Saturday 1 March 2025
This is the first day of spring for meteorologists, but it came with a heavy frost. I had packed and showered the night before, turned the central heating and hot water off, and left home at 8:40 for a train at 9:46. I made slower progress through the town than I had expected and had misjudged the time, so arrived on the platform of St David’s Station just as the train was drawing in. A couple of weeks before Genviève had phoned to say that Gaston's annual raclette would be held on the 4 March (Shrove Tuesday). She said it was a shame that Jill and I could not be there. I checked my diary and found a gap in my appointments between the first and sixth of March, so booked tickets and also a hotel for two nights in Paris to visit old haunts. An added bonus will be a lunch with Jean-Dominique from the Bibliothèque nationale on Monday before taking the train on to Caen from the Gare St Lazare. It was a beautiful day without a cloud in the sky and I glimpsed the Somerset Heritage Centre right bedside the railway in Norton Fitzwarren as we drew into Taunton.
I arrived at Paddington on time and reached St Pancras early enough for two Eurostar trains before the one I was booked on, but made the mistake of going through the gates immediately on arrival to an immense crowded hall - I should have gone to the British Library next door, like last time. It was a chilly walk from the Gare du Nord to the Hôtel Jenner in the street of the same name, appropriately named after Edward Jenner, the British pioneer of vaccination, beside a large hospital complex on the other side of the River Seine. I could not find out how to get a Navigo card for public transport, so set off along the Boulevard Magenta to the Place de la République with its large statue. Then I took the Rue de Malte where there were two hotels we had stayed in the early 1970s. The Hotel de Nevers was there, but not the Hôtel de Vienne. I had located neither through booking.com. I got a little lost on the way to the Place de la Bastille but found a pleasant café for a meal with, on the neighbouring table, an elderly lady with violent makeup, making life hard for the staff who were very tolerant. I left her sawing her way through a massive raw steak and reached the Hôtel Jenner after dark and had to pay 11 euros taxe de séjour (tourist tax) on top of my pre-paid booking. It was rather a Spartan place, but clean and cheap.
Sunday 2 March 2025
I must have walked ten miles or more around Paris today, and I'm shattered. At least I was able to leave my rucksack at the hotel. It was a cloudless morning but bitterly cold. I took no breakfast in the hotel but found warmth and an indifferent coffee in the exotic environment of the Great Mosque.
I turned back to follow the Left Bank westward all the way to the Eiffel Tower, getting a view across the river of the restored Notre-Dame without the crowds in front and having a panorama of the Louvre and other sites glimpsed between the stalls of the bouquinistes. I stopped to browse and bought an uncut copy of a book published in 1935 on the origins of paper, printing and engraving by André Blum for 18 euros reduced from 20 which I thought very reasonable. I continued to the Eiffel Tower but did not join the crowds and queues, instead crossing the river to the Trocadero gardens and climbing up to the Palais de Chaillot to get a picture for Pippa, who is fascinated by the Eiffel Tower.
Monday 3 March 2025
I left the hotel early, hoping for breakfast at the Collège des Bernardins. Rather than walking I used the metro line 6 which passes close to the hotel and runs much of its route on a viaduct above ground. It was very crowded as it was rush hour. A change onto line 4 got me to Maubert-Mutualité, the nearest stop to the College, arriving at 9:50, ten minutes before they opened, to find that the restaurant only opened at 10:30 so I had a petit déjeuner in a nearby bar, returning to view the statue of Christ, which had been discovered in rubble when restoring the college buildings, supposedly a spitting image of Hubert. I took a photo and purchased a postcard to prove that it looked nothing like him at all. The College is a Cistercian foundation established in 1245 and is still used as a religious centre. It has an extremely long nave with beautiful rows of simple early gothic columns and vaulting.
However, the restaurant showed no sign of opening for me to have another coffee so I went across the Île St Louis to wander through the picturesque Marais district, largely pedestrianized, and ending up by the flamboyant Opéra house and the grands magasins (department stores) of the Boulevard Haussmann. I had time to wander round the men’s section of Au Printemps, staggered at the prices of articles of clothing with fancy names. I located Exki (96, rue Saint-Lazare), the eating place suggested by Jean-Dominique with time to look round the book-store Fnac, noting that the books are now relegated to the third floor with the toys, the lower floors being dedicated to laptops and mobile phones and other digital paraphernalia.
