Tencin) or insane asylums (sculptress Camille Claudel); excommunicated for their art (Rachel Félix, La Champmeslé) or cheated out of their earnings (Colette).

Vallée also describes the necessary life-hacks that women were obliged to employ in order to get their work noticed, or to be able to work at all.

“We can’t let women be erased from history, and sometimes history itself does that,” says the author, noting that mathematician Emilie du Châtelet (1706 – 1749), considered a world-class savant in her day, has somehow morphed over the years into “Voltaire’s brainy girlfriend.”

The book, well-received in France, is not yet translated in English but the French is not overly complex. It’s the perfect guide for a #TimesUp tour of Paris.

Le Matrimoine de Paris by Edith Vallée. Published by Editions Christine Bonneton, 2018. 18€.

© 2019, Corinne LaBalme.

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In September 1939, when France declared war on Germany, the Camp des Milles interned so-called “enemy subjects,” largely meaning citizens of Germany and Austria living in France, in more than 240 camps around the country, including a former tile factory in the village of Les Milles. By the following June Les Milles was known as the camp of artist due to some 3500 artists and intellectuals being detained there. Among them was Lion Feuchtwanger, a Jewish German writer.

Born in Munich in 1884, the son of a Jewish factory owner, Feuchtwanger became a well-known writer who tried to warn the world about the dangers of Hitler and the Nazi party. As early as the 1920s he predicted many of the Nazis’ crimes in his book “Conversations with the Wandering Jew.” His book “Jud Süß” (Süss the Jew) would be distorted by the Nazis, who turned it into an anti-Semitic feature film. Heinrich Himmler had it shown to SS units and Einsatzgruppen paramilitary death squads about to be sent east on their murderous assignments.

When Hitler rose to power in 1933, Feuchtwanger was on a book tour in the United States. There he met with President Franklin D. Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. While in the U.S. he learned of the confiscation of his properties in Germany and the burning of his books. The German Ambassador to the U.S. advised Feuchtwanger not to return to his homeland. He took his advice but returned to Europe. Lion Feuchtwanger and his wife Marta settled down with other German exiles in the seaside town of Sanary-sur-Mer, between Bandol and Toulon in southern France.

“We were in paradise, against our will,” he wrote. Although his books were banned from publication in Germany, the high circulations of translations enabled Feuchtwanger to have a comparatively comfortable life in exile until the outbreak of the war.

It was then, in September 1939, that Feuchtwanger, like other Germans and Austrians living in exile in France, was first interned at the Camps des Milles. Remarking on the irony of the internment of what were essentially anti-Nazi refugees, he wrote: “the responsible authorities know perfectly well that the spies, the saboteurs, the Nazi sympathizers were to be sought quite elsewhere than among us.” Recognizing this, the authorities released Feuchtwanger after several weeks.

The Devil in France

But the war situation and the attitude of the French government changed in early 1940 Feuchtwanger was arrested and interned there a second time. In his memoir “The Devil in France” he speaks of the deplorable conditions of that internment.

Republished in English by USC (University of Southern California) Libraries in 2010, The Devil in France (subtitled “My Encounter with Him in the Summer of 1940”) provides an intimate account of Feuchtwanger’s thoughts, snippets of his conversations and details of his survival tactics. Although Les Milles was not a work camp, Feuchtwanger recalled how, “under the sharp command of a sergeant,” he and his fellow inmates were forced to make neatly stacked piles of bricks. The bricks would later be torn down and piled up in another place. It made him think of the verse from Exodus “in which,” he wrote, “the children of Israel are forced to bake bricks for Pharaoh of Egypt to build the treasure cities of Pithom and Raamses.” So he chanted “Pithom Raamses… Pithom–Raamses” as he mechanically tossed bricks to his neighbor.

In the memoir he tells about the tiles, the bricks, the cramped spaces, making his bed directly on the floor out of straw, setting it off with more bricks, breathing in dust until his lungs bled and dust even in their inadequate food, the boredom, the lack of privacy. When not lifting bricks, the inmates spent much of their days in the dimly lit dormitories.

In the morning, he wrote, there were long lines to go outside to a handful of filthy latrines that were controlled by Foreign Legion detainees, some of whom had fought for France for decades and were maimed. One could tip the Legionnaires to get moved up to the front of the line. The Legionnaires also ran much of the camp’s black market.

The inmates organized cultural activities in their fight against boredom and dehumanization. Feuchtwanger eloquently describes a cabaret club set up in the brick oven area of the camp, where they could mobilize their creativity and artistic talents. They called it the Catacomb, after a Berlin nightclub closed by Goebbels in the mid-1930s.

Feuchtwanger lived to write about his experiences because he managed to escape at the end of the summer of 1940, before the French began participating in the delivery of Jews to Nazi death camps. His wife Marta orchestrated his escape. At that time, he, along with other prisoners of Les Milles, had been moved to a makeshift tent camp near Nîmes. The prisoners were allowed to bathe every afternoon at a small river in the middle of the afternoon. This proved to be the perfect time of day to engineer an escape and smuggle him out disguised as an English woman and take him to Marseille.

There, Marta was assisted by the American vice consul in Marseille, Hiram Bingham IV, who was known for liberally issuing visas to help refugees, in defiance of State Department policy. Bingham arranged to have a picture of a grim and gaunt Feuchtwanger behind the barbed wires of the Milles Camp sent to America. Feuchtwanger’s publisher, Ben Huebsch of Viking Press, had friends show the picture to Eleanor Roosevelt, who made the president aware of the situation. An emergency visa was then issued, unofficially, in view of the American policy of neutrality during that period. Feuchtwanger was therefore added to a list of prominent artists and intellectuals, most wanted by Hitler and therefore in great jeopardy, to be rescued by the American Emergency Rescue Operations run by the American journalist Varian Fry.

From Marseille he undertook a dangerous journey through Spain and Portugal. Realizing that even in Portugal any delay to get on a boat to the United States could be fatal for a man wanted by the Nazis, Martha Sharp, a Unitarian minister’s wife, gave up her own berth on the Excalibur so that Feuchtwanger could sail immediately for New York City. His wife Marta obtained passage two weeks later.

