Beginning the Long Goodbye

Avoir Paris. Je suis triste, mais c'est la vie, non? I felt well enough to go out to the market this afternoon. My last time. That's why I am sad. But I think I should be well enough to spend the day out tomorrow, that is my hope, anyway.

I took pictures. I don't like taking pictures in places like the market because that's what tourists do, but I wanted to remember it. That's Montmartre in the background, clementines in the foreground below. I've been writing today about this area. I've done a big burst of research since I'm stuck indoors. I've been using the time to work on a paper about Romanticism in Paris—background for my book.

I'm sure I'll have a lot more to say after tomorrow, after my walk through the "neighborhood," and maybe up into Montmartre. That's the plan, to cover La Nouvelle Athènes once again and in more detail. It has crystallized into The Appassionata's main setting—especially now that I've been able to locate the Farrenc publishing house here. Makes me very happy.

Interestingly, this whole area was more or less developed in the 1820s. Right here where I live. As a matter of fact, there used to be slaughter houses on Avenue Trudaine. That's surprising. I think they were moved into Montmartre and then eventually pushed out of there. I think Napoleon forbade slaughter houses within the city walls.

And maybe here's why—before he was Napoleon the Emperor, back in the days when he was just Napoleon, the ambitious soldier working his way up the food chain, Josephine de Beauharnais lived here. Yes, that Josephine, the one who got her cards read from Madame Lenormand. She lived on Rue de la Victoire, which is just southwest of Rue des Martyrs, and I bet the slaughterhouses stank. And there were stables there too. In fact, it could be where Géricault kept his horse.

The point is, Napoleon slept in my neighborhood! And right here, where the farmers market is flourishing on Avenue Trudaine is where there used to be slaughter houses that he, once he had power, removed. Napoleon: what a bundle of contradictions that guy was. And just to keep my words and pictures somewhat coordinated—up above are the chickens I'm so fond of, at the stall where I can also find Toulouse sausages, another favorite. I will miss them both.

And I will miss the vegetables too. It's what I know the best and what I'll miss the most, this kind of "ordinary" level of being here, the survival stuff like eating and cooking and buying cough drops—just living life. I'm very grateful for all the ways I have not been a tourist, that I've gotten to pretend (as someone put it) that I actually live in Paris. Well, I have sort of lived here—three months is long enough to have to get down to the reality of living now and then. You know, buying toilet paper and dish soap. I'm going to miss the cafés. Nothing can replace them. I don't know what to do about that. These days I don't wake up thinking,"My God, that's Paris out there." In fact, lately, I've been waking up thinking, "Oh no, it's not going to be Paris much longer."

There's a flower stall at the market, and a flower shop that I walk by everyday on my way to the Metro. It spills out onto the street and I walk through it. I'm pretty sure that's why I cross the street where I do. I never think about it, but I take pleasure in walking through the plants and flowers, the color. That's the kind of thing I'm going to miss like crazy: flowers on the street in December and a French woman walking six little white Scottie dogs, sans their leases—I think she was the dog nanny.

I learned today that Victor Hugo knew this neighborhood well. His mistress, Juliette Drouet lived here and apparently they met every afternoon by the church of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette—that's the church at the bottom of Rue des Martyrs, down where all the excitement was happening in the 1820s. Her portrait's by Charles-Emile Callende de Champmartin (1797-1883). He also painted one of the famous images of Georges Sand and a beautiful portrait of Delacroix that I saw at the Paris Museum.

Delacroix spent time around here too. He wrote about it to Georges Sand: "This new district is likely to turn the head of an ardent young man like myself. The first sight that met my virtuous eyes on arrival was a magnificent lorette of the top flight, all dressed in black velvet and satin, who as she got out of her carriage, with goddess-like unconcern, showed me her right leg up to her belly. I won’t mention other encounters to which I already have been exposed and which may perhaps cause me to waver in the path of righteousness…"

The painting (The Young Courtesan) is by Alexandre Francois Xavier Sigalon (1787-37). I've found very little about him, other than like Géricault (1791-1824), he studied with Pierre Guérin, but left and, again like Géricault turned to copying the masters at the Louvre. Did they know one another? Seems likely. There's also the cryptic title of a paper delivered to the Society for French Studies in Leeds in 2005: Exclusion in French Nineteenth-Century Painting: the Meteoric Rise and Precipitous Fall of Xavier Sigalon, Romantic Painter. Ah, those Romantics, they rise and fall quickly. (Not trying to confuse anyone—this last image is Delacroix by de Champmartin.)