Sous le pont de la Concorde coule la Seine, April, 1993
If Kathleen seems to be frowning (she isn't, actually), that's because she knows I'm going to tell the "Pont Dix" joke when we get home. We are crossing the Seine on the Pont de la Concorde, heading out from our hotel - the Crillon! I won a raffle! (too many Texans) - to the Café de Flore, because it is a Sunday and not much else is open. As I recall, this was the only rainy day of our first trip to Paris.
The Place de la Concorde started out as the Place Louis XV but served as the Place de la Révolution in the 1790's, and was the scene of much guillotining. I have been reading Colin Jones's Paris: The Biography of a City (Viking, 2005), and at the moment, Baron Haussmann is just rolling up his sleeves. But the orderly Paris that is the Second Empire's greatest legacy was framed by great disorders, in 1848 and 1871, and there were plenty of other uprisings earlier in the century. Mr Jones exhibits a two-page woodcut of the tenth anniversary of the Trois Glorieuses, the 1830 revolt that drove out Charles X, the last of the main-line Bourbons. He would be followed by his cousin, Louis-Philippe, who as king in 1840 inaugurated a commemorative column at the Place de la Bastille, but Mr Jones misses the chance to inform the reader that if you want to imagine what the parade was like you have only to turn to Hector Berlioz's Symphonie Funèbre et Triomphale, a truly amazing piece of band music, with a chorus at the very end. The dead march that opens the "symphony" is one of the most moving pieces of public music that I have ever heard; the very pace is mortuary. Hopeful motifs, whenever they sound, are invariably crushed by huge chords of grief. It is overwhelming stuff, and I wonder if it has ever been used again. Sorrowfully, France has had many suitable occasions for reviving it.
Comments
So that's Kathleen? She's lovely. I must have missed all those other pictures you've surely been posting of her.
Posted by: Joe.My.God. | July 24, 2005 10:36 AM
You should see what Haussman did to my staircase. It's so narrow the IKEA guys didn't know how to handle it (I presume they've seen everything).
Posted by: Coquette | July 24, 2005 06:42 PM
Funny, Michael Lane sent me this excerpt from The Daily Blague this morning. Coincidentally, I got a call last night from the Strand, after speaking with the birthday boy, to let me know that my copy of Colin Jones's book on Paris had arrived. The confluence sparked a vivid memory.
My first sight of the Place de la Concorde was during a wild cab ride from the American Ambassador's residence on the Rue du Faubourg St Honore. It was after having endured 36 hours of no sleep while escorting a fabulous collection of French Impressionists paintings for Ambassador Rohatyn from New York to Paris and helping the great interior designer, William Hodgins, arrange the pictures in the enfilade of rooms at said residence; an 18th century "hotel particulier" last owned by the Rothschilds, that I left Mrs. Rohatyn and Mr. Hodgins during the evening rush hour.
My first Parisian cabbie barreled down the relatively narrow street on which stand the palatial masses of the Elysee and the American Ambassador's residence to the tight corner where the flank of the Crillon, housed in one of the twin palaces of Gabriel, confronts the verdure of the garden of, the rather chaste and neoclassical, American Embassy at the foot of the Jardins des Champs Elysees. As we spun through the turn, the spatial explosion of the Place made me dizzy; cars swirling and snaking in no particular order other than the general counter clockwise flow amid ancient Egyptian obelisks while assorted bronze putti, nymphs and river goddesses disported amid the plumes of the fountains.
The cabbie seemed an insane Mario Andretti, yet he successfully shot across the flow of traffic to the edge of the Place, shot down toward the Seine flank of the Louvre and over the river to my hotel on the Quai Voltaire. I stumbled to my room and conked out, to be awakened a few hours later by searchlights flashing across the thinly curtained window; the noise of a loudspeaker echoing in my head. As I sprang from bed and pulled open the curtain, I was caught in the spotlight of a passing bateau mouche; its operator announcing the sights to its passengers. While gazing down at the night river, the lights and the glow of the Louvre's river façade opposite, it suddenly occurred to me that I was standing stark naked in the long french window, giving the river traffic and the tourists a bit more than than they had bargained for; though again, maybe not - it was Paris, after all.
Posted by: Walter J. Wade III | July 26, 2005 11:16 AM
The typing police just informed me that i mistyped Mr. Rohatyn's name. I mistakenly spelled it "Royhatyn". Mea culpa. Mrs. R. was graciousness itself, if this helps.
Posted by: Walter J. Wade III | July 26, 2005 12:05 PM