Feuchtwanger was living in California and had published his memoir of his internment by the time Camp des Milles experienced its darkest days. In the summer of 1942, some 2,000 Jewish men, women and children rounded up in the southern France were interned at the Camp des Milles before deportation to Auschwitz, where they were exterminated. While the Germans never asked that children be deported, French minister Pierre Laval insisted that they be deported as well. At Les Milles this is given its full impact by the Serge Klarsfeld exhibition that commemorates the 11,400 Jewish children deported from the whole of France to Auschwitz between 1942 and 1944.

Feuchtwanger died in Los Angeles in 1958. After his death, his wife Marta willed their house Villa Aurora and his extensive personal library to the University of Southern California. Villa Aurora, a historic landmark, is now an artist residence.

Visiting the Camp des Milles

On September 10, 2012, exactly seventy years after the last train convoy left from Les Milles for the Auschwitz death camp, the Memorial-Site of the Camp des Milles was opened to the public. In 2015 UNESCO launched its new Chair for Education for Citizenship, Human Sciences and Shared Memories there. The Chair focuses on research and activism centered on the history of the Holocaust, citizenship and the prevention of genocide.

The historical section: A visit to the Memorial-Site of the Camp des Milles begins with a rich and compelling collection of displays, audiovisual pieces and illustrations in French and English dedicated to understanding the historical background to the threats that escalated across Europe between 1919 and 1939, to the individual destinies of those interned and to the history of France’s Vichy government. Displays document the general history of internment camps in France under the country’s Third Republic (i.e. prior to the summer of 1940) and under the Vichy regime. It recounts in detail the history of the Milles Camps where some 10,000 people of 38 nationalities were interned during the war. It also focuses on the perpetration of the Jewish genocide on a European scale and its implementation in Les Milles.

The remembrance section: The visit continues with the remembrance area, which includes the internment quarters of what had been a tile-making factory and the makeshift cabaret as described in Feuchtwanger’s memoir. Some of the artwork created by interned artists remains visible on the walls. In this section, the guide points out the windows from which women were willing to jump rather than suffer deportation and also indicates the places where some fortunate individuals managed to hide and survive.

The reflexive section: Based on a scientific analysis of the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide and the Tutsi genocide, this this third section provides an understanding of the mechanisms that can lead a democracy (both the system and the gathering of individuals within that system) towards a genocide and the capacity of individuals to resist. It also explores the human behavior mechanisms operating through racism, antisemitism and xenophobia.

The Wall of Righteous Acts concludes the visit to the Camp des Milles by showing the many different ways ordinary people can carry out acts of resistance in the context of genocide through examples of the past century.

Today young people remain an important target group for the memorial-site. Alain Chouraqui, president of The Milles Camp Foundation, has written that it is “not for the visitors, especially the young, to leave overwhelmed by the darkness of the persecutions, but rather that they become aware of vigilance and resistance.”

Practical information

Camp des Milles, 40 chemin de la Badesse, 13517 Aix-en-Provence. Tel. 04 42 39 17 11. Open 10am-7pm (no tickets sold after 6pm) daily except Jan. 1, May 1, Dec. 24, 25, 31. The memorial-site suggests counting on 2½ hours for a complete visit. Audio guides are available in English. For information about guided tours in English contact the camp directly. It can be cold in the internment quarters in winter – dress warmly.

The Devil in France: My Encounter with Him in the Summer of 1940 by Lion Feuchtwanger can be downloaded free of charge from the USC Libraries website. Further information about the writer and his life as an émigré in the United States can be found here.

Aix-en-Provence Tourist Office, 300 avenue Giuseppe Verdi, 13100 Aix-en-Provence.

Bus service (line 4) from the Rotonde near the Aix-en-Provence Tourist Office goes to the camp, whose station is called Gare des Milles.

© 2017

Wendy Dubreuil is a conference interpreter with a deep interest in human rights and discrimination issues.

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* * *

We are often at a loss for words when we travel in continental Europe. It isn’t only the words for natural conversation that are lacking but also the vocabulary of the things we see.

We admire the architectural and ornamental details of cathedrals, castles, mansions, ornate buildings and interior design without being able to name them: the archivolt, tympanum and gable at the entrance to the cathedral, the rib vaulting and lancet and rose windows inside, or the madillions, scrolled pediments, atlantes and caryatids that draw our attention as we wander through town. Perhaps that’s why we take so many pictures, because we don’t have the vocabulary, even in English, to describe or remember the details.

That isn’t a failing on our part. After all, we have little to no contact with such elements back home. Still, if you find yourself curious for the name of such things, the handsome coffeetable book Vocabulaire Illustré de l’Ornament by Evelyne Thomas can go a long way in satisfying your curiosity in the vocabulary of ornamentation from Antiquity through the 19th century.

The 320-page book has hundreds of entries alphabetically organized and precisely illustrated with 800 photographs, nearly all of which were taken by the author Though the descriptions are in French, a 12-page lexicon of terms English-to-French and French-to-English adds a touch of accessibility to those unable to read in French.

Evelyne Thomas is a journalist originally from Tours who holds a doctorate in the History of Art. (Disclaimer: She is also member of the board of the Association des Journalistes du Patrimoine as is this writer.)

Vocabulaire illustré de l’ornament par le décor de l’architecture et des autres arts by Evelyne Thomas. Published by Eyrolles. 39.50€. First published in 2012, and recipient of the 2013 Demeure Historique book prize, the book’s second edition was published in this year.

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Beyond his responsibilities at Versailles, Baraton is at once a folk historian, a provocateur and an entertainer in writing about the dark side of Versailles in Vice et Versailles: Crimes, trahisons et autres Empoisonnements au palais du Roi-Soleil (Vice and Versailles: Crimes, Treacheries and other Poisonings at the Palace of the Sun King).

“Money is celebrated in every corner [of Versailles],” he writes (in French). “There isn’t a statue or restored vase that doesn’t have its plaque thanking a generous donor… My greatest wish would be that a plaque, however modest, serve as a reminder that this palace of fairy tales is also that of dramas and misfortunes, because I cannot and don’t want to forget those, numerous as they are, who suffered in their flesh and paid with their life to enable us today to contemplate and to appreciate the chateau of kings, Versailles.”

In the absence of such a plaque, Baraton pays homage to the victims of Versailles in this book, though “homage” may not the appropriate term for his account of much the suffering he describes seeing how much he seems to delight in telling it. He spares no gore in telling stories about Versailles that “Historians,” he writes, “scarcely evoke,” “truths that would tarnish the luster of Versailles.”

