{"id":1173,"date":"2015-07-14T06:00:14","date_gmt":"2015-07-14T06:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/?p=1173"},"modified":"2020-01-18T09:16:14","modified_gmt":"2020-01-18T14:16:14","slug":"edith-wharton-and-my-bastille-day-blunder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/edith-wharton-and-my-bastille-day-blunder\/","title":{"rendered":"My Bastille Day Faux Pas in France"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Edith<\/a>Years ago when I was researching a book on Edith Wharton’s psychology and fiction, I visited her home north of Paris in Saint-Brice-sous-For\u00eat.\u00a0 It was le<\/b><\/b>ss than an hour north of the city and I’d written ahead long in advance to get permission to explore it and take pictures.\u00a0 I didn’t realize my clueless publisher would have no interest in the photos, not even an author photo of me in her garden. The ways of publishing have always been mysterious….<\/p>\n

Arriving in that small town of fewer than 15,000 citizens, and fluent in French, I was puzzled that nobody I asked on the street seemed to know where Rue Edith Wharton was.\u00a0 I kept getting responses of “Desol\u00e9, M’sieu, connais pas<\/em>.”\u00a0 Sorry, don’t know. Finally I resorted to the Town Hall for a map to find the home Wharton called Pavillon Colombe, which was built in the late 18th century for an actress.\u00a0 I later learned that the street had only recently been renamed for Wharton, which was probably why citizens couldn’t help me.<\/p>\n

Though the facade of her home is aloof and impersonal, it opened into a cool, dark hall, beyond which, through French doors, stretched a sunny parterre. A shy maid showed me into a gorgeous salon filled with beautiful paintings, tables, books, and bibelots. A bell rang somewhere and the maid said, Madame la Princesse vienne<\/em>. I stood there trying to figure out why she was using the subjunctive tense to tell me that the princess was coming (what was wrong with the regular present?), and I felt that I was in way over my head.<\/p>\n

But I couldn’t help relishing the elegant rooms opening onto each other and onto the parterre.\u00a0 This was my first time ever in a French home of such grace and beauty.<\/p>\n

Princess Isabelle von und zu Liechtenstein, the wife of Pavillon Colombe’s owner, strode up through the garden.\u00a0 She was drop-dead chic in black and grey with a colorful Chanel scarf at her throat, her hair in a chignon. As she passed wailing peacocks, she called out to two bounding white borzois in a high piping voice.\u00a0 It was an entrance like something out of a stage play, dramatic and somewhat intimidating.<\/p>\n

Madame la Princesse gave me a brisk but exceedingly gracious tour through the house that bore no trace of Wharton’s former presence.\u00a0 On my own I toured the garden which also had changed since Wharton’s day, but still showed signs of her planning.\u00a0 In the Italian style, it was a tranquil, inviting progression of orderly spaces, light giving way to shadow, square spaces to round, grass to fountains.<\/p>\n

Upon leaving and thanking my host, I struck the absolute wrong note.\u00a0 Bastille Day was coming up and I made some reference to it, because I’d never been in France before on July14th and was looking forward to the fireworks.<\/p>\n

Without thinking, I asked if the Princess had any special plans.\u00a0 “Je porte toujours le deuil<\/em>,” she said with no change of expression: “I always wear mourning.”\u00a0 She added that her husband was a descendent of Queen Marie Antoinette. My French failed me.\u00a0 My English failed me. Had I spoken German at the time, that would have failed me, too.\u00a0 Luckily, I was on my way out.\u00a0 It does make a good story, though, something Wharton herself might have enjoyed.\u00a0 I suppose the Princess’s version might be even more entertaining–if she’s ever deigned to tell it, of course.<\/p>\n

Lev Raphael is the author of the mystery The Edith Wharton Murders<\/a><\/em> and 24 other books in many genres.\u00a0 This anecdote is taken from his study Edith Wharton’s Prisoners of Shame.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Years ago when I was researching a book on Edith Wharton’s psychology and fiction, I visited her home north of Paris in Saint-Brice-sous-For\u00eat.\u00a0 It was less than an hour north of the city and I’d written ahead long in advance to get permission to explore it and take pictures.\u00a0 I didn’t realize my clueless publisher … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[344,340,249,339,345,343,338,346],"class_list":["post-1173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-authors","tag-americans-in-france","tag-bastille-day","tag-edith-wharton","tag-france","tag-le-quartorze-juillet","tag-pavillon-colombe","tag-research","tag-the-edith-wharton-murders"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1173"}],"version-history":[{"count":30,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5477,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1173\/revisions\/5477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}