DAFFODILS FIT FOR A KING

Today's favorite photo from Versailles: the long awaited blooms of hundreds and hundreds of meters of daffodils.  They line the double alleys and sidewalks along both sides of two of the city's principle streets leading to the center of town. Fit for a king.

Photo ©2011 P.B. Lecron

THE COUNTENANCE HE KEEPS by P.B. Lecron

I keep waiting for a delayed character revelation to emerge from the bricks each time I pass his five-story high portrait as I go down my hill and up the next toward the center of Versailles. He looks so, oh gosh, Balzacian, dressed in his black redingote and white cravate, with his placid face framed by short dark curly hair à la Titus and those 19th-century sideburns. Painted in the early 1920s, the rare vintage toothpaste publicity features its enterprising creator, Dr. Pierre Mussot, a.k.a. Dr. Pierre, who has been smiling over decades of comings and goings on avenue des Etats-Unis, a main artery of Versailles. Ads like these, which could be seen from afar, were usually painted on the pignons of five- and six-story Haussmannian constructions in Paris. This location in Versailles was probably selected because the ad could be seen by train passengers arriving on the line coming from the Paris Saint-Lazare station.


The most well-known ad for the mint-flavored toothpaste which Dr. Pierre concocted and commercialized in 1837, is a poster or affiche designed by the famed children's book illustrator Louis-Maurice Boutet de Movel in 1894. But in the post-war giddiness of the Roaring Twenties it was the portrait of the good Dr. Pierre clad in 19th-century attire that was chosen for the giant mural advertisements; his person a symbol harking to a sense of tradition and stability of days gone by.

I sometimes wonder if the keenly observant Honoré de Balzac and the famous Dr. Pierre ever crossed paths, knowing that a multitude of social encounters fueled Balzac's inspiration for the some 2,500 characters in his panorama of 19th century French society, La Comédie Humaine. Then other times, thinking of  Dr. T.J. Eckleburg's eyes on the billboard in The Great Gatsby, I wonder, too, how F. Scott Fitzgerald might have reacted or been affected by the immense portraiture of Dr. Pierre, had he seen one of the mural ads during his séjour in Paris in the early 1920s. Slowly fading away with antiquated charm, the publicity today is discreet, but spanking new Dr. Pierre must have seemed an obnoxiously imposing and all-seeing voyeur.

Some vocabulary
redingote: frock coat
cravate: tie
à la Titus: as that of the Roman Emperor Titus (AD 79-81)
pignon: gable
pâte dentifrice: toothpaste
en vente partout: on sale everywhere
affiche: poster
séjour: sojourn

To read an article I wrote, Back to Balzac, about Balzac and the Maison de Balzac, a Parisian museum dedicated to his life and work,  join The Literary Traveler. An assay of the article is available free; the complete text requires membership.

©2011 P.B.Lecron

THE OTHER VERSAILLES by P.B. Lecron

 Trees and ease

Say "Versailles" and most think "château," but Versailles is also a city where the quality of life appeals to even the most hardened critics of the Ancient Regime's excesses. Louis XIV's innovative and harmonious urban planning is still a model three centuries after he first laid out its wide avenues and imposed building restrictions.

Historic preservation and controlled growth have given the town a look all its own. Unperturbedly classic, human in scale, Versailles has a very livable, old-fashioned aspect that its residents adore.

Modern urban amenities keep life simple and uncluttered: underground parking, buried electrical and telephone cables, and a highly developed public transportation with 37 city bus lines and five train stations. Today the tree is king and the city keeps careful track of all 180,000 of them; whenever one is to be cut down, it must be replaced.

It's inevitable that a provincial city which figures as a cultural counterweight to Paris and selected repeatedly by magazines as one of the best places to live, inspire clichés. And clichés abound about Versailles' 85,000 souls who go about their business as ten million visitors stream through the town yearly on their way to the château and park. "B.C.B.G." or "bon chic, bon genre," synomous with good taste and tradition, is a platitude for the archetypical Versaillais deemed to have a family of four or more well-behaved children dressed in navy blue with claudine collars or in scouting uniforms.