This zone on the way to Normandy from Paris was once the stomping ground of a less titled band of crooks and hoods before Louis XIII purchased land at the village of Versailles in 1632 and ordered the construction of a hunting lodge. His son Louis XIV, upon assuming the reigns of power, would then use that lodge as the inner shell around which his expansive palace would develop beginning in 1662, a project that he would pursue for the next 50 years. Versailles was built a tremendous theater where Louis XIV always stood center stage, whether in the palace or in the garden, asserting and ensuring his role as the Sun King, the power and the glory around which all rotated.

Always quick to point out the murky side of this story, Baraton writes: “It’s fear that brought Louis XIV to Versailles, frightened by the Fronde [a rebellion against the royal government during the king’s minority]. It’s blood that allowed him to remain there. The sweet paths that we visit and the fabulous luxury of a palace that we admire are built on an open grave that would make the worst tyrant nauseous.”

At the time of its construction, Versailles was the largest construction site in Europe: 36,000 men worked on the site and there were 22,000 soldiers in the area. Malnourished and poorly paid, they worked under horrible conditions, suffering from cold, fever and frequent accidents. Baraton writes: “While I don’t know how many men died—the number 8,000 that has been mentioned by some sounds optimistic to me—I know that three hospitals… were built to care for the victims of a project worthy of a pharaoh.”

Beyond the sufferance of those who created Versailles, he invites the reader to revel in shadowy corners of the history of Versailles over the past 400 years whether telling us that the Grand Trianon was built on the site of a cemetery, noting that the last court-ordered public execution in France took place in the town of Versailles in 1939, or speaking of a of tortures, crimes, acts of vengeance and the occasional bloodletting.

Poisoning, Baraton explains, was all the rage during Louis XIV’s reign, “an arm for women that was very fashionable at the time.” As to elixirs of love, he has dug up the recipe of the love potion that Madame de Montespan supposedly managed to sneak into the king’s bloodstream: testicles of wild boar, artichoke, cat urine, fox excrement, toad powder, an eye of viper.

The author playfully lets us know that a bit of the macabre can await us, too, when we visit the great palace. In the name of history and beauty, mercury, despite its known toxicity, was recently used in the Hall of Mirrors to restore and replace those of the famed mirrors that had deteriorated over the centuries. “The level of toxicity is certainly beneath the safety level established by the WHO, but I recommend visitors who are particular about their appearance to not gaze upon themselves too long in the Hall.”

Though haphazard in its telling of the horror stories of Versailles, “Vice et Versailles” is a pleasant and easy trot of a read—in French only—full of anecdotes, ironic asides, juicy tidbits, black humor and broad historical strokes.

Published by Grasset in 2011, “Vice et Versailles” is one of a number of books that Baraton has written about the grounds where he has been employed since 1976 at the age of 19. He is also the author of more cheerful books including “Le Jardinier de Versailles” (Grasset, 2006), “Versailles vu par Alain Baraton” (Hugo et Cie, 2007) and “L’Amour à Versailles” (Grasset, 2009), along with other books on gardening, landscaping and trees. Baraton is especially known to a wide public in France through his weekly gardening show on the radio station France Inter. (Think a French version of “You Bet Your Garden” on NPR.)

During the height of Louis XIV’s reign at Versailles, 7000 people worked in the gardens of Versailles. Nowadays, with 800,000 flowers to plant each year along with general upkeep and various restorations, there are now 48 permanent gardeners for 2100 acres (850 hectares) along with surveillance agents and employees of ten private companies that periodically intervene “without,” Baraton said during a presentation of his book, “the same personal attachment [to Versailles] that the permanent gardeners have.”

In a conversation with the author-gardener it’s clear that he sees a certain amount of horror in the effects of contemporary tourism in Versailles, albeit far less bloody horror. He cites the eyesore of garbage cans now placed everywhere as a consequence of picnickers having so much waste. He also doesn’t like the idea of visitors listening to audio devices rather than to the natural environment. And he’s no fan of the golf carts that visitors can use to visit the garden but in which people don’t even look at what they’re passing but simply use to get from point A to point B. He would rather have us remember that beyond the palace the park of Versailles is a 17th-century creation that ought to be approached in the spirit of that era, meaning with lots of walking, perhaps in the wind or the cold, and with moments of silence so as to listen to the birds.

Though “Vice et Versailles” doesn’t present the technical aspects of his work overseeing the garden and park of Versailles, Baraton, as heir of sorts to André Le Nôtre, the landscape gardener who created Louis XIV’s backyard at Versailles, lets it be known that he has “an account to settle” with his forebear.

ALAIN BARATON, LE JARDINIER DE VERSAILLES… par AJPAT

In the interview video above conducted by Michel Shulman, president of the French Assocation of Heritage Journalists (Association des journalistes du patrimoine), Baraton explains (and I translate):

“Le Notre is a truly competent professional who left us with a unique and remarkable work, except that Le Notre didn’t invent anything—it’s worth bearing in mind—and Le Notre didn’t transmit anything either. When one has the opportunity, as Le Notre did, to be titled, to be near the king, to be wealthy—to keep everything for himself and take to the grave the secrets of his work, it’s not honorable. So I love Le Notre’s creation but I like the man himself a lot less… When one does work such as his it’s one’s duty to perpetuate it… I’m mad at Le Notre and that’s why from time to time I take a perverse pleasure in damaging a little his memory.”

Recognizing his role as a media personality, Baraton concludes that “My own obsession today is to transmit not only my own knowledge but that of my colleagues and to do exactly what he, Le Notre, didn’t have the courage to do.”

For those who read French, “Vice et Versailles” is a enjoyable and bloody introduction to some of that transmission.

Vice et Versailles: Crimes, trahaisons et autres empoisonnements au palais du Roi-Soleil by Alain Barton. 203 pages. Published by Grasset, 2011.