The meeting with Jean-Dominique was a delight. We exchanged recent publications and he told me that he was finalizing a biographical dictionary of the 19th century French book trades which, thanks to the work of Alain, Jean-Dominique and myself will be especially complete for Normandy up to 1870. He also told me that the manuscript stock cards for Rouen municipal library were ditched after the digital catalogue had reached the letter Z, so was thought to have been completed, forgetting that anonymous literature, including many thousands of official publications, the bibliothèque bleue (popular literature) and other grey literature had not been covered at all. I suppose that “Personne ne savait ce qu’ils étaient” (Nobody knew what they were). He saw me to the train at Gare St Lazare and on arrival at Caen I walked from the station in about 40 minutes, meaning that Geneviève did not need to face the rush-hour parking inferno by the station, and it was still light when I arrived to a warm welcome at her home.
Tuesday 4 March 2025
Shrove Tuesday, the day of Gaston’s raclette, the main reason for this trip.
I walked down into town this morning with Geneviève to the office of SFR (Société française du radiotéléphone) to confirm her several recent attempts to cancel a visit that day to install a fibre-optic network connection. She joined a queue of similarly entangled customers so I slipped out for a coffee, returning only to be accused of queue-jumping. Then home, hopeful that it had been resolved and a later date arranged. We drove to Gaston’s apartment, arriving at 12:30, about the same time as the other ex-library guests. As aperitif Gaston served a rosé sparkling wine accompanied by amuse-bouches he had prepared: cheese scones in a choux pastry and toast with aubergine and anchovy. While we enjoyed these he prepared the potatoes, salad, sliced ham and sausages which were to accompany the sliced cheese we were to melt on the scoops provided. A sociable do-it-yourself meal which could be extended as long as the conversation flowed. As Lent was about to begin I had brought for each friend bags of mini-eggs from Chococo, one of the only two chocolatiers in Exeter – rather hesitantly as chocolatiers abound in Caen, as in most other French towns. I had learned on a previous visit to the cathedral library in Bayeux that the local bishop in the 18th century permitted the eating of eggs during Lent but whether that extended to chocolate eggs I am unsure. I also passed over a copy of each of my recent published booklets: The writing of local history and Nobody knew what they were: the rise and fall of Exeter’s public heritage libraries. Familiarity with English and continuing interest in library matters varies but I assume that they will be passed around and end up either with Geneviève or be placed in the local studies section of the Alexis de Tocqueville library in Caen.
We left once more at 7:00 by car, this time to the Conservatoire de Caen, where there was a packed house for a one-and-a-half hour concert of baroque music from Monteverdi to Vivaldi and Handel. The performers, a group named Damigella, were eight teachers at the Conservatoire and the Orchestre de Caen with a visiting soprano who had studied at the Conservatoire and was welcomed back with whoops and whistles by an enthusiastic audience who had to be reminded that baroque concertos normally had three movements. I was lucky to get a seat beside Marie-Françoise and Geneviève who had booked tickets before I decided to come over. It was an excellent evening and some of the performers had made their own reconstructions of early musical instruments, including an impressive theorbo.
Wednesday 5 March 2025
I made my way into town at 9:30, hoping to see Sophie Biard at the Bibliothèque Alexis de Tocqueville. I went through the Jardin des Plantes to the University, hoping to walk through the medieval Château to reach the port. It was closed for conversion into a “parc urbain, so I went through the picturesque quarter of the Vaugueux to arrive at the port and then along the east bank to the library. It is an impressively large building on the water’s edge but rather remote from the historical centre of the city. I understand that they may be building a footbridge across the canal basin.
I returned home and invited Geneviève for a snack lunch in what used to be the printing office of the Imprimerie Malherbe and we then took a walk in the nearby gardens of the Colline aux Oiseaux, a wonderful transformation of a huge rubbish heap to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Normandy landings in 1944. It had a rose garden, a lake in the shape of the Normandy coastline, best seen from the top of the central hill where the children used to visit a petting zoo, now moved to a lower level and replaced by a tree-top walk and a series of gardens of the world, including Devon.
Thursday 6 March 2025
So ended a packed few days in France, where I managed to do all that I had hoped for, and more, thanks to Geneviève and my other friends and library colleagues. Thank you all, if you have persisted this far in reading my account. Geneviève dropped me off at the station to catch the 9:06 train, and in Paddington I was able to catch the train before the one I had booked and so arrived home in daylight. Although cold, the weather had been splendid with virtually no rain. And I was relieved that I did not stay longer in Paris on my return as on Friday morning one of our WW2 bombs was unearthed just outside the Gare du Nord, throwing one of France’s busiest stations into chaos and cancelling all Eurostar services to and from Paris for more than a day. The waiting rooms are packed enough in normal times, so it must have been absolute chaos.
