Why France?

We were all wondering where I would settle: Sweden, where I’m a citizen, Germany, where I have ‘chosen’ family, Italy, where my daughter lives, or France, land of my maternal grandmother’s ancestors.

Of all these places, France was the one that felt most like home. Given that, I should perhaps have visited Ireland, since I have an Irish grandmother on one side and an Irish grandfather on the other. But the one time I did visit (Dublin and some smaller coastal spot), I didn’t find it particularly appealing. I did like the abundance of live music and the sea, but somehow that didn’t compensate for the meat and potatoes culinary orientation and the absence of trees, much less forests. Maybe I didn’t visit the right places?

The first foreign culture I encountered was Francophone. My uncles spoke it (both their French parents did), although for some reason neither my grandmother nor her sister, Aunt Grace. As a toddler, my mother stationed me in front of the TV at noon on weekdays to watch a half-hour French language program on the local public television station while she prepared lunch. I doubt I ever reached a conversational level, but by the time I got to kindergarten, I could count to ten, knew color names, and the French names of some body parts. French (rather than Spanish, the only other choice) was the language I studied in middle and high school, although by the end of that, I could read but still couldn’t engage in conversation, and had never yet been to Quebec, much less France.

I might have anchored myself in France a lot earlier had I not had a falling out with Dina Vierny, the last model of Maillol, and the person who inherited his estate. We developed a kind of friendship while I was in graduate school because I wrote a paper, later my first published article, on Maillol’s monument to French revolutionary Auguste Blanqui, Action in Chains. When I began the project, I contacted Madame Vierny, and when she came to New York, she invited me for tea at her hotel, the Westbury on Madison and 69^th, a short walk from my graduate school on 78^th and Fifth. She was dark-haired and energetic, with a confidence and authority unexpected in such a small woman.

Over the course of two years, I met her there when she was in New York, and when I went to Paris, she invited me to her home, now the Musée Maillol, tucked behind the magnificent eighteenth-century Fountain of the Four Seasons on rue de Grenelle. The first time, I was escorted into a small, elegant salon. Her Capuchin  monkey, Rocky (she was a huge Sylvester Stallone fan) vaulted about – from furniture to heads to tables and chairs, pausing briefly to survey, and then returning to his frenetic activity. A maid arrived with an elegant silver tray with tea and madeleines and then returned with another silver tray on which three small Maillol sculptures were arranged. Each had something in common with Action in Chains. I examined the small studies, my mind racing to decode the relationship among these works and how they might clarify  decisions Maillol made for his monument. I could feel the watchful eye Madame Vierny. When her patience was exhausted (in less than a minute), she barked, “pick them up!” As a rule, it is considered improper to manhandle artworks, but I did as commanded. Then, her voice softened and she explained that Maillol’s sculptures were best understood by touching, because that is how they were made. I startled. She reminded me that he abandoned drawing and painting when his eyesight deteriorated and took up sculpture. That I knew, but I hadn’t imagined that he made all of his (almost exclusively nude female) sculptures by touch—feel the model, mold the clay. Yes, I saw you grimace when you read that sentence, and when I heard that explanation, I’m sure I stared, albeit briefly, at my hostess, who began working as Maillol’s model as a teenager. Anyway, we stayed friends until the moment I sent her my published article. I had sent her a draft before submitting it to the journal, and she gave it a thumbs up, but after I sent her a copy of the Art Journal issue where it was published, she wrote me an angry letter, asserting that I’d misinterpreted things she’d told me (I’d actually found information that conflicted with it, but that was clear from the draft). I didn’t respond, felt terrible, and abandoned all plans for a dissertation about the sculpture of Maillol.

Over the years, I visited Paris periodically, like many art historians, and wound up stranded there by choice when the Pandemic unfolded in 2020 (you can read about that in detail in my memoir, An American in Pandemic Paris. That was, without question, one of the most magical episodes of my life. The city was so quiet that I heard church bells (and ambulance sirens) rather than traffic and smelled jasmine as I walked the streets rather than exhaust. I read every historical marker I encountered and watched the weekly book discussion program La Grande Librairie.

When lockdown occurred again in the winter of 2020-21, I relocated to Antibes with a friend. I bought lavender and cheese and did most of my shopping at its famous Marché provençal, sat with my laptop at la gravette beach or the fortress, and made weekly excursions by car to usually bustling but then quiet and charming towns along the Côte d’azur: Théoule-sur-Mer, Biot, Tourrettes-sur-Loup, Vence, Courmes, Eze. I returned to Paris for the summer, which had just the right number of people – no lines, no overcrowding. I wandered the palace of Versailles in near solitude. Imagine!

Since then, I’ve spent a lot of time in France, mostly Paris, finding more reasons to settle there as time passed: cheese, three colors of cauliflower, a half-dozen varieties of strawberries, live theatre, gypsy jazz on Saturday afternoons, dancing along the Seine on weekend evenings, the bal musette at St. Medard and the Rennes-Raspail organic market on Sundays, the aroma of butter and yeast wafting from boulangeries, people watching, the first twinkle of the Eiffel Tower, the park-closing ritual at the Luxembourg Garden (le Luco), street wandering in the evening, friends, and civility, perhaps the most important quality.

In France, the general level of consideration for others (including not wasting their time—unless, of course, you’re part of the governmental bureaucracy, in which case it seems to be an obligatory part of the job) is palpably higher than anywhere else I’ve visited in Europe. No one in France is too busy  to say ‘hello’, whether they’re arriving in a doctor’s waiting room or working as a cashier at the local grocery, nor to say ‘goodbye’ and ‘have a nice day/evening’ upon departing. No one. Someone stumbles, they stop to help. People routinely stop to inquire about the well-being of indigent individuals on the street. Nothing and no one seem rushed. One gets the distinct impression that one has joined a community of individuals united by a commitment to fostering a respectful and compassionate society. It reminds me of the America of my childhood;  a psycho-emotional space that I’m happy to reinhabit. France, in this and many other ways, feels safe and a bit old-fashioned.

As a consequence, following my liberation from wage-slavery, I packed up my worldly possessions and moved. I scouted locations during the winter of 2026: Paris and Antibes—of course, as well as smaller, charming cities: Angers, Nantes, Pau, Tours, and Troyes. Where did I wind up and why? Stay tuned!