© 2013, Gary Lee Kraut

Other articles, photographs and videos about Versailles on France Revisited include:
Your, Mine and Le Nôtre’s: An American Photographer Examines the Garden of Versailles  (photography)
Jealousy and the Thrones at Versailles  (exhibtion)
The Gardens of Versailles in Winter (photograph/video)
Versailles, an Alternate Approach (advice)
Versailles, Versight, Versails, Versighs, Versize, Versache: How I learned to Forget the Crowds and Appreciate Versailles (3-part article)

The post Vice & Versailles: A Master Gardener Delves Into the Dark Shadows of the Louis XIV’s Palace appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Quentin and his brothers Ted Jr., Archie and Kermit all served in WWI. Ted Jr. would later be the oldest American soldier and highest ranking officer to land by sea in Normandy (Utah Beach) on D-Day June 6, 1944. He died of a heart attack five weeks into the invasion. Quentin was originally buried in the village of Chamery, where his plane crashed. The two brothers are now buried side by side at the Normandy American Cemetery above Omaha Beach.

In this exclusive France Revisited interview, Christiane Sinnig-Haas, author of a forthcoming book about Quentin Roosevelt, tells about “the most famous American victim of the First World War” and how, after becoming director of the Jean de La Fontaine Museum in Château-Thierry, she became interested in Quentin’s life.

[This interview was conducted in 2012. In 2015 Château-Thierry inaugurated the Maison de l’Amitié France-Amérique on Place des Etat-Unis. The building houses the tourist office, an exhibition space that speaks of the life and death of Quentin Roosevelt and a “mini-school” offering English classes for children.]

[Cliquer pour la version originale française de cet entretien.]

France Revisited: How did you come to be interested in Quentin Roosevelt?

Christiane Sinnig-Haas: I came upon Quentin Roosevelt by chance, as is the case with many encounters. His story is tied to the history of the First World War in the Chateau-Thierry region. I discovered the tragic destiny of Quentin Roosevelt when I took over as director of the Jean de La Fontaine Museum of Chateau-Thierry, which is also a Maison d’Ecrivain [Writer’s House].

I had just finished a book about a great contemporary Chinese writer Ba Jin who lived in Château-Thierry in the 1920s and whom the city wanted to honor when a friend took me to Chamery to the site where Quentin’s plane crashed on July 14, 1918.

The City of Château-Thierry also held a series of events and exhibitions in honor of the memory of Quentin Roosevelt in 2010.

In doing research about Quentin I discovered that he had left numerous letters telling about his short life before and after his arrival in France where he enlisted as a volunteer. He had inherited from his father, President Theodore Roosevelt, a taste for writing. In 1921 his brother Kermit published a selection of Quentin’s letters. Reading between the lines one discovers the portrait of the extremely likable and brilliant young man that was Quentin.

I traveled to Harvard, to Sagamore Hill [home of Theodore Roosevelt and family] and to Washington to better understand the reality of his daily life. It’s through his letters and through the archives maintained by the family that I entered into the world of Quentin Roosevelt.

Another decisive encounter was my meeting Richard Derby Williams and his wife Mary. Richard Derby Williams, grandson of Quentin’s sister Ethel to whom he was very close, attaches, as does the entire Roosevelt family, great significance to paying homage to Quentin’s sacrifice, and he was extremely positive about this project in English. He knows Château-Thierry well and has become friends with those here who honor and maintain the memory of Quentin. His grandmother Ethel Roosevelt Derby, guardian of the family memory, had established a friendship with a couple of teachers from the area, the Corets, who perpetuated the celebration of Memorial Day at Quentin’s tomb in Chamery, part of the commune of Coulanges-Cohan since 1954.

These warm relations have been perpetuated by her grandson and family, the Theodore Roosevelt Association, local authorities, the City of Château-Thierry, and the Aisne-Marne Cemetery at Belleau Wood.

FR: Quentin Roosevelt was the youngest son of President Theodore Roosevelt and is often described as being his favorite. Why?

C.S-H.: As his name indicates, Quentin was the fifth child of Theodore and Edith Roosevelt. His half-sister Alice and his mother Edith often remarked that he was undoubtedly the most talented of the President’s children and that he possessed a strong sense of humor.

At a young age he showed himself to be very bold and reckless and to have little physical inhibition, which frightened his parents. Intelligent, full of joie de vivre, direct, sensitive and inventive, he was a born leader, as can be seen early on in episodes of the White House Gang which delighted the press and the American public. The president attached great importance to the development of Quentin’s sense of responsibility and principles and channeled this spirit that he recognized in himself.

He was an excellent student whose interest in reading and writing were encouraged by his parents.

Theodore Roosevelt nourished high ambitions for Quentin in whom he might have seen a potential political heir. He shared his father’s traits both physically and intellectually, and Theodore didn’t fail to notice that Quentin had a certain charisma.

While a student at Harvard, Quentin became the epistolary confidant of his father who shared with him his opinions particularly regarding domestic and international politics. Like the president, he was charming and full of energy; he was sincere and applied the principles in which he believed.

Quentin had an absolutely limitless admiration for his father, whom he adored.

FR: Where did Quentin’s passion for flying come from and how did he become a pilot?

C.S-H.: Quentin surprised his friends and family early on with his strong attraction and innate talent for mechanics, which was both a passion and a gift.

In August 1909, during a family journey in Europe, he was struck by the beauty of an aerial show in Reims, which was for him a revelation. He was almost 12 years old. He returned to the region in 1918, as a pilot enlisting voluntarily to meet his destiny.

Poems that he wrote at a young age reveal his fascination with aviation, mechanics and engines. His enthusiasm for experiences involving mechanics wasn’t always shared by the family. While a student at Harvard he considered completing his degree at MIT and said that he wanted to become a mechanical engineer.

Theodore Roosevelt, for his part, understood very early on the strategic importance that aviation was going to have in the European conflict, especially after the first Battle of the Marne. He had written articles on the subject and Quentin was well aware of them.

In 1917, when the United States entered the war, Quentin, then at Harvard, immediately informed his parents of his decision to enlist in order to become a fighter pilot, despite problems with his back and his sight. His father gave his support and totally adhered to his decision.

Before leaving for France in July, Quentin was trained at the Mineola Aviation School then completing his training in France.

In 1917 the American army had less than one hundred trained pilots, and the manpower needs for the conflict in Europe were enormous.

FR: How did his father, a former president, feel about his son going to war?

C.H-S.: It’s undeniable that Theodore Roosevelt’s personality and ideas definitely marked the choices of his sons and of his entire family.

Theodore Roosevelt’s political perceptiveness concerning the conflict and the worldwide situation in Europe were remarkable. With premonitory insight he warned his countrymen of the economic and strategic dangers of a German victory for Europe as well as for the United States. He was convinced very early on of the necessity for the United States to get involved in Europe. The attitude of his successor in the White House, Woodrow Wilson, and of the latter’s refuge behind political neutrality—which enabled Wilson’s reelection in 1916—distressed Theodore Roosevelt.