The cliché also calls for a wicker shopping cart--the indispensable accessory for going to the public market, which at Versailles is so packed with people that celebrities who shop there get lost in the crowd.  Be it "Old France" or "traditionalist," this is not a city where fashion elegance is a moral imperative; ostentation is generally avoided and low key is the local style.

Regardless of the conformist image, Versailles has space and oxygen to raise creative, cosmopolitan talent. Like filmmaker and master of intimate comedy, Bruno Podalydes and his brother Denis of the Comédie Française, or fashion designer, Agnés b, who grew up here. International trip-hop electronic duo of Air, Jean-Benoît Dunckel and Nicolas Godin, went to school together here, as did members of the pop-rock-soul-funk electronic group, Daft Punk. Then there's the singularly curious figure of the French hip-hop scene, the Klub des Loosers, an anonymous one-man act that local teenagers have called Versailles underground. His cult hit, "Born under the Sign of V" caricaturizes teenage disillusionment and boredom in Versailles. A common complaint, but as one youth quips, "We may not have a bowling alley or a mini-golf, but we can go sculling on the Grand Canal!"


Or if really bored, the kids can play the special Versailles edition of Monopoly. "Where are you going to install your hotels, in the Quartier Saint-Louis or the Quartier Notre-Dame? Good question, for a legendary gulf separates these prime neighborhoods. Mention it to long-time resident, Christine de Saint-Exupéry, countess and mother of four, and she knowingly smiles. "The Quartier Saint-Louis is more traditionalist than Notre-Dame; it's a city within a city and the people there feel they are more 'Versailles' than Versailles."


"As for traditionalists," she continues, "Versailles has a high concentration of old, aristocratic families. Half of the town is in the Bottin Mondain! It's a genealogical listing of French aristocracy--the bible of Versailles," she adds, grinning.

A quiet revolution is going on in Versailles as its officials seek to transform the city into the economic motor of the western Parisian area; Versailles Satory district is the new site for the Vestapolis research center to develop the car of the future. With these prospects and an increasing number of young Parisian families moving to Versailles seeking trees and ease, a socio-demographic mutation is guaranteed. Like gilding, will the Versailles sense of tradition rub off onto its new faces? That would be hard to predict, but with its rich history, Versailles can surely bank on a future in gold.


What was true then, is true today; the above text is a slightly revised republication of a magazine article I wrote which appeared in France Today, March 2006. 


To the list of new musical talent that has sprouted in Versailles, add the alternate rock group Phoenix. I like the comment a friend, Adah Rose Bitterbaum, from Washington, D.C. of the Studio Gallery had: "I saw a great rock 'n roll band from Versailles called Phoenix. They were adorable and good. Lots of Versailles Angst which is a real oxymoron."  



www.francetoday.com

VERSAILLES STREETS: IN THE MOOD FOR ART by P.B. Lecron

 Très street art--watch your step


 "Even so, Versailles is the only place where I've ever seen a fleur-de-lys stenciled as graffiti," I said at a morning coffee with French friends when the conversation turned to graffiti and tagging. 


"Oh, that must have been my crazy cousin!" exclaimed one of the ladies.

"Really? How old is he?"
"Forty-five! He's a die-hard Royalist."


The next time I went out, I looked for the neatly spray-painted emblem of the French monarchy, but it had already gone the way of other graffiti and tags in Versailles, which are quickly removed by a city crew.



For the past couple of years, however, another genre of graffiti in Versailles has had longer staying power. Unobtrusive, and even beguiling, are fluid quick studies of human figures that an anonymous artist has painted on pedestrian markings. The artist probably executed the works dribbling paint from a squeeze bottle, sometimes adding whimsical captions.


The pedestrian markings do get repainted from time to time and the streets repaved as a part of regular maintenance, but this hasn't deterred our local street artist; it's only provided him with fresh surfaces to work on. Engaging and non-aggressive, the charming, ephemeral figures fit the genteel mood of this very livable city and have transformed a  simple walk around town into an amusing photo op adventure. 

Text & photos ©2009 P.B. Lecron