Story by Thirza Vallois for Eye Prefer ParisI live, almost always have, on the Left Bank. Where else when you belong to the 60s generation? Our student lives were played out in the Latin Quarter and in pre-glitz Saint-Germain. Sometimes we merged night and morning at La Coupole in Montparnasse, or ventured across the river for an onion soup at old Les Halles. When we started having families,post 1968, many of us shifted our quarters to the 14th arrondissement,a leafy, more villagey neighbourhood just a bit further south, young enough owing to the presence of the Cité Universitaire.
The 14th has none of the glamour and glitter of the city centre, but it has authenticity; and a provincial touch that is the mark of what is truly French. It has long been a draw to thinking and creative minds: Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, and also a good number of national icons whom foreigners are unlikely to have heard of - my favourite singer-songwriter, the modern-day troubadour Georges Brassens, or my neighbour Coluche, to name but two.
Like myself, Coluche lived overlooking Parc Montsouris, the jewel of the 14th. Unlike me, however, he owned a full two-storey house, an unassuming red-brick remnant from the neighbourhood’s countrified past, thoroughly updated inside ( the neighbours say it had a jacuzzi or an indoor swimming-pool). But whereas Coluche lived on street level, I live perched high up as if in a tree-house, enjoying a stunning view of the gardens.
I remember Coluche queuing up at the boulangerie and greengrocer’s like everyone else, always in his sartorial trademark - a pair of blue-and-white striped dungarees buckled over a potbelly and yellow T-shirt. His round, rimless glasses and round, reddish face, his funny tufts of curly hair sticking out on either side of a shiny baldness, were no less familiar to the French than Charlot (Charlie Chaplin)’s moustache and bowler hat.
When Coluche was killed in a motorcycle crash on 21 June 1986, the night France beat Brazil in the World Cup, his death somewhat overshadowed the euphoria of victory. Interminable files of mourners streamed to his house the following days, bringing the limelight to our hitherto little-known street. Loved for his irreverence towards the establishment, he had received substantial support (but also death threats) when he attempted to run for the presidential elections, in 1981. Even today Coluche is a living icon, still entertaining television viewers with his old films and sketches; but he is remembered perhaps even more for the soup kitchen charity he founded, les restaurants du coeur, now a major institution. When I take a cab home and indicate my street to the driver, he will often respond - Ah, mais c’est habitait Coluche! and slow down to check out his house as we drive past it.
Parc Montsouris was laid out under Baron Haussmann, one of the “English” gardens that were woven into his urban scheme, emulating in miniature those his emperor Napoleon III admired in England.Although often accused of vandalism, he was in effect a visionary of genius, precociously attentive to environmental issues. Closer to us, memorable scenes were shot here for important French films, not least Agnes Varda’s Cléo de Cinq å Sept, an award winner at the Cannes Festival.
Parc Montsouris started, however, with a tragedy, for no sooner had the lake been filled up for the official inauguration than it emptied again, causing the chief engineer to commit suicide.
The gorgeous weeping willow by the lake is gone, as are the swans, and the one-time manicured lawns have been given over to the crowds and look more like meadows. But the venerable cedar and the balm of the slender coniferous, the lime, the elm, the azaleas, the winding paths, the miniature yet spectacular ravines, the little brook that leaps merrily to the waterfall, have resisted the erosion of time. Come here in the morning, when the birds converse across the tree branches and everything is divinely serene: a mother with a pre-school doll of a child may be feeding the ducks by the lake, an elderly retiree dozing off in the sun on a bench. A lithe jogger is wired to her ipod, her ponytail swinging to a rhythm I can’t hear, a fitness enthusiast fiercely exercises at the top of the steps, a cross-legged guru meditates on the grass. Up the hill, a woman is engrossed in her novel in the little rose garden that, thank heavens, goes unnoticed by most… Paris is so many miles away.
Thirza Vallois is the author of the internationally acclaimed Around and About Paris series, Romantic Paris and Aveyron, A Bridge to French Arcadi (click here to order). She is also the author of the Paris entry of the Encarta Encyclopedia. Thirza has lived in Paris most of her life and holds several degrees from the Sorbonne, including the most prestigious agrégation(a French doctoral-level teaching degree). She also lectures worldwide on various aspects of Paris. Thirza appears and contributes to television, radio and magazines in the UK, US, France and elsewhere - PBS, BBC, The Travel Channel, Discovery, CNN, The French Cultural Channel, NPR, The Financial Times, Condé Nast Traveller among others. Her award-winning “Three Perfect Days in Paris”, written for Unites Airlines’ Hemispheres, was aired as a video on United Airlines international flights and travel channels worldwide. Visit her at www.thirzavallois.com.
I just adore Parc Montsouris. It’s one of the only parks in Paris where you are really encouraged to sit on the grass (except of course in winter when the grass in resting). So many different parts of it too. I tend to live there during the warmer months. Bliss!