Roosevelt early on sought to convince the American people that Wilson’s non-interventionist attitude and his pacifism were reprehensible; he called President Wilson a coward.

To Roosevelt, the United States’ entrance into the conflict in 1917 came very late and he considered the country to be unequipped and that a lot of time had been lost. (As early as 1914, Quentin’s sister Ethel, a nurse, had accompanied to France her husband Richard Derby, a surgeon voluntarily enlisted to work at the American Hospital in Paris.)

President Wilson’s refusal to allow Theodore Roosevelt (“Colonel” Theodore Roosevelt) to enlist, despite the insistence of allies who believed that his presence would have a positive effect on troop morale, left a bitter taste in the former president’s mouth since he was well-known and popular in Europe. His sons, he said, were his pride and his substitution due to the prohibition against being on the front in Europe himself.

In June 1917, his sons Ted and Archie sailed to France and Kermit for Mesopotamia (now Iraq). On July 23, 1917, Quentin sailed for France. For the entire family, participating in the war effort was a question of honor.

FR: What’s known of Quentin’s last dogfight?

C.S-H.: Quentin’s squadron, the 95th Pursuit Squadron, along with 94th Pursuit Squadron were the first American fighter plane squadrons.

On July 14, 1918, the situation in the Chateau-Thierry sector was extremely dangerous. German aviation had very strict orders to prevent any observation and reconnaissance attempts—the great German “Friedensturm” offensive was planned for the following day, July 15. The German commander had given orders to totally neutralize any observation flights along the front line.

On July 14, Quentin’s unit, based at Saints near Château-Thierry, took off early in the morning under the command of Lieutenant Edward Buford. The squadron’s mission was to fly cover for an observation plane of the 88th that would take photos behind the front line The photos were taken and the observation plane headed back to base when German Fokkers appeared. The formation of five American planes that had gone over the front line found themselves faced with a formation of seven German Fokkers.

Confronted with so many enemy planes, Lieutenant Buford decided to cease combat and to bring the unit back behind the lines. The weather was cloudy and windy and visibility wasn’t good. Between cloud layers, Lieutenant Buford caught sight of a Nieuport in difficulty being attacked by three Fokkers. It had apparently been hit. The dogfight lasted five to six minutes. Quentin had thrown himself into combat, undoubtedly the victim of his own great boldness, his bravery and his lack of fear, convinced that he was doing the right thing.

At the same time it was raining in Paris and the allies were parading down the Champs-Elysées for the July 14 French national holiday, Bastille Day.

Quentin was signaled as missing when the other airplanes returned to base. He had been shot down and had crashed in Chamery, in the German zone.

Quentin had deplored the superiority of the new design of the German Fokkers over the older American Nieuports in his letters and had noted the problems of being underequipped that his father had predicted at the start of the conflict.

FR: Quentin’s plane crashed on the other side of the front. The Germans buried him and, conscious that he was the son of a former American president, immediately informed the French military. What’s known about the reaction of the German and the French authorities to his death?

C.S-H.: News of Quentin’s death shocked the entire world. The press everywhere told of his sacrifice, and his courage was saluted unanimously. The Roosevelt name was known and respected by the French as well as by the Germans, both civilians and the military.

On July 15 he was buried in Chamery, a little village in the department of Aisne, at the place where his plane had crashed. An eyewitness described an impressive honor guard of German soldiers giving him military honors at the site.

In keeping with tradition, the broken blades of the propeller and the buckled wheels of his plane marked the site of his tomb surmounted by a wood cross.

A photo of his remains next the plane was taken by the German military. Its use as propaganda to lift troop moral quickly turned out to be extremely counterproductive among both civilians and the German army. It was even quite demoralizing for the troops. The comparison of the courageous son of the former American president dead in aerial combat with the six sons of the Kaiser who maintained a respectful distance from the front was rather unflattering for the latter and further glorified the sacrifice of Quentin and of his brothers Theodore Jr., Archie and Kermit, all on the front and volunteers in the name of the fight against barbarism.

The American press was explicit: On August 4, 1918 the Chicago Sunday Tribune printed photographs of the sons of President Theodore Roosevelt and the sons of the German Kaiser with the heading “THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DEMOCRACY AND AUTOCRACY.”

On the French side, Quentin’s death confirmed the admiration and the gratitude for these American volunteers. The high French authorities quickly send their condolences to Theodore and Edith. Quentin was decorated with the Croix de Guerre avec palme [a French medal for exceptional conduct during WWI].

FR: Quentin Roosevelt was killed in aerial combat on July 14, 1918, the French national holiday, Bastille Day? Is that in some way significant?

C.S-H.: Quentin had a rendez-vous with destiny. The symbolic date of his death amplified the prestige of his sacrifice. That date is part of what made him a legend. Le 14 juillet (the 14th of July), the national holiday, date of the storming of the Bastille, is the French equivalent of America’s Independence Day. It’s as though the son of a French president had been killed by the enemies on American soil on a 4th of July!

Quentin’s sacrifice and the Americans who volunteered to enlist in the First World War left a very strong mark in the collective memory; their enthusiasm, their energy and their indefectible faith in doing the right thing lifted the morale of soldiers and of the French people. The ferocious battles that took place in the area around Château-Thierry during the Second Battle of the Marne have marked forever the sites themselves and French-American friendship.

FR: Can you tell us about the reaction of the Roosevelt family to the news of Quentin’s death and the bond it created between the family and France after that?

C.S-H.: President Roosevelt was informed at Sagamore Hill [his home] on the morning of July 17. The reaction of the parents before the press and before the American people was one of great reserve and great dignity. They saluted Quentin’s courage and his sacrifice along with that of all parents whose sons were in danger or had died on the front in a foreign land. They wanted to share their pain with the American people and with parents who suffered as they did. Quentin’s father and mother didn’t ask for any more compassion than ordinary citizens.

In private the shock was violent. It was a shock of the ideals on which Theodore and Edith had built their lives confronted with the reality and pain of Quentin’s death. It’s possible that Theodore couldn’t stand the sense of guilt concerning Quentin’s tragic end. He was devastated. Something was extinguished in Theodore’s heart with Quentin’s death. His family, those close to him and he himself recognized it. The “Lion,” as his family called him, died six months later at the age of 60.

