Frances Gendlin © All rights reserved.
Excerpt
The Saga Unfolds
God knows I’m not the first American to write about falling under the spell of Paris or about coming here to live. But sticking to fact, neither was Ernest Hemingway, who spent some time in Paris in his youth and wrote about it later, or even Gertrude Stein, who stayed and dissected Parisian life until the end of her days. Nor, despite current hagiography, were they the most famous—although so much is made of their sojourns here, of moveable feasts and lost generations and literary salons. No, honors in all these categories must go to Benjamin Franklin, bespectacled and wise, who in 1776 conquered le tout Paris, and whose own memoir shows him to have taken Paris to his heart as fully as its citizens took him to theirs.
Strange as it may seem, I think often of Franklin as I walk with my grocery bags and baguette down rue de l’Ancienne Comedie, passing Procope, the oldest café in the city, where he is known to have dined. Sometimes—if my bags are not weighing me down—I even go out of my way to pass by, just to peer in. The restaurant no longer resembles that ancient café, of course, but it amuses me as I look in to imagine where Ben might have sat, who his companions might have been, and what political deals they might have been hatching there on behalf of the newly formed United States.
Moi, I rarely eat at Procope. It primarily serves tourists now, and I find myself, these days, considering Miss Stein’s words that “America is my country and Paris is my home town and it is as it has come to be.” For me, as well, this might (or might not) turn out to be true. Yet, about six weeks ago, toward the end of blustery November—just before taking off on my annual trip to the States—I did take some visitors to Procope, which I save for American history buffs or for a Sunday if my regular hangouts are closed. Or even, as was the case with this rather nervous little-traveled couple, if someone Stateside asks me to meet a relative who has arrived in Paris, and I simply cannot come up with another place that I am sure would suit. These folks—who had never been outside of America before—were the nephew and wife of my old friend Lenore in Chicago, where I had long lived. I was happy to oblige her, but she now owes me a favor, big time.
Yet, I can’t say that I minded Procope that night. I ordered a dozen large oysters, and feeling greedy, later I downed a half-dozen more. The couple, though, tittering at the thought of garlicky snails or even foie gras, both took the coq au vin, ignoring my caution that it really would be cock not chicken, as it would be at home. Try the duck breast and order it rosé (rare inside), I suggested. Magret de canard is so good. Mais non, so I just shrugged and smiled (weakly) when later they seemed to flinch. What else could I do? But while we were eating and drinking a wine the serveur suggested, I trotted out some Franklin stories, and we were all generally content.
When he arrived in Paris that fateful year, Franklin’s fame had preceded him across the Atlantic. He was compared to Socrates and Newton, and cheered by the people as he walked through the streets. Hardly the simple Poor Richard character he had created, Franklin used his wits and even that endearing supposed simplicity to his advantage. Thus, comporting himself carefully, he succeeded in the mission given to him by the Continental Congress—to forge an alliance with France against George III. It wasn’t that Louis XVI favored revolution, as the events in France a decade later fatally proved. He just hated the English and King George.
What surprised my captive audience more than the strongly flavored coq was that Franklin—whose manly appetites were also quite well known—found some pleasant diversions here. Paris was très sophistiquée, even then. To the dismay of John Adams, also on the American delegation—and who wrote of Franklin’s “discipation”—Franklin was enjoying himself, especially at fashionable Parisian soirées. “Somebody, it seems,” he wrote to his step-niece, “gave out that I lov’d Ladies; and then every body presented me their Ladies (or the Ladies presented themselves) to be embrac’d, that is, to have their Necks kiss’d....‘Tis a delightful People to live with.”
My companions seemed impressed by this lore, which gratified me, I must admit. “How do you know all this about Paris, Fran?” they asked—apparently not having done any advance homework about me with Lenore. I am a travel writer, after all. This means, to be blunt, that after decades of “day jobs” in publishing offices here and there, I have finally found a way to get paid for doing what suits me best: landing myself temporarily in different cultures and pondering about peripatetic lives (including my own, I suppose). It also means reading everything in sight, keeping meticulous records and checking off lists, talking to everyone around, and exploring neighborhood after neighborhood on foot, figuring them out. Yes, this suits me just fine.
But what should I have told those young visitors as I curved my knife around the rim of the oyster shell, loosening the little lovely and slipping it into my mouth? That my editors had asked me to prepare a completely new guide to living in Paris? And that I was going to spend a year once again focusing on Paris life? I could have left it at that, and probably should have. But it’s hard for me to let things go. To keep myself from spilling out the events that brought me here. Not to impose with what it is about us both—this city and me—that seems to be leading me to attempt a steady life in one place, when I have never succeeded in this before.
“Oh, I just read everything I can about Americans here,” I started out, managing then to contain myself somewhat. And it was essentially true. For in my fascination with this particular city’s odd magnetism, how it seems to pull people in and then hold on, I think of others over the centuries—and not just Miss Gertrude—who have also been drawn in. But there’s more.
(For the entire Chapter, read pages 1-12)