American troops liberated the area of Chamery and discovered Quentin’s tomb several days after his death. His parents wanted Quentin’s remains to stay buried there where he had fallen, and the authorities accommodated their desire.

Early in 1919, Quentin’s mother came to meditate on his tomb. The former First Lady had a fountain built in Quentin’s memory in the village of Chamery.

[Editor’s note: Quentin’s oldest brother Theodore Roosevelt Jr. died during the Invasion of Normandy 1944. After the creation of the Normandy American Cemetery above Omaha Beach, the Roosevelt family sought and obtained permission to have Quentin’s remains exhumed from Chamery and buried beside those of his brother. ]

FR: Beyond the personal story of his engagement in the war and the family tragedy of his death, how do those events fit in with the larger narrative of the war and why do you consider them significant?

C.S-H.: Quentin’s life, his birth, his personality, his intellectual abilities, his charisma and his humor formed an exceptional individual and someone who was extremely likable; he would undoubtedly have made his mark on America’s political or social landscape. He considered himself as someone who was very ordinary yet he had many uncommon qualities.

There’s a tragic and romantic dimension to his destiny about which he had a premonition. He went through very dark phases of depression but he felt that he had a mission that he could not and would not escape. That sentiment appears repeatedly in the letters to his fiancée Flora Payne Whitney. He belongs to a generation that expressed a pressing desire to fight for ideas. It gives pause to consider today the consensus at the time around the determination and the will to fight to the death that invaded the entire society, whatever the price may be. He was only 20 years old yet his letters reveal great maturity.

Reading his letter we can imagine someone for whom friendship was precious. His comrades-in-arms, the soldiers and the mechanics under his orders were unanimous in their great appreciation and respect for him. It’s difficult to fake your personality when death is lying in wait at every mission. Quentin belongs to the collective memory as do all those pilots who died in aerial combat.

He was undoubtedly the most famous American victim of the First World War.

Crushed by his destiny, by the war and by the events that engulfed the world, he would have belonged—had he not carried the Roosevelt name—to the thousands of forgotten aviators and aces who, like Quentin, wanted to bring an end to this war and to its butchery.

[Editor’s note: Regarding American WWI pilots who were killed in action, see also this information about the Escadrille Lafayette Memorial near Paris.]

One of his favorite expressions was “noblesse oblige,” something that defines him well; he carried a famous name that personified courage, it gave him responsibility, and he assumed it with nobility.

He embodied the quote from Theodore Roosevelt engraved on Quentin’s fountain in Chamery: “Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die.”

FR: How did you, as an expert on Quentin Roosevelt, come to be chief curator and director of a museum dedicated to Jean de La Fontaine? What brought you to the La Fontaine Museum?

C.S-H.: It’s because I’m director of the Jean de La Fountaine Museum in Château-Thierry, which is labeled “Musée de France” and “Maison d’écrivain” (Writer’s House), that I became interested in Quentin Roosevelt. My approach was essentially literary. His character emerged through a reading of his letters and through the archives.

Jean de La Fontaine was born in Château-Thierry. The museum occupies a 16th-century home that once belonged to his family and is listed as a Historical Monument. It’s just received from the Ministry of Culture the label “Maison des Illustres” [designating a home of someone “illustrious” or renown]. Restoration of the façade has just been completed.

La Fontaine is one of the great poets of the French literature. He lived in the 17th century, the century of Louis XIV, who both admired and was wary of La Fontaine’s genius. Great artists have illustrated his fables and tales: Fragonard, Oudry, Chagall, Dali, etc.

The museum has collections of exceptional paintings and miniatures as well as a library devoted to the writer.

Quentin knew French literature, including La Fontaine and La Bruyère, and had visited France in his youth. He had been impressed by the Louvre. In his letters he quotes authors in French. Through his education he had a command of French both spoken and written.

FR: English-speakers are especially familiar with Aesop’s fables but few know those of La Fontaine. In what way would the La Fontaine Museum be interesting for those who don’t know the writer’s work?

C.S-H.: Aesop’s fables are known in Anglo-Saxon literature and are found in La Fontaine, whose own work they inspired. The 17th century is the century of fables and tales that were showcased in French literature and at the Court of Louis XIV

La Fontaine uses animal anthropomorphism, putting to the forefront animals such as the fox, the wolf, the hare, the frog, the cat, the town rat and the country rat. That animal world is also the key to the success of Walt Disney, who adapted fables, fairy tales—stories with a moral component, often inspired by European literature. Among his sources of inspiration were the fables of La Fontaine.

The mouse known around the world, Mickey, sticks the tip of his snout into La Fontaine’s animal world. As with La Fontaine, the purpose is to permeate the imagination of children and adults, to get around censures and to give lessons in morality by using animals to give a message or to make situations less alarming.

Walt Disney’s The Tortoise and the Hare, a short film from Silly Symphonies released in 1935, was inspired by a fable that Jean de La Fontaine wrote for the king’s son.

There was a before and an after La Fontaine in literature just as there’s a before and after Walt Disney for their adaptation to the movies. Both are unequaled and incomparable. The fables and the ideals that they convey, such as courage, know no borders and are a bond between our two cultures.

Christiane Sinnig-Haas is the chief curator and director of the Musée Jean de La Fontaine in Château-Thierry. She is founder of the Association pour le Musée Jean de La Fontaine and vice president of the network of Writers’ Houses in the Picardy region.

The responses in this written interview, originally in French, are the copyright of Christiane Sinnig-Haas, 2012. Translation by Gary Lee Kraut.

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Over the course of a single day, the novel follows the parallel stories of the three Americans and their respective tutors through separate walks on the streets of Paris: A woman who’s traveled to Paris alone after the death of her married lover; a women living in Paris and seeking freedom from family life; and the husband of a well-known actress who’s in the French capital to make a film.

Their parallel stories are explorations of love, loss, fidelity and loneliness—and of course of the beauty of Paris. In each case, the characters must decide what to do about their attraction to their opposite-sex French tutors.

Originally from Trenton, New Jersey, as is this interviewer, Ellen and her husband Neal now live in the San Francisco Bay area. She has two grown daughters.

Gary Lee Kraut: How did you learn French and was your teacher cute?

Ellen Sussman: When I moved to Paris I had a one-year-old and I was pregnant with my second child. So I never had time for real French lessons. For a short period of time I did set up for a French tutor to come to my apartment to give me lessons. We’d sit at the kitchen table and my daughters would be a constant distraction. No wonder my French is so bad! When I created the character of Riley in French Lessons I wanted to make two major differences between us so that I would feel freer to write fiction rather than memoir. Riley hates Paris – I loved Paris. And Riley got a hot French tutor. Mine was definitely not hot.

GLK: What is it about Paris that arouses fantasies about sex and romance?

ES: Come on – you guys are always making out on the street! Well, maybe not always. But there are more kisses and caresses on Parisian streets than we might find in the US. And I don’t blame the French. Paris is very romantic. It’s a gorgeous city – and there’s a long history of romance tied to the place. So when we visit Paris we think about love, we think about sex. We might also think about loneliness. A long walk along the Seine at night will make a person yearn for someone, maybe even someone they haven’t yet met.

GLK: Two of the American characters learning French in your novel are women, one is a man. In your opinion, do men and women have different perceptions of Paris?

ES: I used all three characters to explore different perceptions of Paris. I’m not sure the differences are gender-based. In fact, Jeremy might be my most romantic character, rather than either of the women. And the one who lives in Paris hates it – at least, in the beginning of her day. Maybe Paris is a reflection of our own need for love and romance in our lives.

GLK: Did you write any of French Lessons while in Paris?

ES: No, but I was taking notes! I think I spent every day of the five years I lived there taking mental notes, and sometimes filling notebooks with my observations. Every walk I took – with one baby in the stroller and one in the Snugli – every dinner conversation – every hour spent in the parks, became material for French Lessons. When I finally started writing the novel – years after I left Paris – it poured out of me. I was so ready to use my Paris.

GLK: How did you select the three specific walks that your characters take?

ES: That was a joy to create! I wanted my characters to hit some of my favorite spots in Paris. So I led them through the different arrondissements, stopping at small museums or parks along the way. My writing challenge was to make Paris matter. I didn’t want each location just to be a pretty background. I wanted each spot to make a difference to the characters – to change them in some way. So, for instance, when Josie and Nico reached the Eiffel Tower, they had to walk up the stairs; they had to gaze from the top – they had to be transformed by the Tower.

GLK: Paris is so associated with romance. Do you recommend it for single travelers?

ES: Yes! I think romance is good for the soul, even if it’s the romance of dreams. And Paris moves us to dream.

GLK: When did you first visit Paris? Do you remember how you felt that first time?

ES: I was 24 on my first visit to Paris. But it was too quick, too short. When I moved there I was 33 and I discovered the real Paris, not the tourist’s Paris. I think everyone who visits should stay awhile. Walk the streets of Paris and take it in. You can learn so much from the city. Explore the nooks and crannies – the secrets of Paris off-the-beaten-track.

GLK: Has your appreciation of Paris changed over the years?

ES: Yes. It helps that I finally speak French (sort of – well, at least on the level of a five-year-old.) And that I know the city and push myself to explore new areas every time I’m there. I’d like to live in Paris again for a long period of time. I think the city has changed a great deal and I’d like to get to know this new diverse city. It’s less formal, less traditional. It’s younger!

GLK: You lived in Paris from 1988 to 1993. How did your time in Paris influence you as a writer?

ES: I think all writers should live abroad for a period of time! It’s a remarkable experience – it opens your eyes and makes you see the world in a brand new way. I think it’s good for writers to be outside their comfort zone – and living abroad will do that. We also learn the world in a bigger way – so that the vision of the world we bring to the page can be a deeper, more expansive one.

GLK: What’s your process for writing a novel?

ES: I write a first draft fairly quickly. It might take 6 months to a year. Then I spend another six months or so revising that draft many many times. I don’t have a plan when I write the first draft – I discover the characters and the plot as I write. So there’s a lot of work to be done on that manuscript. I’m also a very disciplined writer – I write every morning, for three or four hours.

GLK: What’s your next writing project? Are you working on a new novel? Where does it take place?

ES: I’m almost done with my new novel. It’s called The Paradise Guest House and it takes place in Bali. (Yes, I like exotic locations!) The story: A young woman is caught in the terrorist attacks in Bali in 2002 and returns to the island five years later to find the man who saved her.

I’m already thinking about the next novel – and I know where it takes place: the south of France. Back to France!

“French Lessons” by Ellen Sussman. Published in paperback in July 2011 by Ballantine Books. 256 pages.
Ellen Sussman’s website.
A schedule of Ellen’s book readings can be found here.

Comments may be left at the bottom of this page.

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That may have been intended as a sound bite since Monet did in fact work in a studio as well as outside. Two studio spaces that he used subsequent to that interview can still be seen at his home in Giverny. He also installed something of a studio on a boat while there. Nevertheless, the point was well taken: nature and the outdoors were where Monet lived as an artist.

And the Seine was not Monet’s studio alone. It also served at times as the studio for many of his fellow Impressionists—e.g. Renoir, Sisley, Pissarro, Caillebotte—as well as for those who preceded and came after the heydays of Impressionism of the 1870s and 1880s, such as Courbet, Corot, Turner, Jongkind, Saurat and Signac.

A new book, La Seine Impressionniste, at once guidebook and small encyclopedia, revisits those “studios” along the Seine and its surroundings. In it authors Monique and Georges Lucenet present a step-by-step view of the 471 miles (776 km) of the river and the sights along the way, from its source in Burgundy to its estuary in Normandy.

This handsomely illustrated 464-page paperback reveals the artistic and general history of the sights and space that inspired or attracted (or were merely easily accessible to) the Impressionists and others as they developed what I think of not so much as an art of nature but an art of place. The text, in French, is accompanied by 160 reproductions of works coming from more than 40 museums. The book also tells of the literary figures of the time who were also attracted to these riverbanks.

La Seine Impressionniste by Monique and Georges Lucenet, 24.90€.

* * *

But you don’t read French, you say? Or you’re tired of the Impressionists?

Here then is another way of regarding the banks of the Seine as it passes through Paris.

The video below, entitled Notre Train Quotidien (Our Daily Train), examines the contemporary relationship between the left and right banks of the Seine.

Our Daily Train was filmed between the metro stations Gare d’Austerlitz and Quai de la Rapée. That’s where metro line 5 crosses over the Seine, mid-way between the zone of the historical Left Bank/Right Bank at the center of the city (arrondissements 1 through 7) and the Left Bank/Right Bank developments of the past 25 years on the eastern edge of the city (arrondissements 12 and 13).

The video was filmed by Gonzague Petit Trabal, with music by Rémy Klis. It is posted on France Revisited with permission from the authors.

Grab a glass of wine or your relaxation drug of choice, place the video on full screen mode, and let yourself get transported back and forth between the left and right banks of the River Seine.

© 2011, Gary Lee Kraut

See also on France Revisited: “The Art of Punching, Kissing and Lunching: Monet, Renoir and the Impressionist Island at Chatou” and “Paris Rive Gauche: a 21st Century Left Bank.”

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Elliot Essman, an accomplished wine writer, has thus decided that the time has come to make such use of his passion, wine. Or so the title “Use Wine to Make Sense of the World” would lead us to believe. A more modest title would have been more appropriate since the world he is talking about is entirely his own, though fellow wine aficionados may well feel at home there.

Essman holds up his glass of wine in search for all manner of insights—about social interactions, choices, language, education, the brain. Unfortunately, he tends to get stuck on the drink and fail to reach the insight.

 “Wine,” he says, “is my life and inspiration,” but it also appears to be something of a prison, for what he truly craves is a women who, among her other fine qualities, will share a passion for wine—or at least understand his.

In 25 encounters/paragraphs spread throughout the book, he describes dates during which he seeks the perfect communion between “wine, women and, yes, song” (the “yes” is Essman’s since he also has a passion for music). In those passages it’s sometimes difficult to tell whether the author is on a date with a woman or with a glass or bottle wine, but those encounters are nevertheless among the most interesting, if distressing, parts of the book. Though the 25 dates (I leave it to the reader to discovery why he stops at 25) are only briefly sketched, they reveal, perhaps inadvertently, as much about the humorless tensions of the middle-aged dating scene as about the pitfalls of sharing a glass with an incorrigible wine authority.

Essman knows his wine and can likely find words to describe every note of the hundred or more wines (heavy on the French) mentioned throughout this slim book. But those wines, for all he tries, can only make sense of what doesn’t work in a relationship, rarely what does.

Through the dating sequences and other sections exploring social situations (parties, dinner invitations, etc.), the author reveals himself to be an obsessive note-taker, “high-strung” (his words), frequently fighting against a tendency to snobbery and loneliness, quick to judge people for their choices of wine, always concerned about the quality of his.

As a man obsessed with good taste, or at least the right pinot for the right occasion, he is prone to melancholy, as when he states, “Inflexibility and rigid taste preference in wine bothers me, perhaps because I have been rigid and inflexible in other areas of my life and this has caused me unhappiness.”

The book shows a constant inner conflict between the author’s wanting to share his passion and his wanting to be understood. That conflict is sometimes endearing, as in the dating sequences, and sometime annoying, since Essman can be unkind when describing those who don’t share his passion or depth of knowledge.

“If you gain expertise in wine, no matter how genuine your passion and interest, someone, somewhere, will make the unalterable judgment that you are a wine snob. The mere action of holding a glass of wine up to the light and sniffing a wine rather than just gulping it down is enough to cement this judgment in some minds.” That’s a great observation, so it’s a shame that in making it the author can’t keep himself from looking down upon those that would hold that “judgment” when he concludes, “Accept it, and love these people for other things.”

Flattering oneself and ones choices is an unfortunate byproduct of writing about one’s own pleasures but Essman’s overall approach would be more appealing if he (or his editors) had done a better job of holding his distain for the non-initiate in check.

The author does occasionally step back from his quest in order to examine more objective aspects of his passion, such as when he tells about the 17th-century Diary of Samuel Pepys, in which much is written about drink, or about wine cocktails.

“The more you know about wine,” he writes, “the greater the satisfaction you will attain from it, even if it makes you downright silly.” I wish he had let down his guard enough to get silly in this book.

Clear, concise, at times well observed, “Use Wine” is a pleasant and easy read even if it is too sober to have the playful, philosophical edge promised by the title. Essman at once romanticizes and rationalizes wine as he holds it up to the light, takes a sniff, and gives well-rounded discourses on its variety and personality. It would have been nice to see him take some flights of fantasy in his analysis.

Like Beaujolais Nouveau, this book is too light for meaty wine discussions or in-depth wine explorations and too condescending to the novice to lead him or her into the fold. Nevertheless, Elliot Essman’s quirky and personal take on his love for wine is an easy-going addition to a wine library if you, too, see the world through the optic of wine.

© 2010, Gary Lee Kraut

By Elliot Essman

Available on Amazon.

Elliot Essman’s wine writing can be found online on stylegourmet.com

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Maurice, himself now in celluloid heaven, would be pleased to know that the praise he sung over 50 years ago is still so intimately attached to Leslie Caron that Thank Heaven is the title of her memoir, to be published on Nov. 30.

Thank Heaven (Viking) is a recollection of her life both professionally—among her many roles she has been nominated for two Academy Awards for Lili (1953) and The L-Shaped Room (1962), she once again appealed to our Francophilia in Chocolat (2000), and she made her mark on television in an episode of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit (2006), for which she won an Emmy Award—and personally—her love affairs, her three husbands, her divorces, motherhood, her alcoholism and depression, and finally her recovery. Living primarily in Paris, she continues to work as an actress as well as an innkeeper, since she owns Auberge La Lucarne aux Chouettes in Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, Burgundy.

Leslie Caron will be in the United States for the following schedule of events coinciding with the release of Thank Heaven:

December 1, New York City. Barnes & Noble, 1972 Broadway, 7:30pm.

December 2, Philadelphia. Central Library, noon. Leslie Caron will be interviewed by Philadelphia Inquirer film critic Carrie Rickey. Attendance is free. That evening she will be the guest of honor of a gala dinner and film tribute organized by the Alliance Francaise de Philadelphie. Click here for further information.

December 4, Pasadena. All Saints Church, 7pm.
December 5, Los Angeles. Borders Books & Music, 7pm.
December 8, Hollywood. Receiving star on “Hollywood Walk of Fame,” 11:30am.
December 8, Beverly Hills. Tagore Gallery, 5:30pm.

France Revisited thanks Daniele Thomas Easton, former Honorary Consul of France in Philadelphia and Wilmington, for tipping us off about this news.

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